So when the Prince of Wales arrived in Turkmenistan in 1996, the Foreign Office had one very clear instruction for the new British Ambassador, Neil Hook, and the Prince’s officials: no more horses. It was a tense evening as the royal convoy pulled up at the President’s floodlit pink palace. Niyazov was in expansive form. ‘Look at my house,’ he told the Prince. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ ‘Yes,’ the Prince replied, reaching for the tactful mot juste. ‘We call it strawberries and cream.’ Niyazov then took the Prince firmly by the arm and led him down to a vast equestrian arena, where an energetic display of Turkmen horsemanship was laid on for the Prince’s benefit. As the two men walked through the stables, Niyazov sang the praises of one horse after another. It looked increasingly likely that the Prince was about to be offered one at any minute. The Prince, however, was managing to hold his own, dodging every presidential blandishment. ‘We were always told you were very active in racing,’ the President remarked. ‘I did a bit of steeplechasing but I never made myself look very respectable,’ came the reply. Niyazov asked the Prince which horse he most admired. Prince Charles craftily observed how impressed he was that the President could manage so many horses, when he himself had too many to look after. Frequently rubbing his back, the Prince lamented that a bad back made riding very painful these days. Time and again, very genially and diplomatically, he made it quite clear that the last thing he actually wanted was a horse. At the end of a twenty-two-course banquet, the Prince left Niyazov’s pink palace with nothing more awkward than a pom-pom hat and a carpet.
DANGER
There was more haggling ahead of an even more challenging trip two years later. It was one that highlighted an aspect of royal travel which, with a few exceptions – like the Lusaka Commonwealth meeting of 1979 or the 1994 attack on the Prince in a Sydney park by a man armed with a starting pistol¶ – tends to go unreported: the element of danger on a royal visit. In 1998, the Foreign Office asked the Prince to visit Sri Lanka to mark the sixtieth anniversary of independence. The country was involved in a long and bitter civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese-majority government, with regular explosions and suicide attacks all over the country. The Prince did not shrink from visiting a war zone, but if he was to go there, then he would jolly well include a visit to somewhere else he genuinely wanted to see – the mysterious mountain kingdom of Bhutan. A former member of staff remembers the discussions with the Foreign Office: ‘Sri Lanka was very dangerous so we said: “Well if he’s doing that, you’ll have to let him do Bhutan too.” Diplomatically, it was a pointless trip. We had no embassy there. But he wanted to go.’
The result was an extremely high-risk tour of Sri Lanka, followed by a scenic visit to the Gurkha heartlands of Nepal, from where the Prince could enter Bhutan for three days of Himalayan hiking. During the pre-tour ‘recce’ his staff had tried to include a spot of walking in Sri Lanka, but encountered stern resistance from the Sri Lankan security chiefs. It was too risky, they said. When the Prince’s staff asked why, they would be given the same catch-all excuse: ‘Snakes’.
As the chartered royal flight approached the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, the Prince tried to lighten the mood. ‘Have you got your bullet-proof vests?’ he joked to the accompanying press pack (some of whom actually had). No sooner had the flight touched down than the dramas – and comedy – began on the Colombo tarmac. The Sri Lankan artillery unit performing the twenty-one-gun salute to welcome the Prince inadvertently managed to set fire to the grass beside the runway with red-hot shell casings. As fire engines raced past the royal dais, the Prince was invited to inspect the guard of honour, whereupon a stray dog appeared from nowhere and joined him. At this precise moment the military band struck up ‘The Liberty Bell’, better known as the theme tune to Monty Python. As the Prince remarked later, he was biting his tongue so hard to retain his composure that he nearly drew blood. His first engagement was originally supposed to have been a visit to the Buddhist holy of holies, the Temple of the Tooth, but terrorists had blown up part of it earlier in the week. So he was taken, instead, to a Courtaulds factory producing men’s Y-front underpants for Marks & Spencer. Doing his level best to keep the mood upbeat, the Prince made a speech thanking the workforce for ‘providing hidden support to substantial parts of the UK population’.
The following day was the moment his team were dreading. The security risk was now so high that the independence anniversary celebrations could no longer be held in public, but had been relocated to the grounds of the presidential compound. ‘People kept on blowing things up,’ says a member of the entourage. ‘There was the Prince sitting alongside this very unpopular president and we all felt as if we were on borrowed time, that we might get mown down at any minute – like the assassination of Sadat.# It only needs one soldier to turn round with a gun. But the Prince is brave – and he is stoical.’ Even as he was flying out of Colombo, nine people were blown up at a checkpoint through which the Prince had passed just a few hours earlier. No one was going to begrudge him three days in the Himalayas after all that.
In the years following their separation, both the Prince and Princess of Wales had each worked out a new modus operandi for their international work. Although the breakdown of any marriage is an intensely sad and personal matter, much of the world felt entitled to have an opinion on the failings of this one. To their credit, both sides had adopted Churchill’s old maxim of ‘KBO’,** continuing to represent the Queen and their various charities all over the globe, taking some solace from the impact their work might have on others. For the Prince, however, the subsequent dip in his own popularity coincided with concerns inside the Commonwealth. Was he starting to lose interest in the Commonwealth? If he took foreign holidays, they would be spent on alpine ski slopes or in the Mediterranean sun. His well-publicised outreach work in the Islamic world was all well and good, but other parts of the world were feeling neglected.
‘He was seeing too many emirs and not enough Commonwealth leaders,’ says one former Marlborough House insider. The Commonwealth Secretariat had made periodic attempts at giving the Prince a more hands-on role. Stuart Mole, former chief of staff at Marlborough House during the 1980s and 1990s, remembers the familiar debate. ‘Every secretary-general I have known was thinking about the future relationship. Back then, there was a feeling that Prince Charles wasn’t very interested in the Commonwealth. There was also a counter-argument that he didn’t want to tread on his mother’s toes, that he didn’t like being seen as a walking dummy and wanted a proper job’.
The Prince’s separation from the Princess coincided with the rise of a new Commonwealth superstar, one who was even being discussed as a potential future head of the organisation. Having been elected President of a new, democratic South Africa in 1994, Nelson Mandela had sought his country’s immediate return to the organisation. With the monarchy at a low ebb, some commentators began to argue that he might one day be the ideal person to lead it, rather than the British monarch – not that Mandela himself ever expressed the faintest desire to do so. ‘With Mandela in his prime, there was a sudden realisation of the lack of automaticity,’ says one of the Prince’s staff. ‘It was being suggested that Mandela would be a good Head of the Commonwealth and we had to consider how to deal with it if it gathered momentum. It wasn’t serious but it was on the radar. The Prince was at rock bottom and at his world-weariest.’
HANDOVER NUMBER TWO
The nadir would come in 1997. In July, the Prince was despatched to Hong Kong to lower the Union flag. This was not like the previous independence ceremonies he had conducted, for the simple reason that Hong Kong was not about to become independent. After 150 years under the British Crown, it was to be absorbed into mainland China. This plot did not follow the usual simplistic British Empire narrative of imperialist, racist baddies being kicked out to make way for plucky, democratic good guys. Most of the residents emphatically wanted to remain under British rule. They had not merely prospered under the Crown, but had grown i
nto one of the world’s pre-eminent financial centres. Nor, having been decolonised, could they even take their place at the Commonwealth table. Quite the opposite: having been part of the family of nations via Britain ever since the creation of the Commonwealth – even fielding its own team at the Commonwealth Games and winning a total of five gold medals – Hong Kong would now be removed from the organisation. This might well be a moment for unalloyed celebration in Beijing. In Hong Kong, however, it felt distinctly unpromising, a step, if not into the dark, into uncertainty.
Around the world, third-party commentators billed it as the end of the British Empire. No matter that other dependent territories, from Bermuda to Gibraltar and the Caymans, still remained firmly wedded to the Crown and had no intention of letting go. Britain was just a few weeks into a dynamic new Labour administration, embracing a mantra of ‘Cool Britannia’. The handover of Hong Kong was the perfect emblem of the decline of the old order, a deliciously convenient manifestation of millennial change. And here was the personification of that old world order, the Prince of Wales, complete with the ultimate symbol of the ancient regime – the soon-to-be-redundant Britannia.
Little wonder the Prince was in melancholy mood as he presided over the last days of post-imperial rule from his base on board the Royal Yacht. What made him sadder still was that this was Britannia’s last cruise. The new Labour government of Tony Blair had confirmed that Britannia would be decommissioned later in the year. Blair had never actually been on board before, let alone seen Britannia doing what it did best – promoting Britain overseas. When the Prime Minister and his wife, Cherie, arrived in Hong Kong, the Prince invited them round to the Royal Yacht. A member of the royal party recalls the excruciating moment when, at the Prince’s suggestion, the ship’s captain, Commodore Anthony Morrow, offered to give them a guided tour of the ship. Suddenly there was heckling from the back of the room. ‘Lobbying!’ shouted Blair’s spin doctor, Alastair Campbell. ‘I suppose he thought he was being funny,’ says one of those present. ‘But it was just embarrassing.’
What would have been even more embarrassing was the near-disaster at the British handover ceremony on the night of 30th June. Grandstands for thousands of spectators and VIPs had been erected around the parade ground at HMS Tamar, the main British base. At the stroke of midnight this famous old complex – dominated by the high-rise Prince of Wales Building – would become the headquarters of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. It was essential for British prestige and national pride that this last hurrah should be conducted without a hitch. On arrival, the Prince’s equerry, Lieutenant Commander John Lavery, placed the Prince’s speech safely on his own seat and then went about his duties, ensuring that his boss was introduced to the right VIPs in the right order. The proceedings were not helped by a tropical downpour, which, in the absence of covered grandstands, drenched all those without an umbrella – including the Prince himself. Dressed in full Royal Navy uniform, he at least had the luxury of a peaked cap. The outgoing governor, Chris Patten, looked as if he had gone swimming fully clothed.
As the Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch ushered all the military detachments into the centre of the parade square, Lavery reached for the Prince’s speech. It was not there. A frantic search ensured. This could not only turn into a career-ending moment for the equerry. If the Prince failed to read out the Queen’s farewell message of thanks and best wishes to her four million soon-to-be ex-subjects, the embarrassment to both the nation and the monarchy – captured on live television around the world – did not bear thinking about. Suddenly Lavery spotted a diligent cleaner emptying the contents of a dustpan into a bin off to one side. With moments to spare, he found the royal speech in the bin, extracted it and returned to the VIP grandstand, where he handed it to the Prince.
The events of that evening, historic as they were, would be eclipsed by the thunderbolt that struck two months later. The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car crash in the early hours of 31st August 1997 reverberates to this day, as her sons ensure that her place in their lives and the life of the nation is enshrined and honoured. Though the Princess had been divorced for a year, her death was the single gravest blow to the monarchy since the abdication of Edward VIII. While most people would see it for what it was – the premature death of a globally adored young mother, and a tragedy for all concerned – it would, inevitably, polarise those who had taken sides in the ‘war of the Waleses’. Even the Prince’s harshest critics could not fault his love for, or devotion to, his sons. Those qualities would now be more important than ever as he restructured his life to fit around them.
Diana’s death would certainly accelerate the pace of change that had been under way inside the Royal Household for several years. Conventional wisdom holds that the monarchy was grudgingly pushed into reforming itself after the ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992 – a dismal run of royal separations and scandals, culminating in the Windsor Castle fire. In fact the Queen had initiated a wholesale overhaul of royal management and finances as far back as 1986. The events of 1992 had simply hastened the process, speeding up a royal plan for the Queen to pay income tax (although John Major’s government had told her there was no need). In 1994, the Prince had taken part in a documentary, primarily about his public life, in which he had talked about the ‘irretrievable’ breakdown of his marriage. A year later, the Princess of Wales responded in kind with a surprise interview for the BBC’s Panorama, primarily about her private life, in which she cast doubts on the Prince’s fitness to be King. The Panorama film had two instant results. First, the Queen asked the couple to seek a divorce. Next, she set up an internal family committee called the Way Ahead Group, to examine every aspect of royal life, even those issues beyond its control, such as male primogeniture. So changes to the machinery of monarchy were already in hand by the time tearful crowds were piling up their flowers against the gates of Kensington Palace in the first week of September 1997.
The effect of the death of the Princess was to precipitate a change of tone, a fresh mindset. There was a greater willingness to look at new ways of doing the same old things, as opposed to new things to replace the old. For example, there would be more young people and fewer civic worthies at an away-day to the shires. Buckingham Palace would start holding more receptions for different strands of public life. It wasn’t a case of reducing support for old favourites like the Scouts or the Not Forgotten Association. Yet the Queen would hold additional events recognising other elements of British life – from the retail industry to education. A new department called the ‘Co-Ordination and Research Unit’ was established to help the monarchy become more proactive. Instead of waiting to be invited to the centenary of an important milestone, the Palace would seek out appropriate commemorations. Instead of waiting to be asked to different parts of the country, royal officials would look for those places that were not issuing invitations to find out why.
The British public would not see an overnight transformation. This would be reform by stealth. Royal change has always been incremental, for good reason. ‘We were future-proofing,’ says a member of the Royal Household during that period. The monarchy does not move at the pace of a political party, let alone a commercial brand. You cannot ‘relaunch’ the Crown or subject it to a ‘makeover’. However following the death of the Princess, the Prince of Wales had to reassess his priorities both at home and overseas.
SUCCESSION
The Prince already had a long-standing tour in the diary, to southern Africa. Since it coincided with his younger son’s half-term from school, thirteen-year-old Prince Harry would come along, too. The schedule included meetings with President Nelson Mandela and a charity concert in Johannesburg featuring the Spice Girls. Throughout it all, there was the vexed issue of how the Prince should honour the memory of his late ex-wife, in a part of the world where she had been an active charity campaigner. There was palpable nervousness within the royal camp about hitting the right note, ahead of the Prince’s big speech at Ma
ndela’s banquet in Cape Town. As his officials offered up various drafts, the Prince grew increasingly angry, adamant that he would find his own form of words.
In the end, he thanked all South Africans for their sorrow, praised Diana’s work in the fields of Aids and landmines, and saluted the way she ‘brought a real difference to the lives of very many people on this continent and elsewhere’. He received a standing ovation. Among those on his feet was a grieving Cape Town resident, the Princess’s brother. Two months earlier, Earl Spencer’s address at her funeral had been seen as a thinly veiled critique of the monarchy. Now there was a rapprochement.
The Prince’s position vis-à-vis the Commonwealth remained unclear, however. There were still influential voices among certain member governments who felt that he was insufficiently interested in the organisation; there were those who felt that the Prince should steer well clear of what was his mother’s territory; and there were those who wanted to sever the link with the monarchy altogether. When Australia announced that it would hold its referendum on the monarchy just weeks before the new millennium, the Royal Family would not be looking forward to the twenty-first century with great confidence. Yet as some republicans sought to personalise the referendum campaign, the surprise result in favour of the status quo would show that most people still had more faith in the system of monarchy, rather than in an ex-politician, to safeguard their constitutional rights.
Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman Page 62