The Crown

by Robert Lacey

  Wilson’s suspicions of the Gladstone portrait in his Downing Street study became legendary. Not trusting MI5, he sent for outside engineers who confirmed that there was indeed a hole in the plaster behind the painting, but insisted it had accommodated nothing more sinister than a power point for an earlier picture light.591 The Prime Minister was not convinced, however, about the portrait in his study – nor about anywhere else in the second grandest address in the land. ‘During his last few months in office,’ wrote Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5, ‘Wilson appears rarely to have said anything in the lavatory without first turning on all the taps and gesturing at imaginary bugs in the ceiling.’592

  To allay the British Prime Minister’s suspicions about CIA involvement, US Vice-President Hubert Humphrey sent the CIA’s reforming new director George H. W. Bush (the future President) to London to reassure Wilson in person – only for Bush to emerge from the meeting perplexed. ‘Is that man mad?’ he asked. ‘He did nothing but complain about being spied on!’593

  The medical and psychological factors underlying Harold Wilson’s premature mental decline – he was 57 in February 1974 when he became Prime Minister for his second spell in office – were complex. Wilson himself would murmur poignantly to confidants, ‘My mother died of premature senility, you know’.594 When feeling less straightforward he would indulge in ‘confabulation’ – the making up of details to cover gaps in the memory, which doctors now recognise as an early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. In 2008 neurologist Dr Peter Garrard published an analysis of Wilson’s speech patterns at the dispatch box from 1974 to 1976 showing how they deteriorated markedly during his second term of office. ‘Language is known to be vulnerable to the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease …’ explained Dr Garrard. ‘Linguistic changes can appear even before the symptoms are recognized by either the patient or their closest associates.’595

  As early as 1974 on his way to see French President Giscard d’Estaing, Wilson suffered ‘heart racing’ when his plane landed unevenly in Paris, and his doctor had to intervene.596 Then a Northern Ireland Office official was amazed to be instructed by Wilson to ‘ring the number of a callbox in the Mile End Road at a certain time when a certain person would be waiting to give him information he might need to hear’. The official made the call, and nothing transpired.597 Another civil servant was asked by Wilson (always kindly and concerned in personnel matters) why he, the official, had not sought Wilson’s help on a particular career issue.

  ‘I didn’t think it an appropriate thing to bother you with as Prime Minister,’ the official replied.

  ‘Not even a part-time Prime Minister like me?’ asked Wilson, his eyes filling with tears.598

  Medically speaking, the factors undermining Harold Wilson’s wellbeing in the early to mid-1970s were insomnia, gastrointestinal problems, proneness to eye infections and decades of heavy drinking – as early as 1964, when he first became Prime Minister, Wilson was already notorious as a ‘vigorous toper’ who filled his glass with brandy ‘and quaffed it as though it were ale’.599 This had no apparent impact during his first term of office, but in 1974–6 his control of cabinet meetings became notably muddled, and he was also seen to develop high anxiety which he sought to allay by resorting to a glass or two of cognac before tackling Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.600

  This episode’s scenes showing Wilson’s incoherence and inability to memorise speeches have been enhanced in certain details – in fact, he always delivered his speeches from notes. But anticipatory worry was now preying on the Prime Minister as it had never done before, and the many political problems that once inspired him now filled him with embittered despair.601

  There was no shortage of problems. In 1974 the British rate of inflation was moving towards its highest level in history – 26.5 per cent.602 This reflected OPEC’s ongoing oil embargo, together with the accompanying domestic strikes as workers desperately sought to keep their wages in line with the rising cost of living. One of Wilson’s prized economic remedies, membership of the European Common Market, provoked additional conflict starting in his own cabinet. The year 1974 was also a tragic high point in the Irish ‘Troubles’, with the IRA bombings of pubs in Guildford, Woolwich and Birmingham killing 28 and injuring 266. The Houses of Parliament themselves were bombed that June – mercifully with no loss of life, but injuring 17 and leaving extensive damage. On the foreign scene, there were the ongoing problems with South Africa, and the enduring aftermath of Ian Smith’s UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) in Rhodesia.603 It was hardly surprising that, in the eyes of many observers, Harold Wilson should have ‘no sparkle left’.604

  As early as 1972, two years before he returned to power, Wilson had confided to Denis Healey, one of his most trusted Labour allies, that if ever he got back into Downing Street he did not plan to serve for more than three years.605 A few years later, he recounted to Barbara Castle, another favoured colleague, that when he went to the Palace to take up office in March 1974, he had actually informed the Queen of the date when he would retire. ‘She’s got the record of it,’ he said, ‘so no one will be able to say afterwards that I was pushed out.’606

  Then at the Labour Party annual conference in the autumn of 1975 he shared his plans – which were now imminent because he was hoping to leave before his sixtieth birthday the following spring – with his press secretary Joe Haines. ‘Harold Wilson asked me to draw up the timetable for his resignation the following year,’ recalled Haines, ‘which was to be announced at the end of February, indeed, the afternoon of the last Wednesday in February.’607

  Wilson’s to-the-day precision was obviously an attempt to assert his control over a process that cruelly demonstrated his loss of control over so many other aspects of his life and faculties. His principal private secretary Robert Armstrong remembers how Wilson remained as sharp as ever with economic statistics – always the basis of his intellectual preeminence. Armstrong also recalls being asked by Wilson to accompany him on the Downing Street piano at what proved to be his last Christmas party, as the Prime Minister regaled the assembled staff and ministers with his robust rendition of the Yorkshire folk anthem ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht ’At’ (translating as ‘On Ilkley Moor without a hat’) – singing every one of the nine verses word for word by memory, without a mistake.608

  Reflecting later on Wilson’s surprise resignation announcement – which occurred finally on Friday 19 March 1976 – Armstrong always wondered why Wilson, the devoted royalist so proud of his closeness to the Queen, as we saw in Chapter Eleven, did not extend his premiership by just a year and a half so that he could enjoy the celebrations of the 1977 Jubilee, in whose planning he had played an active role. It was the measure of the honesty – and probably too of the fear – with which the Prime Minister confronted the reality of his mental frailties that he decided to step down when he did.

  But there was a royal twist in the tale – which might have perplexed James Angleton and Peter Wright had they known about the true priorities of their perfidious Soviet agent in Downing Street. In March 1976 Buckingham Palace was confronted by the embarrassing necessity of announcing the breakdown of the marriage between Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon – and Wilson thought he saw a way that his retirement could help.

  The complexities of Princess Margaret’s love life have been a running theme in The Crown from her romance with Peter Townsend (Episode 106, ‘Gelignite’), to her meeting with Antony Armstrong-Jones (Episode 204, ‘Beryl’) and their marriage adventures in the early-to mid-1960s (Episode 302, ‘Margaretology’). Now we confront their respective cris de coeur as their dreams turn sour. By 1973 Tony, aged 43, was deeply involved with Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, 32, the intelligent and attractive TV production assistant whom he would marry in 1978. In retaliation – yet with a deep affection that her friends say she had never quite achieved with anyone else – Princess Margaret, also 43, had turned to the shy and disarming young landscape gardener Roderic ‘Ro
ddy’ Llewellyn, 17 years her junior at the age of 26, who bore an astonishing physical resemblance to her alienated husband, by whom she now had two children, Sarah and David.

  This private mess became dramatically public in February 1976 when the News of the World published a shocking frontpage photograph of Margaret and Roddy, semi-naked together in swimming costumes, on the Caribbean island of Mustique. The next day Margaret’s private secretary, Lord Napier, called to tell her that her husband had announced his intention of moving out of their Kensington Palace apartment that very week. ‘Thank you, Nigel,’ replied the delighted Princess. ‘I think that’s the best news you’ve ever given me.’609 But Tony Snowdon was also insisting that the news of the couple’s legal separation should be made public – and quickly, too.

  Enter the retiring Prime Minister, whose not-so-slow mind worked out and suggested to the Queen that the announcement of his own retirement could be timed to coincide with the Snowdons’ bad news.

  ‘He came back from the Palace with some glee,’ recalled Joe Haines. ‘He said he made this arrangement with the Queen to blank out the separation by announcing his resignation on the same day. Having worked on popular newspapers, I was doubtful.’610

  Haines’s doubts proved justified. Wilson’s resignation was announced at 11.30 on the Friday morning, with the news of Princess Margaret’s separation being disclosed at 5.00pm the same day. ‘The papers went for the later, sexier story,’ remembered Haines. The ever-troublesome Princess pushed the loyal Prime Minister right off the front page.

  On Tuesday 7 June 1977 Prince Philip joined the Queen and sat beside her in the Golden State Coach for the Silver Jubilee procession to St Paul’s Cathedral and the Guildhall, then back to Buckingham Palace. The event proved an immense success – with more than a million spectators cheering so loudly that the coachmen could not hear their horses’ hooves hitting the pavement. Shops overflowed with Jubilee ashtrays, thermometers and egg timers, and a chain of hilltop beacons was lit across Britain. Locally organised street parties were tokens of the authentic grass-roots enthusiasm that the Jubilee inspired in communities around the country, with more than 4,000 held in London alone. In one sense, the most telling tributes were the rejoicings reported by the usually subversive Private Eye in Colonel ‘Buffy’ Cohen’s Neasden launderette – an invented scenario, like so many in The Crown.

  The full text of the Poet Laureate John Betjeman’s Silver Jubilee Hymn heard over this episode’s final processional sequence (and also starting this chapter) ran:

  In days of disillusion,

  However low we’ve been,

  To fire us and inspire us,

  God gave to us our Queen.

  She acceded, young and dutiful,

  To a much-loved father’s throne:

  Serene and kind and beautiful

  She holds us as her own.

  And twenty-five years later,

  So sure her reign has been,

  That our great events are greater

  For the presence of our Queen.

  Hers the grace the Church has prayed for,

  Ours the Joy that she is here.

  Let the bells do what they’re made for,

  Ring our thanks, both loud and clear.

  From that look of dedication

  In those eyes profoundly blue,

  We know her coronation

  As a sacrament and true.

  Chorus: For our Monarch and her people,

  United yet and free,

  Let the bells ring from every steeple –

  Ring out the Jubilee.

  April 6, 1977 – Punch, Silver Jubilee cartoon by Trog

  ENDNOTES

  CHAPTER ONE

  1The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 201 NETFLIX, ‘Misadventure’ by Peter Morgan, 00:00:50.

  2Ibid., 00:00:34.

  3Joan Graham, The Baltimore Sun, 8 February 1957.

  4The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 201 NETFLIX, ‘Misadventure’ by Peter Morgan, 00:00:50.

  5Ibid.

  6Profile – Ulanova, Observer, 7 October 1956.

  7‘Duke leaves to-day on world tour’, Manchester Guardian, 15 October 1956.

  8Seward, My Husband and I, pp. 135–6.

  9Baron, Baron, pp. 129–31, 135.

  10Parker, Step Aside for Royalty, p. 179.

  11‘Queen sees Ulanova “Giselle” ballet’, Manchester Guardian, 26 October 1956.

  12Cited in Detroit Free Press, 27 November 1956.

  13Louis, Ends of British Imperialism, p. 635.

  14Colville, The Churchillians, p. 171.

  15Thorpe, Eden, p. 25.

  16Cosgrave, R. A. Butler, p. 12.

  17Vickers, Loving Garbo, p. 235.

  18Frankland, Documents on International Affairs, 1956, pp. 108–9.

  19‘Middle East war threat eases’, Edmonton Journal, 9 August 1956.

  20‘U.K. ponders moves as Suez Canal seized’, Edmonton Journal, 27 July 1956.

  21The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 201 NETFLIX, ‘Misadventure’ by Peter Morgan, 00:27:40.

  22The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 201 NETFLIX, ‘Misadventure’ by Peter Morgan, Ibid., 00:49:22.

  23Ibid., 00:27:40.

  24Ibid., 00:45:46.

  25Bernard Levin, ‘Lord Mountbatten and the Suez fiasco: how the truth was nearly suppressed’, The Times, London, 5 November 1980.

  26The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 201 NETFLIX, ‘Misadventure’ by Peter Morgan, 00:45:46

  27Ibid., 00:47:52.

  CHAPTER TWO

  28Robert Jobson, Evening Standard, London, 17 January 2019.

  29Jack Hardy, The Daily Telegraph, 19 January 2019.

  30Brandreth, Philip and Elizabeth, p. 251.

  31Stephanie Koscak, The 18th-Century Common, 10 January 2018.

  32The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 202 NETFLIX, ‘A Company of Men’ by Peter Morgan, 00:01:32 – 00:02:44.

  33Miles Kington, The Independent, London, 16 January 1996.

  34Ibid.

  35Ibid.

  36Parker, Step Aside for Royalty, p. 178.

  37Ibid., p. 179.

  38Joan Graham, The Baltimore Sun, 8 February 1957.

  39‘New King starts Empire wondering’, The Baltimore Sun, 22 January 1936.

  40‘Palace rumours “are untrue”’, Daily Herald, 11 February 1957.

  41Seward, My Husband and I, p. 134.

  42Court Circular, The Times, 20 November 1947.

  43Whitehall, London Gazette, 22 February 1957.

  44Paul Taylor, Manchester Evening News, 6 April 2013.

  45Wrath at the helm?’ The Times, 26 May 1956.

  46‘Duke enters battle over Teddy Boys’, Des Moines Tribune, 16 June 1955.

  47‘Ibid.

  48‘Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme’, The Times, 27 June 1956.

  49Hannah Furness, The Daily Telegraph, 12 March 2019.

  50‘Queen’s Awards?’, Birmingham Daily Post, 2 November 1957.

  51‘Duke: “I know I couldn’t win one”’, Birmingham Daily Post, 4 November 1959.

  52Becker et al., The Changing World of Outdoor Learning in Europe, p. 190.

  CHAPTER THREE

  53‘Wrath at the helm?’, The Times, 26 May 1956.

  54Heilpern, John Osborne, pp. 66–8.

  55Denison, John Osborne, p. xxvii.

  56Osborne, Look Back in Anger, pp. 10–11.

  57Michael Billington, The Guardian, 30 March 2015.

  58Shellard, Kenneth Tynan, pp. 161–2.

  59Beckett, Olivier, pp. 95, 97.

  60Osborne, Look Back in Anger, p. 22.

  61Ibid., p. 75.

  62The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 203 NETFLIX, ‘Lisbon’ by Peter Morgan, 00:14:46, 00:15:44.

  63Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956, p. 301.

  64The Crown Broadcast Script, Episode 203 NETFLIX, ‘Lisbon’ by Peter Morgan, 00:09:47.

  65James Blitz, Financial Times, 24 May 2019.

  66Jago, R
ab Butler, p. 380.

  67Beckett, Macmillan, p. 67.

  68Campbell, Pistols at Dawn, p. 270.

  69Peter Jenkins, The New York Times, 5 March 1989.

  70D. R. Thorpe, The Spectator, 21 October 2013.

  71Ibid.

  72Ibid.

  73Thorpe, Supermac, p. xii.

  74‘On this day’, BBC News, 20 July 1957.

  75J. Y. Smith, The Washington Post, 30 December 1986.

  76D. R. Thorpe, The Spectator, 21 October 2013.

  77D. R. Thorpe, ‘Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World – Macmillan.’ Lecture at Gresham College, 30 November 2005.

  78Ibid.

  79Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2011.

  80D. R. Thorpe, Gresham College, 30 November 2005.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  81Cathcart, Princess Margaret, p. 81.

  82Fraser, Marie Antoinette, p. 135.

  83Charles Nevin, The Guardian, 10 February 2002.

  84Payn and Morley, The Noël Coward Diaries, p. 289.

  85Payne, My Life with Princess Margaret, p. 90.

  86Brown, Ma’am Darling, p. 148.

  87‘Socialite rolls himself “out”’, Palm Beach Post, 25 September 1956.

  88‘Film rocks, rolls today’, Los Angeles Times, 19 December 1956.

  89Kynaston, Modernity Britain, p. 14.

  90Ibid.

  91Payne, My Life with Princess Margaret, p. 65.

  92Ibid., p. 66.

  93‘Restraint order on ex-footman’, The Manchester Guardian, 11 November 1960.

  94Payne, My Life with Princess Margaret, p. 66.

  95Warwick, Princess Margaret, p. 80.

  96McIlvaine and Sherby, P. G. Woodhouse, p. xv.

  97Dempster, Princess Margaret, p. 43.

  98Ibid., pp. 32–3.

  99Aronson, Princess Margaret, p. 155.

  100Mark Olden, The Independent, 29 August 2008.

  101Alan Travis, The Guardian, 24 August 2002.