The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  * The Entente Cordiale was the name give to a series of agreements made between Britain and France in 1904 following the historic visit to Paris by King Edward VII. The Entente marked the end of centuries of conflict between the two countries and laid the basis for their co-operation in the First World War and thereafter.

  * In an interview in March 1991 with the historian D. R. Thorpe for his official biography of Alec Douglas-Home, Queen Elizabeth made clear that she understood all the implications of what had happened. She said that when Chamberlain and his party, which included Douglas-Home (then Lord Dunglass), arrived at the Palace she had been struck by the fact that they were all exhausted rather than elated. (D. R. Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996, p. 85) The balcony appearance was a constitutional error, she told Thorpe, though she believed it was a ‘venial’ one, because the British people were so relieved by Chamberlain’s agreement. ‘But one must remember it was relief for ourselves, not relief for Czechoslovakia,’ she added. (Author’s interview with D. R. Thorpe) For his part, Alec Hardinge subsequently commented: ‘I have since been reproached for what the King did on this occasion. For me, who was among those with no faith in the prospect of conciliating Hitler, it all went much against the grain; but it seemed to me to be the correct policy for the Sovereign in the circumstances – namely, to give full and public support to the Government.’ (Alec Hardinge’s notes for autobiography, Hon. Lady Murray Papers)

  * In spring 1939 one could indeed still argue that appeasement had bought Britain time to rearm and to improve her air defences – the number of RAF squadrons rose from five to forty-seven. And if and when war finally came, it would be true to say that Britain could not have done anything more to avoid it. In the ‘Munich Winter’ chapter of The Gathering Storm, Churchill acknowledges that in the ‘vital sphere’ of air power and air defences Britain improved her position after Munich, but he concluded, ‘Finally there is this staggering fact: that in the single year 1938, Hitler had annexed to the Reich and brought under his absolute rule 6,750,000 Austrians and 3,500,000 Sudetens, a total of over ten million subjects, toilers and soldiers. Indeed the dread balance had turned in his favour.’

  * Hardinge had long opposed appeasement. In early September 1938 he wrote himself a memorandum to answer the question ‘Can there be friendship between democracies and totalitarian states?’ His answer was negative. No democratic government could be real friends with states which, ‘with the acquiescence of their peoples, abolish individual freedom, preach intense nationalism, make war on religions, and subordinate them to the barbaric worship of race, show complete disregard for the sanctity of obligations and never cease to denounce and pour scorn on the principles that we hold most dear’. In April 1939 he wrote in another memorandum that, as a result of appeasement, the dictators had been able to secure a much stronger strategic position on the continent. Each successive coup – Austria, Czechoslovakia and Albania – had added enormously to their actual armed power, as well as to their prestige. Each had effectively neutralized the advances made in British rearmament. Chamberlain’s policies meant that the Eastern Front was destroyed; smaller countries now doubted the democrats’ resolve and had been forced to come to terms with the dictators; fear of derailing appeasement had led to acquiescence in the victory of the fascists in Spain; optimistic forecasts of the intentions of the dictators had misled the British people and induced an unjustified complacency; finally, Hardinge argued, it had given the impression to foreign countries, large and small, that Britain could no longer be relied upon. (Hon. Lady Murray Papers)

  * Joseph P. Kennedy (1888–1969), American businessman and ally of President Roosevelt, Ambassador to Great Britain 1938–40. After the war began, his enthusiasm for appeasement became defeatism and he argued against US aid to Britain. In November 1940 he gave a newspaper interview in the United States in which he asserted, ‘Democracy is finished in England. It may be here.’ His son John F. Kennedy was President of the United States 1961–3.

  42. The Duke and Duchess visiting the shipyard building the RMS Duchess of York, 1928.

  43. The Duchess receiving an honorary D.Litt. at the University of Oxford in 1931.

  44. The Duchess with the Black Watch. She was appointed colonel-in-chief just after the Coronation in 1937.

  45. Laying a wreath at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day, 1931.

  46. With disabled veterans of the First World War in June 1932.

  47. The Duchess with Girl Guides and Brownies in Stepney in 1933.

  48. The Duchess in January 1935, lighting lamps for new branches of Toc H, the charity of which she was patron for over seventy years.

  49. The Duchess playing with Princess Elizabeth in the sandpit at Glamis.

  50. The Duchess, the Princesses and the Duchess of Kent, at St Paul’s Cathedral for the service celebrating the Silver Jubilee of King George V on 9 May 1935.

  51. The Duchess in the uniform of the St John Ambulance Brigade, of which she was commandant-in-chief from 1937.

  52. The Duchess with the Princesses on the steps at Birkhall.

  53. Sir Oswald Birley’s portrait of the Windsor Wets. Seated, left to right: the Earl of Airlie, Sir Reginald Seymour, the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Beaufort, the Duke of Rutland, the Earl of Erne, the Hon. Sir Richard Molyneux; standing behind, left to right: the Earl of Eldon, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Halifax. Standing behind the screen, the Countess of Eldon. The coat with the scarlet collar and cuffs worn by six of the men is the Windsor uniform, introduced by George III in 1779. The portraits on the wall behind are of the Duke of York, the Duchess of York and the Duchess of Beaufort.

  54. The Duke, Duchess and the Princesses on a family holiday.

  55. Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor in April 1937 shortly before their wedding.

  56. The new King and Queen on the balcony at Buckingham Palace after their coronation on 12 May 1937. Left to right: Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Princess Margaret, King George VI.

  57. The Queen with her train bearers, left to right: Lady Iris Mountbatten, Lady Margaret Bentinck, Lady Ursula Manners, Lady Diana Legge, Lady Elizabeth Percy and Lady Elizabeth Paget.

  58. The Queen, photographed in July 1939 by Cecil Beaton.

  59. The Queen in Paris, July 1938. Her wardrobe of ‘mourning white’ was designed for her by Norman Hartnell following the death of her mother in June that year.

  60. The Queen launching the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth, 27 September 1938.

  61. The King and Queen on the royal train as they leave Toronto, June 1939.

  62. The Queen driving through Washington D.C. with Eleanor Roosevelt, 8 June 1939.

  63. The King and Queen talking to a shipyard worker on a wartime tour of the North-west, 2 September 1940.

  64. The Queen on a wartime tour of south London, talking to bombed-out residents, 11 September 1940.

  65. ‘Dear old B.P. is still standing!’ The King and Queen surveying the damage after the bombing of Buckingham Palace on 9 September 1940.

  66. The Queen visiting an air-raid shelter in an Underground station, at the height of the Blitz, in November 1940.

  67. The King and Queen talking to young air-raid victims having their supper at a rest centre in November 1940.

  68. The King and Queen visiting a bomb site in London, April 1941.

  69. With the Princesses at a wartime poetry reading on 14 April 1943. Left to right: Arthur Waley, Princess Elizabeth, Osbert Sitwell, the Queen, Princess Margaret and Walter De La Mare.

  70. The Princesses on stage in the 1944 Windsor Castle pantomime, Old Mother Red Riding Boots.

  71. VE Day, 8 May 1945.

  72. ‘We four’ on tour in South Africa, 1947, with the police crew of the White Train.

  73. The King and Queen en route to St Paul’s Cathedral for a service to celebrate their Silver Wedding, 26 April 1948.

  74. The Queen presenting the King with a cup for the best Aberdeen Angus at the Royal N
orfolk Show, May 1950.

  75. Four generations of the Royal Family at the christening of Princess Anne, 21 November 1950. Left to right: Queen Mary, the King, Princess Elizabeth holding Princess Anne, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, the Queen.

  76. The three Queens awaiting the coffin of King George VI, February 1952.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

  1939

  ‘This has made us’

  ‘I AM STARTING to read the unexpurgated edition of “Mein Kampf”,’ wrote Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary, who may have been rather startled to be asked, ‘Have you read it, Mama?’1*

  The letter to Queen Mary was written on 8 May 1939 from the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Australia. The King and Queen were at the start of the journey to Canada and the United States which was to take them away from the tense and anxious atmosphere in Europe for the next six weeks. The Queen’s choice of reading matter showed where her concerns lay. The King had been reluctant to leave Britain as it became ever clearer that Hitler could not be appeased. But the government’s advice was that war was not yet imminent, and that the international crisis rendered the tour more, rather than less, advisable. The visit would both demonstrate and strengthen the solidarity of the Empire against the threat to world peace, and boost Anglo-American friendship.

  A tour of Canada had first been proposed by Lord Tweedsmuir,† the Governor General, in early 1937 and was promoted by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, when he came to London for the Coronation. President Roosevelt encouraged the idea of combining the tour of Canada with a trip to the United States. The President invited the Princesses too, but the King felt that they were too young.2 The announcement of the visit was well received, particularly in Canada. ‘People talk about nothing else,’ Lord Tweedsmuir reported. ‘I suggest a very informal and unofficial visit to the United States, as being far more likely to please the American people. That I know is President Roosevelt’s own idea, which he confided to my Prime Minister.’3

  This cautious, indeed downbeat, approach to the American visit was Roosevelt’s preference for both political and personal reasons. He could not afford to antagonize the isolationists in Congress and the press who believed that the United States should remain outside any European conflict. But, certain that war between Britain and Germany was inevitable, he hoped that the presence of the King and Queen on American soil would strengthen the friendship between the two English-speaking nations and sway Congress towards Britain. As his wife Eleanor later wrote, Roosevelt thought that ‘we all might soon be engaged in a life and death struggle, in which Great Britain would be our first line of defence’.4 The American part of the tour was thus of enormous significance, but it was also important to Canada that the King’s journey should be seen to be primarily for the benefit of Canadians.

  Much has been written about this tour.* Despite the hopes of Canadian officials, the American visit came to outweigh the Canadian journey because of the personal relationship the King was able to form with President Roosevelt and the effect this, as well as the public success of the tour, had upon American attitudes to the war when it came. But the visit to Canada was especially significant. Not only was it the first visit by a British sovereign to an overseas dominion, but King George VI was the first sovereign to be crowned king of Canada, since the 1931 Statute of Westminster had established the status of Canada and the other Dominions as autonomous dominions under the Crown. From Britain’s point of view, furthermore, the visit was vitally important in guaranteeing the support of Mackenzie King and Canada in the event of war, for the Canadian Prime Minister had been a convinced appeaser, determined to keep Canada out of any European hostilities.

  The trip also gave both King and Queen their first opportunity to gauge, in person, the feelings of the people of the wider Empire towards them – and that in a country where King Edward VIII had acquired popularity through his visits as Prince of Wales and his purchase of a ranch in Alberta.* The challenge was political as well as personal: there were isolationists in Canada as well as in the USA – the support of French Canadians for the British cause could not be taken for granted. In the event, they succeeded beyond all expectation and for Queen Elizabeth this tour was the beginning of a long and affectionate relationship with Canada; she would visit it more than any other country, returning thirteen times.

  They were to have travelled in the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, but the King considered it unwise to deprive the navy of a warship at this dangerous time. So it was in the liner Empress of Australia that they set sail on 6 May from Portsmouth, accompanied by a suite of ten. The two Princesses, aged thirteen and eight, came to see them off, together with Queen Mary and other members of the Royal Family. ‘I hated saying good-bye to you & Margaret,’ their mother wrote to Princess Elizabeth next day. ‘I shall miss you horribly, but be good & kind,’ she said, adding, ‘P.S. My handwriting is very wobbly, because the ship is shivering like someone with influenza! P.P.S. Papa is writing to Margaret.’5

  Their first few days afloat were not improved by rough seas and by what looked like a deliberate attempt by the Duke of Windsor to cause trouble. He accepted an invitation to broadcast an appeal for peace to the American people direct from the First World War battlefield of Verdun. The timing was not entirely of his choosing and his speech was an uncontroversial plea to statesmen to do all they could to avoid war. But it was tactless to make the broadcast while the King was on his way across the Atlantic. The Queen could only have seen it as an attempt to steal her husband’s thunder. ‘I see on the news bulletin today, that David is going to broadcast to America this evening,’ she wrote to Queen Mary on 8 May. ‘I do wonder whether this is true, and if it is, how troublesome of him to choose such a moment.’6 The Duke spoke fluently and his speech was well received by many listeners;7 but it did seem to be a gesture of appeasement designed to upstage the King. The Duke of Kent agreed with the Queen, and Alec Hardinge, writing to the King, commented that it was ‘ludicrous’ of the Duke to think that such a speech could do any good.8

  Three days later the Duke seemed a minor irritant – the whole journey suddenly appeared to be in jeopardy. The ship was enveloped in thick fog and surrounded by icebergs. She stopped, not for a few hours, but for days. The Queen wrote home to her daughter:

  Here we are creeping along at about one mile per hour, & occasionally stopping altogether, for the 3rd day running! You can imagine how horrid it is – one cannot see more than a few yards, and the sea is full of icebergs as big as Glamis, & things called ‘growlers’ – which are icebergs mostly under water with only a very small amount of ice showing on the surface. We shall be late arriving in Canada, and it is going to be very difficult to fit everything in, and avoid disappointing people. It is very cold – rather like the coldest, dampest day at Sandringham – double it and add some icebergs, & then you can imagine a little of what it is like!9

  The blasts of the ship’s foghorn echoed off the icebergs ‘like the twang of a piece of wire. Incredibly eery,’ she told Queen Mary. ‘We very nearly hit a berg the day before yesterday, and the poor Captain was nearly demented because some kind cheerful people kept on reminding him that it was about here that the Titanic was struck, & just about the same date!’ It was an alarming experience: ‘one kept on imagining that a great iceberg was bearing down on the ship, & starting up at night with a beating heart,’ the Queen wrote.10 The fog finally cleared on 14 May, ‘and we saw the sea covered with floating ice, a few big bergs, and a great mass of pack ice hemming us on three sides. We went round it for a bit, and then ploughed through one side of the pack into open water. It was an amazing sight,’ she reported.11

  Tommy Lascelles, the King’s acting Private Secretary for the trip,* faced with reorganizing the beginning of the tour, commented that it was a near-run thing: any longer delay would have thrown the entire programme off track. Thanks to ‘ingenious juggling’, condensing the Ottawa visit from four days into two and a half, ‘
we have re-mosaic’d the first four days so that nothing is left out.’ And there was a silver lining – the delay had provided the King with a longer rest: ‘it is the only really idle & irresponsible spell he has had since he acceded; there has been nothing for him to do, & Hitler has hardly been mentioned since we left England.’12

  On the morning of 17 May, in fine weather, the Empress of Australia and her British and Canadian naval escorts finally steamed up the St Lawrence to L’Anse du Foulon – Wolfe’s Cove – where the royal party was to disembark. The cliffs above the harbour were lined with thousands of spectators who had been gathering since early morning. At 10.30 Prime Minister Mackenzie King and the Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe went on board to welcome the King and Queen. Mackenzie King’s diary, recording their conversation, showed that the Queen was well aware of the personal contribution she could make to the success of the tour as a Scottish queen: she spoke at once of Scotland’s links with France, and the number of Scots who had come to Canada.13 Nor were Canadian Scots about to forget this. The demands for her attention from émigré Scots became a leitmotif of the tour.

  A few minutes later they came ashore. The King was wearing the full-dress uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, the Queen was elegant in a pale-grey dress of light wool, with long slit sleeves edged with fur and a hat with a becomingly upswept brim. She stepped off the gangway first, remarking as she did so that this was the first time she had set foot on Canadian soil.14 (It was the King’s second visit: he had been to Canada as a naval cadet in 1913.) After being presented with a long line of dignitaries, they were driven to the Quebec Parliament to receive provincial and municipal addresses.