The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  Prince Paul’s conduct saddened the King and Queen, whose friend he had been for so long. Queen Mary was shocked that he had behaved as he did.186 But the Queen responded that she felt sorry for him – ‘he has made such a mess of his job in the eyes of the world, and that after struggling with immense difficulties for some very unhappy years for himself. Of course, one knows that he is very timorous & sensitive & subtle minded, but things have got too serious in the world, for any country to be able to sign a pact with Germany, & yet be pro-English or neutral. It just doesn’t work & he must have known it.’187 To Lord Halifax in Washington she wrote, ‘I am sure that he was afraid & perhaps weak, but with all his faults I would trust him before any of these politicians. He was always terrified of a coup d’état, as of course it would mean the disintegration of such an uncomfortably sham country.’188 It was an acute observation.

  Throughout this dark period, the Queen’s life continued with many visits intended to raise morale around the country. In early 1941 these included the 2nd Canadian Division, the WVS Salvage Centres in Paddington, the American Eagle Club in Charing Cross Road, London police stations, bombed areas of East and West Ham, New Scotland Yard, the Red Cross, the British Legion Conference, the Staff College at Camberley and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service at County Hall, the RAF aerodromes of Bomber Command, a battalion of the London Scottish in Sussex, war factories in the north-east of England, the Glider Training Squadron, the Maurice Hostel Community Club in Hoxton.

  Lord Harlech, the North-Eastern Regional Commissioner for Civil Defence, accompanied her on a visit to Sheffield, and afterwards described it to Harold Nicolson, who reported to his wife: ‘He says that when the car stops, the Queen nips out into the snow and goes straight into the middle of the crowd and starts talking to them. For a moment or two they just gaze and gape in astonishment. But then they all start talking at once. “Hi! Your Majesty! Look here!” She has that quality of making everybody feel that they and they alone are being spoken to.’189

  *

  THROUGH ALL OF this, the relationship between Churchill and the King and Queen became ever closer. Churchill wrote to the King, ‘I have greatly been cheered by our weekly luncheons in poor old bomb-battered Buckingham Palace, & to feel that in Yr. Majesty and the Queen there flames the spirit that will never be daunted by peril, nor wearied by unrelenting toil.’190 At the lunches they digressed into subjects other than the war. The Queen had impressed Churchill by sending him the lines from Wordsworth in early 1940 and he realized the pleasure she took in the spoken and written word. He gave her a copy of H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, saying, ‘He liberated me from many errors & doubts.’191 She in turn found Fowler ‘entrancing … very amusing and extremely instructive’.192

  On 6 May 1941 Churchill came to the Palace to tell the King and Queen of an imminent operation to get more tanks and aircraft to General Wavell in Egypt. Because they were required at once, he was planning to send them by the risky route through the Mediterranean to Alexandria. On the evening of Friday 9 May, he wrote to the Queen – she had probably left for Windsor – to let her know how the operation was going. ‘Madam, Tiger started with 306 [tanks]. One claw was torn away & another damaged last night. The anxiety will last for another day at least. More than half is over.’193 She thanked him for sending news of Operation Tiger. ‘Even though he lacks a claw or two, it is to be hoped that he will still be able to chew up a few enemies. Any risk was well worth taking.’194 The King was able to record that the operation had been safely completed and that 250 tanks and fifty aircraft had arrived at Alexandria. One ship with fifty tanks on board had struck a mine and sunk in the Narrows – this was presumably the ‘one claw’ to which Churchill referred.195

  On 10 May London suffered another gigantic raid by 400 bombers – on that one night almost 1,500 people were killed, 1,800 were injured, 2,000 fires were started and 11,000 houses were reduced to rubble. Both Houses of Parliament were hit, part of Waterloo station was destroyed, Bow Street Church was flattened, Westminster Abbey was damaged.196 The Queen was outraged, and wrote to her mother-in-law, ‘Alas, poor London, an even more violent & cruel raid on Saturday night. Our beautiful national shrines and monuments – It seems such sacrilege that they should be destroyed by such wicked lying people as the Germans.’197

  By June over two million British homes had been destroyed – more than half of them in London.198 Air-raid shelters for the homeless were getting better. The Queen noticed that the bigger ones in the East End now had bunks and running water and that the social services had improved as well. But she and the King had begun to wonder ‘what will happen after the war, when the people will want to go back’ to areas such as Stepney which had been completely destroyed. ‘Of course they were terribly overcrowded anyway, but it will be a great problem, for new houses will take time to build. There will be many very difficult moments, I feel.’199

  What was truly astonishing was how well almost everyone coped with this continual grinding assault – in many ways everyday life continued, as normally as possible. Mail was delivered, trains ran (if not always on time), streets were swept (even more than usual), taxis plied for hire, telephones worked, restaurants stayed open and so did nightclubs, weddings were often celebrated in churches which had no roofs. Shattered shop windows were restored or boarded – as the historian Andrew Roberts has recorded, their owners even competed with cheeky slogans: ‘If you think this is bad, you should see my branch in Berlin.’200

  Hitler’s attack on Russia in June 1941 was not immediately seen as the fatal error that it later proved. Indeed, as the Wehrmacht cut deep into the Soviet Union there were many who feared that another Blitzkrieg might well bring the Nazis another huge success. In summer 1941, with the vast losses in the Atlantic and the German capture of Crete, the war was going very badly for Britain.

  The Queen was now able to exploit a personal link in the United States. Her youngest brother, David, was posted to the British Embassy in Washington. His mission was to create a Political Warfare Executive (PWE) in both Washington and New York. Bowes Lyon developed a good relationship with President Roosevelt as well as with the Ambassador, Lord Halifax, and was a useful, personal and independent channel of information to the King and Queen. Like every other Briton in the States he saw his task as trying to persuade the President and the American people that much more should be done to support the British war effort. He understood the scale of the Queen’s personal success during her 1939 visit to the USA with the King, and he felt that she could do more to capitalize on that. He wrote to pass on a request that she write an article for an American magazine.201 Instead, she agreed to make a radio broadcast to the women of America; such a broadcast was diplomatically more acceptable now than it had been when first proposed in 1939 because she was able to thank the many Americans who were actively helping the war effort, not least in giving medical supplies.202 A text was drafted, which she amended and then sent to Churchill for his advice, adding, ‘I fear it is not very polished – a good deal of my own.’203

  Churchill made suggestions, and the broadcast went out on 10 August 1941. It was effective. The Queen talked of the heavy burden being borne by the British people and of their unshakeable constancy under attack: ‘hardship has only steeled our hearts and strengthened our resolution. Wherever I go, I see bright eyes and smiling faces, for though our road is stony and hard, it is straight, and we know that we fight in a great Cause.’ She thanked Americans for all the help that they had already given – canteens, ambulances, medical supplies – and spoke in detail of all the tasks that women were now undertaking in the armed services, in factories, in the fields, in hospitals.

  It gives us great strength to know that you have not been content to pass us by on the other side; to us, in the time of our tribulation, you have surely shown that compassion which has been for two thousand years the mark of the Good Neighbour …

  The symp
athy which inspires it springs not only from our common speech and the traditions which we share with you, but even more from our common ideals. To you, tyranny is as hateful as it is to us; to you, the things for which we will fight to the death are no less sacred; and – to my mind, at any rate – your generosity is born of your conviction that we fight to save a Cause that is yours no less than ours: of your high resolve that, however great the cost and however long the struggle, justice and freedom, human dignity and kindness, shall not perish from the earth.

  I look forward to the day when we shall go forward hand in hand to build a better, a kinder, and a happier world for our children. May God bless you all.204

  President Roosevelt wrote at once to the King asking him to tell her that the broadcast was ‘really perfect in every way and that it will do a great amount of good’.205

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  THE QUEEN’S forty-first birthday was spent at Windsor. Queen Mary sent her good wishes and her prayers for peace and victory ‘& that you may be given health & strength to carry on the help & comfort you have given to many since the war started. You have given so much help too, to my & your dear Bertie, help for which I shall ever be grateful as your joint loving Mama.’206 Among her many other letters of congratulation was one from the Bishop of St Albans, who praised her and the King for the ‘quiet steady lead’ that they were giving the country ‘in these grim but glorious days’.207

  The Queen and her daughters were able to get to Scotland for a welcome holiday in the second half of August 1941. The King joined them a few days later; he had remained in London to see Churchill on his return from his first, secret wartime meeting with Roosevelt in Newfoundland. Churchill sailed in the new battleship Prince of Wales, and Roosevelt in the USS Augusta. They met at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland and, although they got on together splendidly, Churchill was disappointed that the President’s ability to assist Britain was still restricted by the continued isolationism of Congress.

  The Queen loved being in the sharp fresh air, seeing her husband and daughters relax, and walking in the hills. Within a few days she thought the Princesses were looking ‘ten times better, with pink cheeks and good appetites!’208 It felt healing to both mind and body – ‘Also one stores up energy for whatever may lie ahead.’209 Years later she recalled to her elder daughter, ‘Balmoral is such a very happy house, and I remember thinking when we came up in those awful days of 1941 & 42 how clean it felt, in a way pure, & I still feel that now.’210

  Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, came to stay for two nights and described in his meticulous diary a lunch in a little cottage across the moors. There were no staff – the Princesses laid the table and decorated it with lettuce leaves. He found Princess Elizabeth ‘very sweet’ and natural in her conversation, and Margaret entertaining. ‘She would cross her eyes to amuse the company. The Queen told her to stop doing that for fear they might become fixed in that position and the King had also to tell her the same.’211

  From Balmoral they returned south to the stress and destruction. By the end of the year they were living more at Buckingham Palace – the Queen thought it was ‘not too bad considering the lack of windows and general atmosphere of dust and distraction’.212 The losses touched her, as everyone else. One of her footmen, Mervyn Weavers, who had joined the RAF, was missing. ‘He went off in a Wellington, & never came back. I fear that there is little hope. Oh this cruel war, & the sorrows the German spirit has brought to so many young wives, for he was happily married.’213 Tragedy struck the Queen’s own family too. Her nephew John, Master of Glamis, son of her eldest brother Patrick, was killed in action on 19 September 1941 in Egypt, while serving with the Scots Guards.

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  THE QUEEN WAS listening to the wireless in her room when she heard the news of Pearl Harbor on Sunday 7 December 1941. ‘I remember going through to the King and saying “Do you know, I’ve just heard the most extraordinary thing on the wireless. The Japanese have bombed the Americans. It can’t be true.” ’ It was indeed true and she said later that she realized at once what it meant.214 America would now at last enter the war.

  Next day both Houses of Congress declared war on Japan, and Britain immediately did the same. Obligingly (and unnecessarily) Hitler then declared war on the United States – this was arguably his biggest single mistake of the war. The King sent a telegram of sympathy to President Roosevelt, now the leader of Britain’s most important ally. ‘We are proud indeed to be fighting at your side against the common enemy. We share your inflexible determination and your confidence that with God’s help the powers of darkness will be overcome.’215 American troops began to be shipped to Britain.

  The King and Queen set off on the royal train for a prearranged visit to the mining villages of South Wales. En route the Queen wrote Queen Mary a long letter in which she lamented that Hitler had so far had so much more ‘luck’ than Britain. ‘But we seem to be gradually pulling up, and if only the poor Americans keep calm & start working in earnest, we may get sufficient weapons to cope with the Germans.’ She thought it would take time for the US ‘to learn total war methods, which those horrid Japanese have much used. I do feel rather sorry for them (the US), tho’ they have persistently closed their eyes to such evident danger, for they are a very young and untried nation.’216

  But there was shocking news to come. While they were in South Wales, the Queen noticed that Tommy Lascelles had been called to the telephone. She then saw him returning towards them ‘with a face of doom. We thought, oh, what’s happened now?’217 Lascelles had just been told that two of Britain’s principal ships, the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse, had been sunk by Japanese planes off the coast of Thailand. ‘And that was a dreadful blow. I’ve never forgotten that,’ the Queen said half a century later.218

  The loss of these two great ships cast the country into despair. The King and Queen felt a similar sense of horror. As soon as they were back on the royal train, the King wrote to Churchill to say how shocked he and the Queen were to hear of this ‘national disaster’. He went on: ‘I thought I was getting immune to hearing bad news, but this has affected me deeply as I am sure it has you. There is something particularly “alive” about a big ship which gives one a sense of personal loss apart from consideration of loss of power.’219 Many crewmen were saved but more than 800 were lost, including Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, Commander-in-Chief Eastern Fleet, Churchill’s host on the voyage to Newfoundland only weeks before.

  The horror of these losses killed any sense of jubilation over the entry of the United States into the war. As 1941 ended the Queen was weary. But she retained her faith in the spirit and the wisdom ‘of this wonderful people of ours’. Writing a New Year’s note to Queen Mary in Badminton, she said, ‘I expect, that we shall have a very difficult time in this New Year, for the Americans have been caught out, and things must work up to a climax, but I do feel confident, don’t you Mama? Confident in the values and good sense of the British people, & confident that good will prevail in the end. We send you every loving wish for a happier New Year, and may it help to bring victory to our cause.’220

  * In the next six years the Irish Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera, never once criticized Hitler or the Nazis. When Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, de Valera immediately visited the German envoy in Dublin to express his condolences – and later stated that he had been not only correct but wise to do so.

  * Margaret Elphinstone (b. 1925), youngest daughter of the Queen’s sister May Elphinstone; Diana Bowes Lyon (1923 -86), fourth daughter of the Queen’s brother John (‘Jock’) and his wife Fenella.

  * Princess Elizabeth continued with the historical essays set her by Henry Marten, the Vice-Provost of Eton, and the Princesses’ German teacher, Hanni Davey, sent them exercises.

  * An early draft of this part of the speech in her own hand reads: ‘We too are parted from our children. When I told our little daughters that I was going to broadcast they said “oh Mummy please give o
ur love to all the children”, so I do that now – God bless you all.’ (RA QEQMH/PS/SPE)

  * Cecil Beaton (1904–80), photographer and designer, worked for Vogue and was renowned for his society portraits and fashion photography. On the recommendation of Prince Paul’s wife Princess Olga, he had been summoned to Buckingham Palace in July 1939 to take a series of photographs of the Queen.

  * Augustus John, OM, RA (1878–1961), post-impressionist painter and draughtsman, was known for his Bohemian lifestyle and acclaimed for his portraits.

  † Maud (Mollie) Cazalet, who had been a friend of Cecilia Strathmore, was the wife of William Cazalet, and mother of Thelma Cazalet-Keir, a girlhood friend of Queen Elizabeth, of Victor Cazalet MP and of Peter Cazalet, later to become Queen Elizabeth’s racehorse trainer.

  ‡ Myra Hess (1890–1965) was a celebrated British pianist. During the Second World War, when concert halls were closed, she organized popular lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery, and played in many herself. For this contribution to maintaining the morale of the populace of London, she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in 1941.

  * These lines, from the poem ‘God Knows’, had been sent to the King as he was composing his speech. The poem had been written by Minnie Louise Haskins (1875–1957), a lecturer at the London School of Economics, and had been published privately in 1908.

  * John Elphinstone (1914–75) was particularly close to his aunt, the Queen, and when he was released from Colditz in 1945 she was the first person he called. After the war he settled in Scotland and in 1951 bought Drumkilbo, an estate on the borders of Angus and Perthshire.

  * On one occasion when she was unable to attend she wrote to Churchill, ‘I am so sorry not to be at “the picnic” today, and hope that conversation will flow unchecked by that incessant prowl round the table by attentive varlets!’ (13 April 1943, CAC CHAR 20/98A/56)