The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  The streets of every town in the country were filled with singing, dancing, frolicking people. Tens of thousands of them gathered in the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace. The Palace balcony had been surveyed to ensure that it was still structurally sound after all the bombs that had exploded near by. That evening the King, the Queen and the Princesses appeared on the balcony – for the first time together. Huge happy crowds roared for the family to come back out again and again. Among the throng was Noël Coward: ‘The King and Queen came out on the balcony, looking enchanting. We all roared ourselves hoarse … I suppose this is the greatest day in our history.’241 The Princesses begged their parents to allow them into the throng to celebrate. The King agreed. ‘Poor darlings, they have never had any fun yet,’ he wrote in his diary.242 With a party of young officers, the Princesses danced through the city unrecognized as hundreds of thousands of people cheered and cheered their parents.

  The King was exhausted and in his victory broadcast he stumbled over his words more than usual. In common with millions of his subjects, he felt the strain of the war terribly. He looked shattered. He and the Queen found all the expressions of gratitude and praise for them overwhelming. They were especially moved by the tribute Churchill paid them.243 In a speech to the Commons, the Prime Minister was lyrical in his description of all that the King had done to help sustain the war effort. He then told the House that it would be ‘altogether unfitting’ if he did not also speak of the King’s ‘gracious consort, the Queen’. She, he said, ‘has been everywhere with him to scenes of suffering and disaster, to hospitals, to places shattered the day before by some devastating explosion, to see the bereaved, the sufferers and the wounded, and I am sure that many an aching heart has found some solace in her gracious smile.’244

  The Queen summed up her own feelings in a letter to Osbert Sitwell:

  I feel rather numbed by the emotions of the last weeks, and on top of all the great anxieties of the last years, this has made me feel stunned as well, so you will understand a rather stupid letter, I hope! … It is almost impossible to believe that the dreadful war is over, and Germany truly beaten – the sense of relief from bombs and rockets is very agreeable at the moment, and I hope that people won’t forget too soon. They have shown such a noble and unselfish spirit all through the country during these long years of war, and I long for them to keep at the same high level in the days to come.

  Our people respond so magnificently when they are asked to do hard things, to die, to smile amongst the wreckage of their homes, to work until they crack, to think of their neighbours before themselves; and the more difficult things you ask of them, the more response you get. It’s been so wonderful; and all that spirit will be needed now, more than ever, for the whole world looks (even if some unwillingly) to these Islands for leadership in decent living and thinking. We must do it somehow.245

  * John Piper (1903–92), British artist renowned for his landscape and architectural paintings, as well as for his abstract work. During the Second World War he was commissioned to record bomb damage in London and elsewhere, and he became an official war artist in 1944. He designed the stained-glass windows for Coventry Cathedral, built in the 1960s to replace the cathedral destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.

  * This is the chapter which includes the well-known verses: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers … shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:35, 38–9)

  † Most of her letters to Edward Woods were unfortunately lost in the 1980s in a fire.

  * The Second World War saw an acceleration in medical science. M&B was first produced by the firm May & Baker in 1936 – it was the first effective antibiotic that could be used for a variety of infections, including sore throat and pneumonia. It was mass produced during the war. Churchill was prescribed it in 1943 and announced, ‘This admirable M&B, from which I did not suffer any inconvenience, was used at the earliest moment and after a few weeks’ fever the intruders were repulsed.’

  * Mrs Greville also left Osbert Sitwell £10,000, which made him feel ‘very rich’. A few months after her death he returned to Polesden Lacey to visit Aline, her old French maid who still lived there. He reported to the Queen that the rest of Mrs Greville’s staff, known to him and her at least as ‘the Crazy Gang’, had been disbanded, but that they had ‘brought off a big coup with the sale of Mrs Ronnie’s cellar – an appropriate finale’. (Osbert Sitwell to Queen Elizabeth, [18] April 1943, RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL/Sitwell)

  * An Allied raid on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France in August 1942, carried out by a largely Canadian force, was a disastrous failure, with more than half of the 6,000 raiders either killed, wounded or captured. An Allied battle plan, discovered by the Germans, proposed that German prisoners should be shackled. Hitler gave orders that the same be done to Canadian prisoners. In retaliation, Churchill ordered that German POWs in Canada be shackled. Both orders were soon rescinded.

  * ‘Boniface’ was the word used by Churchill and his circle for intelligence derived from the top-secret decryption of German communications. Much of the German cipher traffic was encrypted on Enigma machines, one of which had been handed to the British by Polish intelligence shortly after the outbreak of war; it was used by the decoders at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. Enigma decrypts, one of the most important secret achievements of the war, were later called Ultra. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the western Supreme Allied Commander, later described Ultra as being ‘decisive’ to Allied victory. The secret was kept until 1974 when F. W. Winterbotham published the first history of the codebreaking, The Ultra Secret.

  * The Matron at Lewisham Hospital wrote to thank the Queen for her visit and added that she ‘would also like to thank the Princesses for their very generous gift of bananas, and to say how much the children enjoyed them, even little “Betty” who had never seen a banana before.’ (RA QEQMH/PS/ENGT/1943: 4 February)

  † In January 1942 the Nazi leadership had secretly devised plans for the more systematic destruction of the Jews. The minutes of this conference held at Lake Wannsee near Berlin survive – replete with such euphemisms as ‘evacuating the Jews to the East’ and ‘dealt with appropriately’.

  * It was often difficult to write speeches for the Queen. In 1939 A. A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh, had written a broadcast for the Queen at the request of the Ministry of Information. It was, in the words of the historian Frank Prochaska, ‘patronising’. ‘Men say we gossip,’ the Queen was to tell her listeners, ‘perhaps we do. It is nice sitting cosily with a friend and saying, “Did you hear this?” and “did you hear that?” But please, please don’t let us gossip now.’ The Director General of the BBC had thought the draft broadcast ‘generally admirable’ and it was sent to the Palace for approval. It was not delivered. (Frank Prochaska, Royal Bounty, p. 223, quoting PRO INF 1/670. 37)

  * ‘Coming In on a Wing and a Prayer’ was sung by Anne Shelton with Ambrose and his Orchestra. The music was by Jimmie McHugh and the lyrics by Harold Adamson.

  * The previous Colonel, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, third son of Queen Victoria, had died on 16 January 1942.

  * In 1943 the King had asked Parliament to amend the Regency Act of 1937 to enable Princess Elizabeth to become a Counsellor of State at eighteen, instead of at twenty-one as under the existing law.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WAR TO PEACE

  1945–1947

  ‘Oh how I hate utility and austerity’

  WITH THE END of the war in Europe, as the full horrors of Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz were uncovered, it had become ever more clear that this war really had been, as Churchill had often declared, a war against evil and a new Dark Age. But, now that it was finally won, the vast costs of the effort, both personal a
nd national, became starkly evident. In Europe alone more than fourteen million people had died; the economic structure of the continent had been ruined. Now millions of the survivors became refugees, wandering all over Europe, which was quickly divided, first by influence and then by physical barriers, between east and west. The Queen found it hard to believe that the Germans could have been responsible for so much misery.

  She wrote to her mother-in-law to say that she and the King ‘have aged a lot, and look rather haggard & ravaged! & one’s clothes are so awful!’1 The Queen was now in her mid-forties, a more mature, indeed more matronly figure than when the war began. Both she and the King had expended enormous physical, mental and emotional resources in the previous five years. The King, whose health had always been poor, was exhausted by the physical and moral strain. And he knew that it was not over yet. ‘I have found it difficult to rejoice or to relax as there is still so much hard work ahead to deal with,’ he wrote in his diary ten days after VE Day. ‘Russia & America & U.K. have got to work together to put Europe straight again after this upheaval.’2 And there was still the war in the east to be won. A tragic reminder of this was the news that Clare and Doris Vyner’s son Charles had just been killed in his plane in action over Rangoon. The Queen was horrified. ‘Oh Doris I cannot bear to think of your sorrow … All my most loving thoughts are with you all the time; if you ever want me I shall come at once, even just to be with you a moment.’3

  The King needed to rest. But he could not. From the Queen’s point of view, the story of the next six years was of tumultuous change in British society and of catastrophic decline in the King’s health.

  At the end of the war, London was a drab and filthy city, with thousands of homes, churches and other public buildings bombed beyond repair, the dust from myriad bomb sites blowing everywhere. Buckingham Palace was not destroyed, but it would take years to repair the damage and restore both the Palace and Windsor Castle to their pre-war state.

  Through the summer of 1945, the King and Queen tried to construct a normal family life around their daughters. But they both knew that the war had made them into such public figures that they had no chance of returning to a relatively secluded private life. They undertook victory tours in many different parts of the United Kingdom; they attended countless march-pasts and rallies or services to celebrate the achievements of many different groups, regiments, associations. They visited the Channel Islands – the only part of British Crown territory occupied by the Germans. The Queen was impressed by the spirit of the islanders and, as a result of this visit, she decided to make a special gift to the Islands to commemorate their loyalty and Christian spirit – it took the form of specially made church plate, crucifix and candlesticks for the two main churches in Jersey and Guernsey.

  Letters of praise and relief flooded into Buckingham Palace. The King replied to a letter from Cosmo Lang to say that he and the Queen had been overwhelmed by everyone’s great kindness. ‘We have tried to do our duty in these 5 long exacting years.’ Now there could be only a moment for rejoicing, as there was so much more work to do to recover from ‘all the suffering & destruction which Hitler has caused. But we also have much to be thankful for & the people of this Country won’t let us down.’4

  However, the people, wearied by the war, wanted political change. Politics had been, in effect, suspended since 1940, and the Labour leader Clement Attlee had served loyally as Churchill’s deputy in the Coalition government. Churchill now wished to prolong the Coalition until the war with Japan was won. But the Labour Party decided at its annual conference in May 1945 to end the Coalition at once. Queen Mary thought this was ‘disgusting & ungrateful’ after all Churchill had done. She also thought that, since a peace conference involving all the big powers was about to convene in Potsdam, it should be Churchill who led Britain.5 Churchill himself felt the same. Ever since VE Day, his main preoccupation had been with the Soviet Union – he feared that a new ‘period of appeasement’ would lead to a ‘third World War’.6

  The King and Queen agreed. They believed, in common with millions of others, that because of her heroic stand in 1940–1 and her dogged fighting ever since, Great Britain should still be considered a great power in 1945. Britain’s armed services were more powerful than ever and Britain’s global Empire was being restored. London now shared with the Allies in the governance of Germany, Austria and Italy. The Mediterranean was a British lake. The North African littoral, southern Persia and Greece were all under British control. British armies were keeping the peace and defending British interests around the world. The Royal Navy boasted 3,500 ships and the Royal Air Force enjoyed widespread international bases and prestige. It was not surprising that many Britons, proud of their individual and national achievements, believed that Britain would soon be able to re-establish her pre-war dominance of the international system.

  But the war had vastly strengthened others, in particular the United States and the Soviet Union. People were slow to understand, but Britain now faced, in the words of John Maynard Keynes, a ‘financial Dunkirk’.7 To defeat the Nazis, Britain had nearly exhausted her gold and dollar reserves, worn out her industrial base and become increasingly dependent on American munitions, shipping and foodstuffs – each of these was essential to the war effort.8 Moreover, for all Churchill’s intimate relationship with Roosevelt, by the time of his death the American President had been negotiating over his head with Stalin.

  Parliament was dissolved on 15 June. Polling began on 5 July but instead of the usual one day was extended for much longer to enable the troops stationed overseas to vote. The result – a stunning victory for the Labour Party with a majority of 146, and the rejection of Churchill and the Conservatives – was announced on 26 July.

  The King and Queen were, to say the least, disappointed. That evening, Churchill drove to the Palace to tender his resignation. It was, wrote the King in his diary, ‘a very sad meeting’; he told Churchill he thought the people were very ungrateful.9 A few days later he wrote to Churchill to tell him:

  how very sad I am that you are no longer my Prime Minister. During the last 5 years of war we have met on dozens, I may say on hundreds of occasions … Your breadth of vision & your grasp of the essential things were a great comfort to me in the darkest days of the War, & I like to think that we have never disagreed on any really important matter. For all those things I thank you most sincerely … I shall miss your counsel to me more than I can say. But please remember that as a friend I hope we shall be able to meet at intervals.10

  Churchill replied with similar emotion.

  The Queen set out her views to Queen Mary:

  The election has been rather a shock, and I think that Bertie felt it very much, as Winston has been such a great support and comfort all through these terrible years of war. He is a great man, of great vision, and his leadership has meant so much to so many. People’s memories are short, alas!, and one must try now to build up another good sound government. But the material is not too inspiring.

  With a great war raging, & a Potsdam Conference sitting, really [it] is not the time to have a change of Government! We both feel tired, & today has been very depressing, but Bertie is wonderful, and tho’ he looks rather pinched in the face, he is so calm & good, tho’ I know he is worried to death. You have been through all these things Mama, & understand it all so well – it is hell, isn’t it.11

  Churchill himself was both devastated and philosophical. The waste of his talents upset him. ‘The knowledge and experience I had gathered, the authority and goodwill I had gained in so many countries, would vanish,’ he recalled later. But when his doctor, Charles Moran, spoke of the ‘ingratitude’ of the British people, Churchill replied, ‘I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time.’ To another aide he said, ‘They are perfectly entitled to vote as they please. This is democracy. This is what we’ve been fighting for.’12

  Two men who later became friends and admirers of the Queen were pleased by the news. The
Oxford philosopher and diplomat Isaiah Berlin danced a jig in celebration. Noël Coward, the actor–entertainer who had played an important wartime propaganda role and was certainly no left-winger, was sanguine. ‘It may not be a bad idea for the Labour boys to hold the baby,’ he recorded in his diary. ‘I always felt that England would be bloody uncomfortable during the immediate postwar period.’13

  In August 1945, President Truman unexpectedly and, he later acknowledged, unwisely, cut the economic lifeline of Lend-Lease, whose creation Churchill had called ‘the most unsordid act in the history of any nation’. The sudden end of this vital support meant that Britain had to negotiate new loans from the United States; the terms seemed onerous. There was even less money to pay for both imperial and post-imperial commitments and for the socialist revolution which the Labour Party had been elected to carry out. The government immediately had to cut imports of food, tobacco, textiles, fuel. But that did not mean that Labour would, or could, change its policies. The historian Robert Rhodes James put it succinctly in his biography of the King: ‘The series of economic miseries that were to demoralise and eventually to destroy the post-war Labour government had begun.’14

  *

  THE FAMILY WAS at Windsor for the first weekend in August 1945; Saturday the 4th was a special day, the Queen’s forty-fifth birthday and a good outing for the King at the races – Rising Light won him the first victory by one of his own horses that he had ever seen. That evening they gave a small dance at the Castle to celebrate both the Queen’s birthday and the end of the war in Europe.