At the end of June the King and Queen, taking the Princesses with them, travelled to Scotland for a week of official engagements, based at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. They visited Falkirk, Stirling, Grange-mouth and Linlithgow; the Queen took the salute at a march-past of Red Cross units at Holyroodhouse; they attended a service in St Giles’ Cathedral and a drumhead service and parade for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the British Legion in Scotland; they gave a garden party, and returned to London overnight on 3 July. The rest of July and early August were filled with visits to Sandhurst, to Canterbury, to North Wales, as well as constant engagements in and around London and two garden parties at Buckingham Palace. Thus it continued until the family departed for Balmoral on 8 August, where among the guests was Prince Philip of Greece. In September the King and Queen made a quick trip south to accompany Prime Minister Attlee, his wife Violet and Sir Stafford Cripps to the ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition. ‘But no one can get it’ was the Queen’s pithy private comment.53
Back in Scotland, she and the Princesses drove from Balmoral to the Clyde to spend the day on the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth which the Queen had launched in 1938. The liner had served as a troopship throughout the war and now she had been refitted for her original purpose. The Queen thought the ship beautiful and comfortable – she was glad to see good British taste and workmanship – ‘oh how I hate utility and austerity, don’t you?’ she wrote in a note to the King. ‘It’s all wrong. Well, darling, I must fly, the children have just returned from the engine room, and tea is calling.’54
The state of the arts, in the broadest sense, remained a central interest for her. She had been concerned throughout the war about protecting artists and their work from the brutal assaults of the time. Osbert Sitwell had invited her, just before the war’s end, to attend the Authors’ Society Jubilee in June 1945. This included a John Gielgud recital of pieces by Tennyson, Thomas Hardy and John Masefield, the Poet Laureate. Sitwell told her how ‘delighted and enchanted’ 400 authors ‘good and bad’ were to see her.55 She enjoyed the occasion and agreed to attend a more ambitious gathering in 1946 at which Flora Robson, Edith Evans, John Gielgud and others read from Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Chaucer and many other classics, while T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Walter de la Mare read from their own works.
She had been anxious about the fate of the paintings and other works of art in the Royal Collection evacuated for safekeeping during the war. Now they were all being brought back, cleaned and restored where necessary. In autumn 1946 she involved herself in an exhibition, ‘The King’s Pictures’, at the Royal Academy, a selection made by Anthony Blunt and Ben Nicolson, the Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. It was the first large art show to be held in London since the end of the war and was a great success. More than 366,000 visitors came to the exhibition.
The Queen held a private view for family and friends on 20 November 1946. The evening ended with an unexpected supper in one of the rooms at the Academy. It was an enjoyable occasion – an example of what one courtier later described as the Queen’s ability to make Court life ‘fun’.56 Queen Mary thought the mix of ‘treasures & interesting people was a great success, very clever of Elizabeth to have thought of it, & the supper was a great surprise.’57 The Queen was pleased; she enjoyed seeing the pictures well lit and well shown and the occasion encouraged her dream to build a gallery at Buckingham Palace to show the Royal Collection on a more regular basis.58 (This was finally achieved in 1962.)
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THE END OF the war did not diminish the Queen’s interest in her regiments. In October 1945 she sent the Toronto Scottish a warm message as they embarked on their voyage home. ‘I rejoice to think that you will soon see those who are most dear to you … You are returning home covered with glory most well deserved and I trust that some day I shall see you again in your own dear land. Goodbye and God speed.’59 Her connections with the Canadian armed forces were reinforced when she subsequently accepted the appointment of colonel-in-chief of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada.
In early 1946 she was upset by the disbandment of the 5th Battalion (Angus). She drafted a telegram to the regiment in which she said, ‘I was grieved to hear this news as the 5th Battalion The Black Watch having such close ties with my family and my native County of Angus has a special place in my heart.’ She thanked them for ‘their devoted service’ and asked to be kept informed where the men were posted.60 There was happier news a few weeks later when one of the most accomplished staff officers of the war, Lord Wavell, became colonel of the regiment. She wrote to him saying that she wanted to associate herself with the pleasure that his appointment had given to all ranks, and telling him she hoped he would call upon her if he needed backing against the War Office. In a typical expression of purpose, she declared, ‘There are certain things that one must fight for, and it is [no] use giving in.’61
The war had left the Queen with the conviction that Christianity was vital to the recovery of the country. She detested what she saw as the irreligious ‘materialism’ of the Nazi and communist creeds, and she was increasingly concerned by the decline in traditional religious belief in Britain. Education seemed to her to be the key to reversing this trend, and she was therefore enthusiastic about a scheme first put to her in 1944, to set up a centre ‘for the study of the Christian philosophy of life’.62 It was the brainchild of Amy Buller, whose book Darkness over Germany had been sent to the Queen in 1943 by her friend the Bishop of Lichfield, a supporter of the scheme. Miss Buller was a remarkable Christian pedagogue and a scholar of German culture who had travelled widely in Germany during the 1930s. She had been appalled by the ease with which the Nazis had seduced ordinary decent Germans, and she feared that, if such a civilized country as Germany could be so warped, Britain bore a similar risk. She believed that Western civilization was in decline because of the weakening of Christianity. The Queen was struck by the book and asked to meet the author. In March 1944 she did so; Amy Buller called this meeting ‘my miracle’.63
Miss Buller’s faith and enthusiasm impressed the Queen; when she spoke of her ambition to create a college to inculcate Christian principles, the Queen said she would like to help. She was as good as her word. The most serious immediate problem was to find it a site. The Queen asked Queen Mary whether part of the Royal College of St Katharine’s in Regent’s Park, of which Queen Mary was patron, could be used. Amy Buller, she said, hoped to attract teachers of psychology, science and medicine and other disciplines from universities all around the country for ‘many of them seem to be almost pagans, and there seems to be absolutely nowhere where clever people can go to study & discuss the Christian way of life from an intellectual angle’.64
In the event no home could be found for the college until 1947, when Cumberland Lodge, a former royal residence in Windsor Great Park, fell vacant, whereupon the King and Queen decided to offer it to Miss Buller’s foundation. They lent furniture, pictures and other household goods to the college, known first as St Catharine’s, Cumberland Lodge, and renamed King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation of St Catharine’s in 1966. Miss Buller became warden and Elizabeth Elphinstone assistant warden. A distinguished academic, Sir Walter Moberly, who had been chairman of the University Grants Committee and was the author of an important work, The Crisis in the Universities, was appointed principal. Like the Queen and Amy Buller he was a firm believer in the value of Christian insight in academic studies.
St Catharine’s was – and remains – a Christian foundation but it brought together those with widely divergent political and religious views. Much of its early work was a strenuous attempt to bring out into the open the assumptions which underlie different points of view and to encourage students to persist in such investigations. It promoted the civilized values which had arisen from the millennia of Christianity. The Queen wrote to Elizabeth Elphinstone, ‘I do take it very seriously, and am quite certain that it is doing, & will do, immense good.’65 For decades to co
me St Catharine’s offered university staff and students the opportunity to examine their own studies and explore the nature of man and society and the Christian interpretation of life as against the various secular alternatives. Its lasting success owes much to the Queen’s patronage.
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THROUGHOUT 1946 IT became ever more clear that the principal consequence of the war was the extreme poverty of the country. The Labour government’s promise to extend state ownership and thus to build a New Jerusalem in Britain’s ‘green and pleasant land’ had been enthusiastically accepted by the electorate in 1945, but inevitably disappointment and even disillusion followed. London remained a wrecked city; too often to the victors their country seemed neither green nor particularly pleasant. Bread had not been rationed during the war – but now it was. All other foods, clothing and fuel were in short supply or even rationed. The spiv had become an important character in the wasteland of post-war Britain: black-market goods were eagerly sought – by those who had the cash. Austerity was the watchword. On the other hand, for millions of people in Britain, perhaps the majority, the post-war years were not overwhelmingly bleak. On the contrary this was the first time in which they could feel security – with full employment, national insurance and national assistance, the advent of a national health service. There was rationing but, by contrast with the years after the end of the First World War, this meant that the poor could obtain food, and limited goods were shared out more equitably. The Labour government was much criticized but it did not lose a single by-election in the immediate post-war years and its vote in many working-class areas actually grew.
The war had demonstrated Britain’s dependence on soldiers from the Empire. And now Britain depended on the Empire for much of her food and raw materials. Royal tours to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and elsewhere were envisaged as a means of giving thanks to the peoples of the Dominions. South Africa was chosen as the first such destination. During the war the King and Queen had discussed such a tour with their friend Field Marshal Smuts, the South African Prime Minister. For Smuts, the tour was politically important, as a means of uniting the country and bolstering his position against the Nationalist Party, which proposed to transform the existing segregation into apartheid and which was generally anti-British. The formal invitation, when it came in 1946, was addressed also to the two Princesses. For the King and Queen this interlude away from home, with their two growing daughters, had a certain poignancy, particularly since it seemed unlikely that ‘we four’ would remain a simple quartet for very long.
Their departure in early 1947 coincided with the most bitter winter in recent memory. The cold, combined with post-war rationing and the general austerity embraced and imposed by the government, made Britain a truly wretched place. The workings of Big Ben froze solid, as did the Thames. Much production just stopped – the ice and snow forced the coalmines and the ports to close. There was a fuel crisis and constant power cuts. Life was miserable. When the time came for their voyage to begin, both the King and the Queen were reluctant to leave.
The Queen had read widely about both the history and the natural life of South Africa. She understood that the journey would be complicated. Unlike Australia, New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) Canada, South Africa was neither homogeneous nor automatically inclined towards Britain. Instead, two races – the Dutch and the British – competed with each other over their visions and their shares of the country and their relationships with the huge indigenous black population, the Coloureds and the Indians. There were two capitals (Cape Town and Pretoria), two national anthems, two national flags. The King and Queen saw it as one of their primary purposes to try and bring as much unity as possible to the divided nation. The King was invited to open Parliament in Cape Town.
Both he and the Queen had lessons in Afrikaans; the Queen took with her for the voyage the lists of the phonetic equivalents of words and phrases given her by her tutor.66 Norman Hartnell designed most of the clothes for her and her daughters; in the Queen’s case they had a certain theatricality that served to project her presence to the forefront of every occasion. Her hats, designed by the Danish milliner Aage Thaarup, introduced the swept-up brim, which she liked because it did not hide her face or her smile.
The immediate Household staff for the tour numbered ten; they included Tommy Lascelles and Michael Adeane (Private Secretary and Assistant Private Secretary), Tom Harvey, the Queen’s Private Secretary, Lieutenant Commander Peter Ashmore and Group Captain Peter Townsend (equerries), Edmund (‘Ted’) Grove (Chief Clerk). The Queen took Lady Harlech and Lady Delia Peel as ladies in waiting, and Lady Margaret Egerton was lady in waiting to the Princesses. The Queen also had two maids and her own hairdresser. An official tour diary was kept by the King’s Press Secretary, Captain Lewis Ritchie, RN. Ted Grove wrote long letters home to his wife which formed a more intimate private diary of the trip.
On 1 February 1947 they sailed from Portsmouth in HMS Vanguard, a new battleship which Princess Elizabeth had launched on Clydeside in 1944; their quarters were made slightly more comfortable by the Queen’s choice of soft furnishings and familiar satinwood furniture borrowed from the royal yacht. As on previous voyages, prints of familiar scenes adorned the walls: the Queen chose the ‘Cries of London’ series. Off the Isle of Wight, the double column of the Home Fleet made a fine sight. As Princess Elizabeth identified the warships for her sister, the Queen was busy with her cine camera filming it all. Their passage through the Bay of Biscay, however, was rough and disagreeable. The King and the two Princesses kept to their cabins. On the second and third days, only the Queen felt strong enough to dine with the Household. ‘She was certainly looking better than I felt,’ Ted Grove wrote home.67
News of their discomfort was published in London and the ever affectionate Arthur Penn wrote to the Queen to commiserate about ‘the extreme disloyalty of the weather which has dogged you … Even the mainbrace has had to be spliced, I learn, which gives one some idea of the savagery of the tempest.’ He said that he ‘felt very low when I turned my back, on Friday, on the ship which was bearing away so many of the people who contribute most to the happiness of my life … It’s disgusting being without you, but I knew it would be.’68
By the fifth day they had passed the Azores, and with the warm weather the King and Queen started to enjoy life on board ship. A friendly sense of fun and games developed. One night under a full moon the Queen, the two Princesses and Lady Margaret Egerton danced an eightsome reel with four ship’s officers on the quarterdeck. Rather as Elizabeth Bowes Lyon used to correspond with her governess, Princess Elizabeth reported to Crawfie: ‘The officers are charming, and we have had great fun with them … There are one or two real smashers, and I bet you’d have a WONDERFUL time if you were here.’69
Amusement on board was ‘home-grown’; the ship’s company gave a floorshow one night, on others Delia Peel played the piano for community singing; films were shown in the King’s dining room. The press photographers begged for something to reveal and captured the family party playing deck games with the naval officers: in the background the royal parents, always impeccably dressed, watched their daughters. All took some part in the traditional high jinks of Crossing the Line. The King and Queen, veterans of King Neptune’s demesne, were given Oceanic season tickets; the Princesses had their noses powdered with a gigantic puff and were given a candied cherry instead of a soap pill.70
On the calmer seas, the royal party were able to visit the escorting ships, including the aircraft carrier HMS Implacable, which the Queen had launched in Glasgow in 1942. Now she told the ship’s company: ‘To me that was one of the most memorable days in those long years of war.’ She had followed the voyages of ‘her ship’ with warm interest. ‘Implacable made a notable contribution to our final victory, and I need not say that it was with deep pride that I heard of her achievements.’71
Inevitably, the holiday spirit was dampened by the King’s growing anxiety about news of the ever worsening sit
uation in Britain. He felt that, having shared so many trials with his people during the war, he should now be there to show sympathy and solidarity with them. Princess Elizabeth wrote regularly to Queen Mary, and admitted to their feelings of frustration: ‘We hear such terrible stories of the weather and fuel situation at home, and I do hope you have not suffered too much. While we were dripping in the tropics, it was hard to imagine the conditions under which you were living, and I for one felt rather guilty that we had got away to the sun while everyone else was freezing!’72 On the eve of their arrival in Cape Town, the King sent a telegram to Attlee, suggesting that he should come home by air. Attlee thought this would only increase the sense of national crisis and politely rejected the idea. But the King’s feeling of guilt continued.73
For the Princesses, never before out of Britain, the landfall in South Africa was exciting. Princess Elizabeth wrote to her grandmother: ‘When I caught my first glimpse of Table Mountain I could hardly believe that anything could be so beautiful.’74 As the ship approached land, a great cheer went up from the dockside. The Queen came ashore wearing an ice-blue dress with floating panels bordered with South African ostrich feathers and a matching hat, also trimmed with feathers. The town was in fiesta mood. ‘There is bunting everywhere and thousands more people have crowded into the town from the surrounding districts … The Queen with her charm has captured them all,’ Ted Grove told his wife.75
The first formal ceremony was a solemn procession of both Houses of Parliament to present loyal addresses to the King and Queen at Government House, and in the first of many additions to the programme the King invested Field Marshal Smuts with the Order of Merit. One evening the Queen added a personal touch to the work of reconciliation between Britain and the descendants of the Boers whom Britain had fought at the turn of the century. After dinner with Smuts at Groote Schuur, the prime-ministerial residence that had once been the home of Cecil Rhodes, she handed back to him the family bible of Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal during the Boer War and a national hero who had died in 1904. The bible had been looted during the Boer War and taken to England; now the little ceremony, in which the Queen laid this immense and beautifully bound volume in Smuts’s hands, struck Lascelles as ‘a remarkable picture in the kaleidoscope of history’.76
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