The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  Back at Sandringham that evening, the Queen went at once to see the King ‘as I always do, & he was in tremendous form & looking so well and happy’.119 Seago’s paintings were laid out and they looked at them together; the King, she took the trouble to tell Seago a little later, ‘was enchanted with them all’.120 They had an enjoyable dinner with Princess Margaret; the King was cheerful and his wife was delighted. At around 10.30 p.m. they said good night and the King retired to the ground-floor room he was now using as a bedroom so as to avoid climbing the stairs. At around midnight a watchman in the garden saw him adjusting the new latch which had been fitted to his window to allow more air into the room.

  At 7.30 the next morning Macdonald brought the King’s early-morning tea, opened the curtains and drew the bath. When the King did not stir, Macdonald went to his bedside. The King was lying peacefully; he had not moved from his usual position and there were no signs of any discomfort. Macdonald shook his shoulder gently. Getting no response he touched the King’s forehead, which was cold. He knew that the King was dead; he immediately sent word to the Queen’s dresser and went himself to report to Sir Harold Campbell, the King’s equerry.121 ‘I was sent a message that his servant couldn’t wake him,’ the Queen wrote to Queen Mary a few hours later. ‘I flew to his room, & thought that he was in a deep sleep, he looked so peaceful – and then I realized what had happened.’122

  The Household had devised a code word for this awful possibility. Lascelles called Edward Ford, the Assistant Private Secretary, in London, and said, ‘Hyde Park Corner.’ He told Ford to go and give the news at once to the Prime Minister and to Queen Mary. At 10 Downing Street, Ford found Churchill in bed, with papers scattered all over the blankets, a chewed cigar in his mouth. He said, ‘I’ve got bad news, Prime Minister. The King died last night. I know nothing else.’

  ‘Bad news? The worst,’ said Churchill.

  The old statesman was devastated. He threw aside all the papers on his bed, exclaiming, ‘How unimportant these matters are.’123 A little later, his secretary, Jock Colville, found the Prime Minister sitting with tears in his eyes, staring straight ahead. He tried to cheer him up by saying that he would get on well with the new Queen, ‘but all he could say was that he did not know her and that she was only a child’.124

  Edward Ford next had to make his melancholy way to Marlborough House to inform Queen Mary. Jock Colville’s mother, Lady Cynthia, was in waiting and she went to Queen Mary’s room to give her the news. Queen Mary seemed to have a premonition: ‘Is it the King?’ she asked Lady Cynthia.125 Later that day she wrote in her diary, ‘I got a dreadful shock when Cynthia asked to see me at 9.30, after breakfast, to tell me that darling Bertie had died in his sleep early today … The news came out about 10.30. Later letters kept arriving & flowers from kind friends.’126

  At Sandringham Lascelles asked Queen Elizabeth, as she was now properly called since her daughter had become ‘The Queen’,* to approve the announcement. He had made it as simple as possible: ‘The King, who retired to rest last night in his usual health, passed peacefully away in his sleep early this morning’. The King’s body was moved in its coffin on a cart to the little family church where his father had lain sixteen years before him. In the streets of London people stopped their cars and stood at attention in the streets to show their respect. Many wept openly. In America, the House of Representatives carried unanimously a resolution of sympathy and adjourned in respect for the King.

  That same day, Queen Elizabeth wrote to Queen Mary:

  My darling Mama,

  What can I say to you – I know that you loved Bertie dearly, and he was my whole life, and one can only be deeply thankful for the utterly happy years we had together. He was so wonderfully thoughtful and loving, & I don’t believe he ever thought of himself at all. He was so devoted to you, & admired & loved you. It is impossible for me to grasp what has happened, last night he was in wonderful form & looking so well … It is hard to grasp, he was such an angel to the children & me, and I cannot bear to think of Lilibet, so young to bear such a burden – I do feel for you so darling Mama – to lose two dear sons, and Bertie so young still, & so precious – It is almost more than one can bear – Your very loving Elizabeth.127

  Queen Mary thanked ‘Dear darling Elizabeth’ for her ‘wonderful letter to poor old me’. The old Queen was deeply touched by all that her daughter-in-law had said ‘about the great affection between our darling Bertie and us all. I cannot get over the fearful shock you must have had when you realised that he had died in his sleep. You have been such a wonderful wife to him in “weal & woe” & such a prop when things were a little difficult and he was upset, this must be a comfort to you in your great grief and I feel this very much indeed.’128

  *

  IN KENYA THE new Queen and Prince Philip had spent the previous night in the countryside at Treetops, a simple treehouse overlooking a waterhole to which animals came at night. They were horrified, at every level. Grief mingled with the knowledge that this meant the end of their independent life together. Prince Philip, according to his Private Secretary, ‘looked as if you’d dropped half the world on him’.129 They began their journey home that night and on the plane Martin Charteris asked his employer what name she would take as monarch. ‘My own name of course – what else?’ she replied. She would be Queen Elizabeth II. Shortly before the plane arrived at London Airport she changed into the black mourning clothes which had travelled with her in case of just such an eventuality. ‘What happens when I get there?’ she asked. As the plane taxied to a halt, she saw the big black Palace cars – ‘Oh, they’ve sent the hearses,’ she said, using the name she and her sister had always used for the royal limousines.130 All in black, the new Queen walked down the steps of the plane to be met by Churchill, Attlee, Eden and other political leaders. She and Prince Philip managed a few smiles and then climbed into one of the ‘hearses’; a photographer caught a poignant image of the Queen in the corner of the back seat, her eyes cast down.

  Churchill, in his own car, was in tears as he drove back to London, dictating a radio broadcast he was to make that night. He spoke of the King as ‘a devoted and tireless servant of his country’ and said that the announcement of his death ‘struck a deep and solemn note in our lives which, as it resounded far and wide, stilled the clatter and traffic of twentieth century life in many lands and made countless millions of human beings pause and look around them’.

  Churchill’s sentiments, on this as on many occasions, epitomized the monarchist feelings that prevailed in a country where at least a third of the people thought the Queen had been chosen by God. ‘The King’, declared Churchill, had ‘walked with death, as if death were a companion he did not fear … In the end death came as a friend; and after a happy day of sunshine and sport, and after “good night” to those who loved him best, he fell asleep as every man or woman who strives to fear God and nothing else in the world may hope to do.’ Now the ‘Second Queen Elizabeth’ was ascending the throne at the same age as the first, nearly 400 years earlier. Despite his grief, the Prime Minister said, ‘I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the anthem, “God Save the Queen”.’

  After the new Queen had arrived at Clarence House, one of her first visitors was Queen Mary. ‘Her old Grannie and subject must be the first to kiss Her hand,’ she said.131 Thus the eighty-four-year-old woman, who had lived through five reigns, curtsied to her new queen. Queen Mary felt keenly the enormous responsibility that her granddaughter now had to take on at the age of only twenty-five. ‘But she has a fine steadfast character,’ she wrote to Queen Elizabeth, ‘& will I know always do her best for our beloved country and her people all over the world – and dear Philip will be a great help.’132

  Elizabeth II and Prince Philip drove to Sandringham. The new Queen understood that the loss of the King was especially terrible for her mother and sister to b
ear. She had a job as well as her young family – for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret ‘the bottom has really dropped out of their world’.133

  Queen Elizabeth was utterly calm – too calm, felt some of those around her. She began to reply to many of the thousands of letters which were sent to her. She wrote almost at once to thank Edward Seago and Delia Peel for helping to make the day before the King died such a happy one. To Tommy Lascelles, she wrote:

  I do want to try & tell you something of the deep gratitude I feel for all your loving and wonderful service to the King through perhaps the most difficult years any sovereign has passed through. Your advice & support were greatly cherished by the King – he respected your judgement completely, & how often I have heard him say, ‘I must discuss this with Tommy’ … I, who loved him most dearly, want to thank you with all my heart for all you have done to help him. I am glad beyond words that you will be at the side of our daughter.

  I am, Yours sincerely, Elizabeth R.

  PS The King was very fond of you.134

  Lascelles was much moved, and thanked her, saying, ‘It is an inexpressible comfort to me to know that The King felt I was not letting him down.’ Her ‘beautiful’ letter had ‘brought me a peace of mind that I haven’t known for a long time; and I am deeply grateful.’135

  Until 11 February the King’s coffin lay in the church at Sandringham, draped in the Royal Standard and watched over all the time by estate workers. On the morning of the 11th it was conveyed, on the same gun carriage that had borne his father’s coffin, to Wolferton station whence it was taken to London. At King’s Cross station the young Queen, her grandmother, her mother and her sister were photographed standing in deepest black, heads bowed and darkly veiled as they watched the coffin of the man they had loved so long being taken from the train.

  The King’s body lay in state for the next four days in Westminster Hall while more than 300,000 people, dressed in their best, sombre and often well-worn clothes, waited quietly in the winter cold, in lines four miles long, to pass by and pay their respects to the unexpected King whom they had come to love and depend upon. For at least a month millions of people wore black mourning armbands.

  On Friday 15 February the King’s coffin was taken to Windsor and brought on a gun carriage drawn by officers and ratings of HMS Excellent to St George’s Chapel in the Castle, where the funeral was held. Winston Churchill’s wreath read simply ‘For Valour’.

  That evening Queen Elizabeth wrote to Lascelles: ‘Today has been the most wonderful & the most agonising day of my life – Wonderful because one felt the sincerity of the people’s feelings, & agonising because gradually one becomes less numb, & the awfulness of everything becomes real.’136

  * The former Lord Cranborne had become the fifth marquess of Salisbury on the death of his father in 1947.

  † Berlin was not uncritical of Queen Elizabeth. In 1959 he described to a friend a dinner at which he, Queen Elizabeth and Maria Callas were among the guests. ‘They were like two prima donnas, one emitting white and [the] other black magic. Each tried to engage the attention of the table, Miss Callas crudely and violently, the Queen Mother with infinite gracefulness and charm of a slightly watery and impersonal kind … I sat between the Q.M. and Lady Rosebery and enjoyed myself … The Q.M., on the other hand, discussed the subject of courage and ventured the proposition that wholly fearless men are often boring. I pounced on that and produced a list of men distinguished in public life – such as General Freyberg and other V.C.s – whom we then duly found boring. It was such a conversation as might have occurred in about 1903 with the then still young Princess May [the future Queen Mary]. I enjoyed it in an artificial sort of way and thought the Q.M. not indeed particularly intelligent nor even terribly nice, but a very strong personality – much stronger than I thought her – and filled with the possibility of unexpected answers … In short I enjoyed my evening a good deal.’ (Isaiah Berlin to Rowland Burdon-Muller, 7 July 1959, Isaiah Berlin, Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960, ed. Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes, Chatto & Windus, 2009, pp. 691–3)

  * See Vickers’s illuminating account of this affair, based largely on the papers of Bruce and Beatrice Blackmar Gould at Princeton University, in Elizabeth The Queen Mother, pp. 279–91.

  * Edward Seago (1910–74), self-taught landscape painter and portraitist who spent most of his life in Norfolk.

  * In accordance with practice at the British Court, as queen consort Queen Elizabeth was always referred to as ‘The Queen’, and not as ‘Queen Elizabeth’. As the King’s widow, however, she was referred to by her name, as Queen Elizabeth, like Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary before her. ‘The Queen’ now meant only her daughter, the reigning Queen. The same practice has been followed in this book. The widowed Queen Elizabeth was now queen dowager, and because her daughter was on the throne she was also queen mother, a title used for centuries among royal families throughout Europe and beyond.

  77. The Royal Family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace following the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, 2 June 1953.

  78. Manning a stall at the Abergeldie Bazaar, August 1955.

  79. Queen Elizabeth with her corgi Honey at the Castle of Mey, October 1955.

  80. On tour in Rhodesia with Princess Margaret, June 1953.

  81. Arriving at the Vatican with Princess Margaret for a papal audience, 22 April 1959.

  82. With Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, after the announcement of their engagement in February 1960.

  83. Queen Elizabeth patting her horse, Devon Loch, for good luck before the Mildmay Memorial Cup at Sandown Races in January 1956.

  84. With the jockey Dick Francis at Windsor Races in January 1969.

  85. Backstage at the Royal Ballet with Margot Fonteyn, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon.

  86. Progressing through the Melbourne suburbs, Australia 1958.

  87. The Queen Mother in Rotorua, New Zealand, talking to Maori women after a performance of their Poi dance, May 1966.

  88. On tour in Canada in 1967.

  89. With the Duchess of Kent at the needlecraft stall at Sandringham Women’s Institute Flower Show, 1978.

  90. Celebrating St Patrick’s Day with the Irish Guards at Windsor Barracks, 17 March 1980.

  91. A birthday lunch in the gardens of Clarence House, 1984. Left to right: Lt. Col. Sir John Miller (Crown Equerry), Ruth, Lady Fermoy (lady in waiting), the Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth, Lord Maclean (Lord Chamberlain).

  92. With the chefs of the Hôtel de la Réserve in Albi, May 1989.

  93. A farewell lunch at the Château de Saran with the Comte de Chandon, after touring the cellars at Möet & Chandon while on holiday in France in 1983.

  94. Queen Elizabeth at the pageant to celebrate her hundredth birthday.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  QUEEN MOTHER

  1952–1955

  ‘Perhaps they would like me to retire decently to Kew’

  QUEEN ELIZABETH’S sense of loss was beyond description. She and the King had lived so much as one, their love had been so deep, that the sudden separation was a physical as well as a spiritual shock. Grief engulfed her.

  She had given the Duke of York what he had always longed for, a happy family life. As his wife, she had dedicated herself to him. She had enabled him to transform himself from an unconfident young man into an active and effective working member of the Royal Family. She had given him confidence and social grace. She had helped him control his temper and his debilitating stammer. After the horror of the abdication she above all had given him the courage to carry the unwanted burden of kingship. In the war she had been his equal partner in sustaining the people of Britain throughout the six long years of suffering. Afterwards she had supported and calmed him through the difficult, austere years of social change. And then she had devoted herself to his care in his extended series of illnesses. The King always talked of his family as ‘We Four’. But, within ‘We Four’, ‘We Two’ were the closest of all.


  Those nearest to Queen Elizabeth saw more clearly than the world at large that it was a relationship of mutual dependence. It has become a commonplace to say that, without her, the King could never have become ‘the great and gallant King he proved to be’, as a friend in later life observed. ‘But perhaps what is not so widely known is the fact of her great reliance on him, on his wisdom, his integrity, his courage … How deeply she must have missed him and what courage it took for her to continue, alone, the work they had done so magnificently together.’1 From a charming, vivacious, aristocratic but unsophisticated girl, she became a much loved queen. It was as ‘the King and the Queen’ that they had become the symbols of British defiance and victory during the war. Now she was alone.

  The shock was perhaps the greater because the past two generations of her own family had enjoyed and celebrated long marriages. When she was three years old her grandparents had celebrated their Golden Wedding, and in 1931 she had helped her own parents do the same. Instead of being able to repeat this pattern, after only twenty-eight years of marriage, the husband who adored her had died at the age of fifty-six.

  Throughout the early weeks of her bereavement she was comforted by the letters of love and sympathy that poured in from friends, relations and strangers. Churchill was eloquent as always: ‘All feel how Yr Majesty’s devotion & love made it possible for him to reach the pinnacle on wh. he stood at his death. There must be some comfort in this. But then there is the future. Boundless hopes are centred in yr daughter’s gleaming personality & reign; and these will find enduring expression in the place Yr Majesty will hold in all our thoughts as long as we live.’2 His wife Clementine was scarcely less moved, saying that she wrote ‘to express our love and gratitude to you Madam for all you both have given us all the years of your Marriage. You have shewn us what family life can be, not merely a domestic state, but a warm glowing existence full of interest and variety.’3 She was right; their obvious celebration of family life was one of the qualities which had most endeared the King and Queen to the people of Britain.