The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  The Queen Mother’s philanthropic reach by the last decade of her life was remarkable, but most other senior members of the Royal Family played similar roles with their patronages and regiments. Indeed, this fruitful interchange showed the robustness of British philanthropic traditions despite the rise of the state. It has been argued that consistent royal involvement in the realm of voluntary action, with its diversity, its principled rivalry and its love of the ad hoc remedy, had given the nation ‘immeasurable moral and democratic benefit’.100

  At the same time, the monarchy offered a constitutional landmark and institutional continuity which made the costs of social change appear easier to bear.101 Queen Elizabeth spoke to this issue in January 1993, when she gave her annual talk to the Sandringham Women’s Institute. Looking back fifty years, she recalled the time ‘when the skies above us were filled with aircraft of the American 8th Air Force, stationed all around us in East Anglia’. She went on to affirm her faith in the unaltered core of her country: ‘Many changes have come about since those days of War, some good, and some not so good, but through all those changing scenes of life we can feel the strong beat of the English heart.’102 It was in this heart that she trusted above all.

  * The inscription above the door of the original BBC headquarters in Portland Place read, ‘This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being Director-General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.’

  * See Appendix B for a complete list of Queen Elizabeth’s patronages.

  * This fund, set up in 1941 on the initiative of a Canadian Battle of Britain pilot, Flight Lieutenant Hartland de M. Molson, raised huge sums in Canada, initially for British victims of air raids, under the chairmanship of John G. McConnell. The organizers wanted it to be associated with Queen Elizabeth, and she allowed it to use her name, and also agreed to a later proposal that its work should extend throughout the Empire, and to victims of all kinds of enemy attack. By December 1941 it had raised £145,000; by VE Day $1,655,252 had been collected. It ceased to make appeals after May 1945, and its funds were used to support the WVS and SSAFA. (RA QEQMH/PS/CSP/Queen’s Canadian Fund)

  * Benjamin Britten’s health was failing following a stroke, but that year the Queen commissioned him to compose a short piece as a surprise present for Queen Elizabeth’s seventy-fifth birthday. The result was A Birthday Hansel, a setting for voice and harp of poems by Robert Burns.

  * The term used for regimental colours in the cavalry.

  * See this page

  * Field Marshal Harold Alexander, first Earl Alexander of Tunis KG OM (1891–1969). During the Second World War he served as a commander in Burma, North Africa and Italy, eventually rising to become Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces Headquarters. In 1946 he succeeded Lord Athlone as Governor General of Canada and in 1952 he returned to Britain to become minister of defence in Winston Churchill’s Cabinet before retiring from public life in 1954.

  † The shamrock was grown specially for the regiment in County Cork, and every serving member received a sprig; hitherto it had been provided by the regiment, but Queen Elizabeth decided to pay for it herself. The initial annual cost of about £25 rose to more than £1,700 over the next thirty years.

  * The British South Africa Police (a Rhodesian force) had its origin in the British South Africa Company’s Police which was formed under the powers conferred by the Charter granted to the company in 1889 by Queen Victoria. The services of the BSAP to the Empire were recognized as early as 1904 when a banner in recognition of these services was presented to the force at Mafeking by Lord Milner on behalf of the King.

  * ‘Cake’ was the nickname that the Duchess gave to the Queen Mother after being deeply impressed long before by her enthusiasm at a wedding when the cake was cut.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AT HOME

  ‘One feels so beautifully far away’

  FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH one decade glided into another, with the basic pattern of her days, weeks, months and years being fairly constant. Thus in outward form the action on stage in 1963, for example, would in many ways have been repeated in 1983 or 1993, with the cast of characters much the same, merely older. Her constant pleasures – from P. G. Wodehouse to Sandown Park, from the Black Watch to Middle Temple, from her corgis to the royal yacht Britannia – did not change.

  Each year she spent Christmas with the Royal Family, until 1964 at Sandringham and after that at Windsor until 1988, when the family reverted to spending Christmas at Sandringham. They were always at Sandringham for the New Year and, unless she was unwell, in which case the Queen took her place, Queen Elizabeth never missed her first fixture there in January: the annual general meeting of the Sandringham Women’s Institute. She visited the studs at Sandringham and Wolferton at least twice a week during her stay. Every year on 6 February, the anniversary of the King’s death, she took communion, usually with other members of the family. In later years she would spend this day at Royal Lodge.

  For most of the second half of the winter and early spring she would be based at Clarence House with weekends at Royal Lodge. Easter was always with the family at Windsor and in May she would make her first visit of the year to Scotland, in the early years to the Castle of Mey, where she was constantly improving the house and the garden and where, in 1960, she bought the neighbouring Longoe Farm to pursue her growing interest in breeding Aberdeen Angus cattle and North Country Cheviot sheep. Latterly she went to Birkhall in May and invited friends to stay for the fishing. Then she would return south.

  Summer’s annual events included the Derby, Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade, the Garter Service at Windsor, and Royal Ascot. In July she went back to Norfolk for the King’s Lynn Festival and the Sandringham Flower Show. After her birthday on 4 August, she would go to Mey for a longer holiday, then a weekend with the Queen and other members of the family at Balmoral, after which she would move down the road to her home, Birkhall, until the end of October – with one final week at Mey. Then it was back to London and Royal Lodge until Christmas. Within this fairly well-fixed timetable there were many events that were ringfenced, on both the private and the public sides of her life.

  Regular engagements included, in March, the annual general meeting of Queen Mary’s London Needlework Guild at St James’s Palace – she attended this every year until 2001. A favourite fixture was dinner with the members of the Garden Society, for an evening of horticultural talk. And every year until she ceased to be chancellor in 1980 there were the University of London graduation ceremonies at the Royal Albert Hall. She attended gala performances of ballet or opera in aid of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera Benevolent Funds; the Royal Variety Performance was also a regular engagement until 1988. Then there was the Royal College of Music’s annual prize giving and concert which she attended from 1952 till 1992, when she retired as president and was elected president emerita, and the Middle Temple Family Night dinner every December.

  The First World War remained always in her consciousness. She made sure that in November she planted her personal Cross of Remembrance in the Field of Remembrance at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, attended the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall and watched the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Cenotaph from the Home Office balcony. Often, though not annually, she would attend the Royal Tournament at Earl’s Court, until this ended in 1996. Similarly, in early December she liked to visit the Royal Smithfield Show, of which she was annual president in 1983, 1987 and 1989.

  Most years she carried out around a hundred official engagements – occasionally more.* Many more requests – usually about 200 – had to be refused every year. Most years included at least one official
overseas visit.

  *

  HER GREATEST pleasure throughout was family. She and the Queen talked to each other almost every day on the telephone if not in person. The Buckingham Palace switchboard operator, putting through the call, would say ‘Your Majesty, I have Her Majesty on the line.’ When they were not talking of their shared obsession with horses and racing, family matters dominated their conversations. Queen Elizabeth took a keen interest in her grandchildren, particularly Prince Charles. The bond between them, forged while his parents were on their long Commonwealth tour in 1953–4, grew stronger as the years passed. In 1961, while his parents were in India, Queen Elizabeth visited the twelve-year-old Prince at his preparatory school, Cheam, in Surrey; he was suffering from a bad attack of measles and came home to Royal Lodge to convalesce. He soon recovered, ‘much to his disappointment!’ said his grandmother, and she took him with her to Buckingham Palace for Prince Andrew’s first birthday party. Afterwards, writing to the Queen, she reported that Andrew was ‘looking absolutely angelic … the noise was terrific, & everyone enjoyed themselves very much. The cake was cut, with great difficulty, by Andrew, & the proceedings ended by me escaping at about 5.30.’1

  Later that year, when the Queen was on a visit to Ghana, the Queen Mother took Princess Anne to Cheam to see Prince Charles’s school play, and wrote to tell the Queen about it afterwards. She was not allowed to mingle with the other parents, she said, but was firmly segregated in another room, where she was given ‘boiling sherry’. She described the play as an adaptation of Richard III:* ‘after a few minutes on to the stage shambled a most horrible looking creature, a leering vulgarian, with a dreadful expression on his twisted mouth; & to my horror I began to realise that this was my dear grandson! He was the Duke of Gloucester, & acted his part very well, in fact he made the part quite revolting!’ The headmaster told Queen Elizabeth that he was pleased with the young Prince’s progress. Passing on his comments to the Queen, she added a remark reflecting both her general attitude to the upbringing of children and, perhaps, her anxiety for this particular child. ‘So often, in children, they suddenly develop, and gain confidence, & if they are naturally gentle & considerate, they probably become all the stronger in character.’2

  The family was at this moment discussing where Prince Charles should be educated next. Prince Philip argued for his own school, Gordonstoun, in north-eastern Scotland. He thought it would suit the Prince best and that its remoteness would protect him somewhat from the intrusions of the media. Moreover, though far from London, Gordonstoun was within relatively easy reach of Balmoral and Birkhall. The Queen Mother, however, made a strong case for Eton, where her brothers and many of her friends had been educated. Recognizing that her grandson was sensitive, even vulnerable, she thought Eton would be by far the best place for him.3 Moreover, the school was just across the River Thames from Windsor Castle and many of the sons of his parents’ friends would be there. At Gordonstoun, by contrast, ‘he might as well be at school abroad.’4 It would be ‘an alien world’ in which he would be ‘terribly alone & cut off’.5 Prince Philip’s view prevailed. On family matters the Queen almost always deferred to her husband’s judgement, conscious that although she was queen he was head of the family.

  Queen Elizabeth was tactful, but she was dismayed by Prince Philip’s choice. She was right – Prince Charles was unhappy and felt isolated at Gordonstoun. She did all she could to aid and comfort him at what she called in one letter ‘that glorious salubrious bed of roses known as Gordon’s Town’,6 and he visited her often at Birkhall; after one weekend there, he wrote, ‘All the way back in the car I kept wanting to go back and stay longer at Birkhall.’ He listed all the times in the week at which he was allowed to receive telephone calls.7 She urged members of the family to telephone him to cheer him up – he was ‘a brave little boy’, she said.8 The Prince’s dislike of Gordonstoun did not ease as he grew older.

  She thoroughly approved of his ultimate educational destination, Trinity College, Cambridge, where the former Conservative politician Rab Butler was master.* ‘I am delighted that you are going to Trinity – I am sure that you will enjoy it to the full, & be able to make the most of the opportunity of getting to know that splendid character Lord Butler – I feel sure too, that he is one of the few wise men just now, & full of humour as well as being a statesman.’9 She gave him a painting by Edward Seago for his room in the College.

  Her complement of grandchildren was completed by the birth of the Queen and Prince Philip’s fourth and last child, Prince Edward (1964), and by the two children of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, Lord (David) Linley (1961) and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (1964). The Queen Mother played an important role in the lives of these last two grandchildren – they spent a great deal of time at her homes, particularly in the 1970s – and they too came to love her deeply as they did their aunt, the Queen.

  *

  THERE WERE SADNESSES too. Her 1960s, like each of her decades, were regularly punctuated by the deaths of many people close to her. The first was Arthur Penn, her oldest, most devoted friend and courtier.

  His last months of service to her (she still had not released him completely) were marred when in May 1960 the British press picked up a report in an American newspaper that Queen Elizabeth was about to marry him. She was in Northern Rhodesia when the story broke and her office dismissed it as ‘complete and absolute nonsense’.10 Her Private Secretary, Martin Gilliat, said she took it ‘in very good part’,11 but Penn was mortified by what he called ‘this most embarrassing absurdity’. He felt that having successfully avoided any publicity through twenty-five years of royal service, ‘this reversal has been most odious.’12

  He became ever more frail and at the end of November 1960 he wrote to Queen Elizabeth in a shaky hand that ‘the medicine men’ could not succeed in stabilizing him. He felt he had to be patient and count his ‘very numerous’ blessings. ‘But I wish I could be with Your Majesty & be of some service to you.’13 He died on 31 December that year. Queen Elizabeth was greatly saddened and wrote to his sister, saying that ‘to be able to turn to Arthur for wise counsel in so many different situations, to be able to share the pleasure of beautiful things and to laugh, was something that has meant more to me that I can ever say, both in happy days and sad days. How wonderful to have lived a life such as Arthur lived. Spreading gaiety and kindness around him, and goodness and courage as well.’14

  Penn’s death was followed in February 1961 by that of Queen Elizabeth’s elder sister May Elphinstone, at the age of seventy-seven. Remembered affectionately by her daughter Margaret as ‘permanently in an old tweed coat tied round the waist with a piece of string and gumboots, bent double over something in the garden’,15 she had a strong social conscience and had worked in the slums of Edinburgh, and in the Women’s Voluntary Service during the war.

  Later in 1961 Queen Elizabeth suffered the sudden death of her younger brother David, who still lived at St Paul’s Walden with his wife Rachel and son Simon. Not everyone found David Bowes Lyon easy, but brother and sister were devoted to each other. Suddenly, at Birkhall on 12 September, he had a heart attack and he died the next day. His funeral took place at the Episcopal church at Ballater on 15 September and that evening the Queen Mother, the Queen, Prince Philip and members of the Bowes Lyon family accompanied the coffin on the night train south. David was buried at the familiar little church at St Paul’s Walden.

  The Queen knew what a gap this would leave in her mother’s life and did her best to cherish her in these days – for which Queen Elizabeth wrote to thank her, and to say how devoted David had been to his niece too – ‘he really loved you, & would have done anything for you.’ He was one of the few people upon whom she could rely to tell her the truth and his death was ‘like a light going out in one’s life, we have always been so close, I knew what he was thinking even.’16

  Soon after the funeral, Queen Elizabeth went up to the Castle of Mey. Relaxing there, she said, made her feel calm
er. But she continued to find life bleak without the other ‘Benjamin’. Almost a year after his death she went to stay with his widow Rachel at St Paul’s Walden, and afterwards wrote to say how grateful she was for Rachel’s understanding of her own love of David. She added, ‘He has left something so strong, hasn’t he – perhaps that is really the point of human life and living, to give, & to create new goodness all the time.’17

  This probably represents as good a statement of her view of the purpose of life as any other – to give and to create new goodness all the time. But she knew also how hard that was – on a later occasion she told Rachel how much she admired ‘the way you face life & its obligations – & oh what a battle it is sometimes.’18

  Her last surviving sibling, Rose, Lady Granville, died in November 1967; Queen Elizabeth had visited her twice earlier that year at her home in Scotland. Rose was not only thought to be the great beauty in the family – ‘a lovely person with a slow, gravelly voice’, one of her nieces remembered19 – she was much loved for her kindness.