On the afternoon of 26 February, after a drive through cheering crowds, Queen Elizabeth flew home via New York. On the last leg of the journey, overnight to London, her party let themselves go. ‘Dinner on board the aeroplane was very gay and lasted so long that no one had more than an hour’s sleep.’30 The British High Commissioner in Jamaica reported to the Commonwealth Secretary that Queen Elizabeth impressed everyone with her charm and ‘zestful interest’ and that the visit ‘will have served to strengthen the attachment to the Throne of an already “loyalist” country’.31
*
ANOTHER LOYALIST country, another visit: in June 1965 Queen Elizabeth returned to Canada, this time in honour of the Toronto Scottish, whose fiftieth anniversary was to be celebrated. By now, however, the Canadian government’s expansive attitude towards royal visits – the more the merrier – had given way to an understandable reluctance to foot the bill for visits which were purely for the benefit of local organizations. This led to a testy correspondence between Canadian officials and Martin Gilliat. The Toronto Scottish, together with the Ontario Jockey Club, which had invited her to attend the running of the Queen’s Plate, agreed to pay the costs of the trip. But Queen Elizabeth was worried about her regiment taking on such an expense, and asked Gilliat to approach the British government to pay for her flights to and from Canada. This was agreed; but the Canadian government, which had not been consulted, was affronted, and finally a compromise was reached by which the regiment paid for her journey out on a commercial flight and the Canadian government provided a Royal Canadian Air Force Yukon to fly her home.32
She flew to Toronto on the afternoon of 23 June and stayed with her party at Windfields, the home of Mr and Mrs E. P. Taylor, who shared her enthusiasm for racehorses. The following day after several engagements in the city she was taken to see Taylor’s stud farm and some fifty-five thoroughbred yearlings. In the evening her regimental duties began with the presentation of former officers of the Toronto Scottish and of its precursor, the 75th Battalion. Then there was a dinner given by the Empire Club in honour of the regiment.
Over the next three days Queen Elizabeth presented colours to the regiment at a ceremony attended by some 22,000 people, and went to a service for the laying up of the old colours at the Knox Presbyterian Church. Among other engagements she lunched with Vincent Massey at Batterwood, and watched the Queen’s Plate Stakes at the Woodbine racetrack. When she left, she drove the ten miles to the airport in an open car along a road lined by thousands of cheering people. She arrived back in London on 28 June.
Two weeks later she flew to Germany to visit British regiments and units in the British Army of the Rhine, accompanied by Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. At Celle they watched an impressive parade by the 11th Hussars, in which the Duchess’s son Prince Michael was serving, on their 250th anniversary. Then Queen Elizabeth went to Minden to visit the 1st Battalion The Black Watch; she took the salute and inspected a guard of honour, but the Highland Gathering which had been planned was washed out by a thunderstorm. The last day was devoted to another of her regiments, the 9th/12th Royal Lancers at Osnabrück, where she watched a mounted parade and attended a regimental fête before flying back to London.
*
IN MARCH 1966 she set off for the postponed tour of Australia and New Zealand, flying with Qantas via Ottawa, Vancouver and Fiji. In Adelaide the official and formal engagements included many drives through crowded streets, a civic welcome at the Town Hall, a reception for the media, luncheons and a tour of floral and handicraft exhibits put on by 600 members of the Country Women’s Association. There were more floral creations in the Victoria Parks: the tour de force was a carpet of flowers made in an aboriginal design. She attended a performance of the Australian Ballet, went to a reception for the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, of which she was colonel-in-chief, mingled at a garden party with 6,000 guests, and opened the new Flinders University. She and her lady in waiting, Frances Campbell-Preston, drove there in an open car ‘in a gale, mostly crouched on the floor of the car & clutching their hats & arrived a little battered and blinded to be received by the Chancellor’.33
In her speech, the Queen Mother noted the remarkable development of Adelaide and praised universities as the centre of hope. ‘We live in an age in which higher education has become a matter of national concern,’ she said.34 Dinner at Government House was followed by a concert by the Australian Youth Orchestra. The music was rousing but even that ‘did not quite succeed in keeping all members of the party awake all the time’.35 Next day the Queen Mother made an unscheduled visit to the National Gallery where Sir Hans Heysen, an endearing figure dressed in knickerbockers, showed her around an exhibition of his own paintings.* She made a final speech praising the Festival and its ‘far-sighted’ organizers and then spent a pleasant afternoon at the races.36
On this as on other such trips, Queen Elizabeth was irritated only if there was too much formality or protocol. She was always looking for ways to make officials relax and, if engagements were going well, she stayed on, thus pleasing her interlocutors but upsetting the schedule. She enjoyed slip-ups. Frances Campbell-Preston recorded that ‘Martin assured me that nothing pleased “People” [as he called her to mislead any eavesdroppers] more’ than if the lady in waiting ‘did something wrong or arrived in the wrong place at the wrong time’.37
Across the country in Perth, ‘People’ had another five busy days. These included a visit to an Aquatic Carnival at the Beatty Park Aquatic Centre which was packed with 5,000 children for her visit. As she arrived, the announcer on the public address system declared ‘The Queen Mother is now in the Pool’ – this raised a storm of laughter and cheering which continued unceasing until she left, rather deafened, an hour and a half later. On returning to Government House she found the drive lined with members of the Boys’ and the Girls’ Brigades, and got out of her car to walk down the ranks and talk to as many of the young people as possible. From Perth she went to Fremantle where, among other engagements, she gave a speech to a room full of teenagers. Frances Campbell-Preston recorded that she had ‘rather dreaded’ this occasion, but that it went off very well in the event.38
It was then on to Canberra where she was overjoyed to have a rendezvous with Prince Charles. He had been released from Gordonstoun to be an exchange student for two terms at Timbertop, the rural outpost of Geelong Grammar school in Victoria. Princess Margaret wrote to her mother to say that she was so happy that she and Prince Charles were together ‘for I have never known a grandson more devoted than Charles is to you.’ She said that she and her sister, the Queen, had had glowing accounts of their mother’s ‘usual smash-hit success. “Her Majesty, in powder blue, stepped from the plane, radiant”!’39
The most enjoyable part of the trip for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles was a visit to the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric project in New South Wales. Between visits to dams and power stations, they stayed in the delightful Queen Elizabeth Cottage at Island Bend where the Prince and other members of the party fished. He and his grandmother spent so much time joking together that they reduced the whole party to giggles, which proved hard to control when the Commissioner of the Snowy Mountains Authority and his wife came to dine, give a lecture and show a film. According to Frances Campbell-Preston, ‘suppressed – & not so suppressed – laughing went on to our guests’ bewilderment as they weren’t consciously adding to the fun’.40
The Australia tour ended on 7 April after a return visit to Canberra and a dinner party attended by the Prime Minister and Mrs Harold Holt. (Holt later disappeared off a beach in Victoria – his body was never found.) Prince Charles returned happily for his last few weeks at Timbertop and the Queen Mother and party flew to Fiji, where Britannia was waiting to take her on the next part of her tour.
Embarking on the yacht was ‘rather a splendid moment, a little like arriving home’, wrote Frances Campbell-Preston, doubtless echoing the Queen Mother’s own views.41 On Easter Saturday the ship docked
in Suva for the formal welcome from a Fijian chief. The short formal visit to Suva was somewhat spoiled by rain, but Queen Elizabeth held a reception and a dinner aboard the yacht before sailing for New Zealand. She landed at Bluff on 16 April in pouring rain, and was greeted by the Governor General, Sir Bernard Fergusson, his wife Laura – Frances Campbell-Preston’s sister – and the Prime Minister and his wife.
Her punishing schedule over the coming weeks was made possible by Britannia, both an agreeable means of transport and a refuge after long days of exposure to the crowds and the elements. When there were evenings in the yacht with no engagements, Queen Elizabeth encouraged everyone to let their hair down. Laura Fergusson had heard that after-dinner games were obligatory and was daunted, but they turned out to be both silly and easy, ‘and she is such enormous fun playing them. It’s gloriously childish and very restful as a result.’42
In town after town across New Zealand, the Queen Mother was greeted by huge crowds, of all ages, cheering her along streets from one civic reception to another. In Wellington on 25 April she marked Anzac Day at the National War Memorial in Wellington – she always found such moments of remembrance for the war dead intensely moving. The engagements continued. On 1 May, after Sunday service in St John’s Anglican Church at Te Awamutu, she flew to Auckland where, despite torrential rain, the crowds packing the streets and the wharf by Britannia were so dense that it took an hour for her car to reach the yacht. Next day there was a civic reception and a performance by children dancing and doing gymnastics in Eden Park.
On one quiet day off, there was enough sunshine to go fishing on Lake Wanaka. Queen Elizabeth was not greatly amused by having to pose, in waders, tweed jacket, a green felt hat and pearls, casting with an unfamiliar rod, for a horde of photographers. They ‘looked as though they were going to swallow her’, according to Laura Fergusson, but the deal was that they would then leave her alone, and they did.43
Near the end of her trip, she received a contingent of London Scottish Old Comrades, was greeted by ‘26,000 children yelling their heads off quite uninhibitedly’,44 made a quick private visit to a stud and attended a reception at Government House. On her last day, she opened a new Science Building at the University of Auckland and received an honorary degree. She went to the races at Ellerslie, and gave a dinner in Britannia followed by a reception on board for 300 people, as rain leaked through the awning.
Next morning there was long ‘farewelling’ (a term they had picked up in Australia), to the officers and crew of the yacht before Queen Elizabeth left for the airport. Admiral Morgan had organized the Royal Marine Band to play ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again?’ while the entire ship’s company stood and saluted on the top deck. ‘There was hardly a dry eye,’ wrote Frances Campbell-Preston.45 Once again the roads to the airport were lined with thousands of people.
Queen Elizabeth’s enjoyment is evident from the letter recalling the best moments that she wrote to thank the Fergussons. There were some things that really mattered to her in the fast-changing world of the 1960s. ‘The love & loyalty of the NZ people is something I shall always treasure – long may it be part of their philosophy of life.’46
The flight home was long; the aircraft landed to refuel in both Honululu (where she joined in a dance by hula girls in her honour) and Vancouver (where, during her one-day stopover, she visited City Hall and attended a formal lunch). She arrived back in England to find, to her joy, that spring was there – ‘the cherries are bowed down with blossom, & the birches & chestnuts a most tender green.’47
Politics was another matter. Towards the end of her trip she had written to her son-in-law Lord Snowdon, saying that she loved New Zealand’s great mountains and lakes and rivers’ but was rather longing to get home ‘and hear those yelling dogs, and play with the grandchildren and burn with rage at politics!’48 She disliked the Labour government’s mishandling – as she saw it – of taxation. Harold Wilson’s administration was into its second year of reforms and was now planning a selective employment tax which she feared would ‘hit many excellent institutions very hard’.49 And she hated what she saw as the government’s ‘mismanagement of the Rhodesia question’.50 In November 1965 the white Rhodesian government had made its unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) rather than move swiftly towards black majority rule, as demanded by the British government.
*
ON HER RETURN she resumed her round of public engagements. She presided at the presentation of degrees of the University of London at the Albert Hall; she went to Cardiff for the service of dedication of the Welsh National Book of Remembrance in Llandaff Cathedral and the opening of an extension to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport. In Sheffield she received an honorary doctorate of music and visited her regiment, the Queen’s Own Hussars, at Catterick Camp. In Northern Ireland in early July she visited another of her regiments, 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards, at Omagh. Such visits had their own protocol and form – there was a regimental dismounted parade, during which the Queen Mother addressed the regiment; an inspection of the Old Comrades; photographs with the warrant officers and sergeants and with the officers; luncheon in the officers’ mess; and finally informal meetings and chats with the NCOs and troopers and their wives.
At the end of July, as usual, she attended the King’s Lynn Festival, which included a thrilling performance of Benjamin Britten’s The Burning Fiery Furnace given by the English National Opera at St Margaret’s Church, with Peter Pears singing Nebuchadnezzar. Afterwards Pears and Britten stayed with her at Sandringham. She celebrated her sixty-sixth birthday in London and went with her daughters to the theatre to see The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Next day she flew up to Wick for her summer visit to the Castle of Mey and Birkhall.
In September 1966 she launched HMS Resolution, the first of Britain’s Polaris-class nuclear submarines, now to be the front line of the country’s independent nuclear deterrent, and a few days later flew by helicopter to land on the deck of one of her favourite ships, HMS Ark Royal, which she had launched in 1950. She enjoyed her day watching various types of aircraft landing and being catapulted off the deck, the firing of live ordnance, air-sea rescue and mid-air refuelling. On her departure her helicopter circled the carrier and, the lady in waiting recorded, ‘Queen Elizabeth waved her scarf through the open door. A Russian trawler snooped about all day & had to be warned off because of the firing. It was a very special day.’51
After a busy autumn, filled with engagements, on 6 December she gave a lunch party at Clarence House and attended a reception given by the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service* at St James’s Palace. After dinner that evening she checked quietly into the King Edward VII Hospital.
Queen Elizabeth had been diagnosed with cancer of the colon. The tumour was successfully excised in an operation on 10 December.52† Members of her family visited her and from Gordonstoun Prince Charles wrote, ‘I hope they re looking after you well. Mummy said that you had difficulty getting around two gi-normous policemen wedged into the corridor outside your room.’53 She was still in hospital over Christmas and so, on Christmas Day, the Queen, with Princess Margaret, Prince Charles and Princess Anne drove down from Sandringham to see her. She left hospital on 28 December and convalesced at Clarence House until she felt well enough to travel to Sandringham in the middle of January. She had no recurrence of the disease.
Rumours subsequently spread that she had had a colostomy. This was not true. Her office was careful to say very little on the subject, but some years later Sir Richard Bayliss, physician to the Queen, wrote to Queen Elizabeth’s lady in waiting, Olivia Mulholland: ‘I understand that there have been a number of letters about the colostomy operation which Queen Elizabeth is alleged to have had. We of course know that this is incorrect and I think it is time that as unobtrusively as possible this lie is countered.’54 But the rumours that the operation had included a colostomy persisted. Many people who had to endure that operation themselves derived comfort from the belief that even someone with as ac
tive a life as Queen Elizabeth could manage so well after such a difficult procedure.
It is perhaps worth pointing out that, even though the operation did not include a colostomy, the cancer from which she had suffered was serious. The illness crystallized concerns within her family and Household about the pace at which she was still performing her duties as she approached her seventieth birthday.
In most respects her health remained remarkably good. She no longer suffered from the frequent bouts of tonsillitis that she had endured as a young woman. She still believed in the power of homeopathy. Sir John Weir had been succeeded by Dr Marjorie Blackie as her homeopathic doctor, and, after Dr Blackie died, Dr Anita Davies, who was a conventional as well as a homeopathic doctor, took over. Dr Davies would create an individual mix of constitutional powders’ for each patient. She also treated Queen Elizabeth for the painful ulcers which developed on her legs with propolis, a resinous mixture produced by bees which is thought to reduce inflammation naturally. She prescribed hawthorn for blood pressure and belladonna for sore throats. Queen Elizabeth also continued to swear by the healing power of arnica – in both tablet and ointment form. She handed it to any of her guests who bruised themselves.
Following her operation, she cancelled nine engagements during the first three months of 1967. Altogether that year her public engagements were down to fifty-two, which included eight for the University of London. She spent January as usual at Sandringham where, she said, the Norfolk air made her feel much better, then February and March at Clarence House and Royal Lodge, with frequent expeditions to race meetings. Her first public engagement was the annual meeting of Queen Mary’s London Needlework Guild at St James’s Palace on 21 March, and on 27 April she dined with the London Scottish Regiment.
The Queen Mother Page 106