The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  The Queen’s Private Secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, came before the Committee and explained in detail the work that the Queen undertook and why there was a need for an increase in the Queen’s public income, the Civil List, to £980,000. The Queen’s work, he said, was endless and unending – no retirement for her.15 The costs of the royal yacht Britannia, the royal train and other perquisites were examined closely. There was much speculation on the size of the Queen’s personal fortune. Huge and inflated sums were put around and newspaper editorials criticized the fact that she paid no tax. As for the Queen Mother, the Committee complained that no explanation had been given for the increase in her Civil List allowance – £95,000 was now requested, instead of the £77,000 set in 1952. The Lord Chamberlain, Lord Cobbold, said that it was his personal view’ that it should be considered ‘as something of the nature of payment for services rendered over years of peace and war’. The Committee, arguing that her duties were likely to contract as the years went by, recommended that her annuity be reduced and that she be paid no more than a retired Prime Minister.

  When the Committee’s recommendations came up for debate in the House of Commons in December 1971 there was fierce criticism, particularly of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, from the Labour benches. William Hamilton denounced the monarchy’s supporters on the Committee as diligent sycophants’. Why did the Queen Mother need £95,000 a year? He listed by name all her Household with their titles. ‘That is a total household of 33,’ he said. ‘I ask the House: what the blazes do they do? What do the Ladies of the Bedchamber do that the Women of the Bedchamber do not do? Why all the extras? … What size of bed chamber is this?’ He did not mention that the ladies in waiting received only a dress allowance but no pay, or that the extras were all retired and unpaid. Instead he declared that it was ‘obscene’ that the Queen Mother was getting such monies while old folk in his constituency were dying from cold and starvation. He was even more insulting about Princess Margaret, ‘an expensive kept woman’ who did ‘even less than her old Mum’.16 In fact Queen Elizabeth had in that year undertaken eighty-six official engagements and seven for the University of London; 187 further invitations had had to be turned down.

  The criticisms were disagreeable and Lord Snowdon telephoned and wrote to his mother-in-law to sympathize. She thanked him, saying she was ‘deeply, deeply touched’ by his words, ‘for of course one can’t help minding such venomous observations, especially coming from our revered House of Commons!’17

  In the end, the Conservative-dominated House ignored the recommendations of the Committee, passed a generous settlement and fixed the Civil List for the next ten years so as to avoid such a debilitating debate every year. Anthony Barber managed to secure victory on one of Buckingham Palace’s greatest concerns – that the Queen should not be forced to divulge the details of her personal wealth and that she be allowed to retain the monarch’s traditional immunity from paying tax. Nonetheless, a precedent had been created – from now on the Civil List would be scrutinized by newly appointed Royal Trustees who included the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and who would recommend whether or not any increases should be entertained in future. In other words, the monarchy would have to justify the expenses it incurred.

  They changed the guard at Buckingham Palace in spring 1972. Having achieved the new settlement, Michael Adeane retired after nineteen years as the Queen’s Private Secretary. He was replaced by Martin Charteris, formerly Private Secretary to Princess Elizabeth and then Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen. Charteris’s succession heralded a change of mood, even of atmosphere. He was probably the liveliest and most amusing Private Secretary the Queen had had. A clubbable and kind man, he was less cautious than his predecessors. He was an incurable romantic and used to say that he had fallen in love with Princess Elizabeth when he came for his first interview in 1950 and had loved her ever since. He had a feel for the monarchy and its place in British society. Its purpose, he said, was to spread a carpet of happiness. It should never be ahead of the times but would be in trouble if it fell far behind.18 Queen Elizabeth might not always agree on the need for change. But when such arguments were expressed with Charteris’s charm and bonhomie, they were hard to resist. He added joy to both Buckingham Palace and Clarence House.

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  IN FEBRUARY 1972, the Queen made an official tour of countries in South-east Asia and in her absence Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret acted as Counsellors of State. Political events were taxing.

  The National Union of Mineworkers had called the first national coal strike since 1926 and employed flying pickets to close a major coal depot. It was a cold winter and the strike caused significant disruption and power cuts across the country. On 9 February Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were required to approve the declaration of a state of emergency. Queen Elizabeth’s private sympathy for the miners – who counted among the ‘real people’ she enjoyed and admired19 – was widely shared and the government was unable to muster support for a hard line. It capitulated. Miners’ wages rose in 1972 by 16 per cent, twice the rate of inflation. There was growing strife in Ireland too. On 24 March Queen Elizabeth had to sign papers in connection with the announcement of direct rule in Ulster.

  On a more cheerful note, she undertook four investitures, a duty she always found a pleasure. After she had knighted the playwright Terence Rattigan in November 1971, he wrote to congratulate her on the way she conducted such ceremonies, remarking that, for almost everyone receiving honours, ‘those few proud but nerve-wracking seconds of confrontation represent the high pinnacle of their lives.’ It was apparent to him how conscious she was of this.20 She was indeed. At a later investiture she met a young sailor who had displayed great bravery after an accident in his nuclear submarine. He had – she wrote to the Queen – ‘crept through scalding steam in darkness to see what was wrong’. She said to him, ‘That must have been a terrible experience,’ to which he replied, ‘Not half as terrible as this.’ She liked that answer and noted that he was indeed ‘white with apprehension & fear!’21

  At Royal Lodge in the spring of 1972 she entertained members of the Eton Beagles to a lawn meet for the first time. This became a cherished annual event and took place every year except two until her death. She loved the gathering of the hounds and the boys, whose school she continued to think was the best in the world. The meet, a win at Sandown Park by one of her favourite horses, Game Spirit, and her constitutional duties helped take her mind off a death she minded very much – that of the Marquess of Salisbury. Since the 1930s she and the King had counted Bobbety and Betty Salisbury among their closest friends.

  Another death in 1972 broke a less happy link with the past. The health of the Duke of Windsor, still living in Paris, had been deteriorating for some time. Prince Charles, under the influence of his ‘honorary grandfather’, Lord Mountbatten, had taken a sympathetic interest in the plight of his great-uncle. He believed that reconciliation was to be desired. There had been a few contacts since the mid-1960s. In 1965 the Duke had been admitted to the London Clinic for an eye operation and the Queen visited him there. She then invited the Duke and Duchess to the unveiling of a plaque in memory of Queen Mary at Marlborough House in 1967. Queen Elizabeth was there too; this was her first meeting with the Duchess since before the abdication. There is no record of any conversation they may have had. Queen Elizabeth and the Duke met again – for the last time – at the funeral of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, in 1968.

  Prince Charles thought that such brief encounters were not enough and in 1970, according to his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, he suggested that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor should be invited for a weekend. He was curious about the Duchess, and thought ‘it would be fun to see what she was like … It is worthwhile getting to know the better side of her.’22

  The Prince raised the idea with his grandmother but, in Dimbleby’s words, ‘it was immediately apparent to him how difficult she would find it to be reconciled with th
e man whom she held responsible for consigning her husband to an early grave.’23 On the other hand, Robert Fellowes, later the Queen’s Private Secretary, subsequently commented, ‘Queen Elizabeth would not have minded the Prince of Wales being kind to the Duke of Windsor. She was herself very kind to the Duchess. On the rare occasions when I talked to her about the Duchess she showed no animosity at all, but rather sympathy for the Duchess’s plight.’24

  But there would be no visit. In May 1972, the Queen called on her uncle while she was on a state visit to France. Ten days later, he died. The Queen sent a sympathetic telegram to the Duchess and expressed pleasure that she had been able to see him before his death.25

  The Duke had stated his wish to be buried at Frogmore and the Duchess came to stay at Buckingham Palace for the funeral. The Queen and Prince Charles dined with her; the Queen Mother, who was suffering a mild attack of shingles, did not. Queen Elizabeth’s feelings at this time can only be guessed at; she herself left little trace of them in writing. Her well-informed and sympathetic biographer Elizabeth Longford wrote that the funeral was a ‘considerable ordeal’ for her. ‘The Queen Mother was gentle with [the Duchess], as became a Queen, taking the sadly bemused woman by the arm.’26 Longford also speculated that Queen Elizabeth would have been less than human if she had not reflected that her own married life had been somewhat shorter than the thirty-five years that the Duchess had shared with the Duke. But as one of her ladies in waiting remarked, ‘she was perfectly all right about meeting the Duchess.’27 Once, she had found this impossible. Without the Duchess, however, she would never have been queen, a role of which she had made a great success and which she had enjoyed. Moreover, although the burdens of kingship took a heavy toll upon George VI, it was lung cancer that killed him, and a frequent cause of lung cancer is smoking.

  Queen Elizabeth felt subdued at this time; in one of the few letters which give a hint of her feelings, she told Betty Salisbury that she had been cheered by her example of ‘great spirit and courage’ for she had been feeling ‘rather depressed, what with one thing and another’. The death of the Duke, and all the memories it aroused, may have been more difficult for her than she had anticipated.28 In 1976, when Queen Elizabeth was on an official visit to Paris, the possibility of her calling on the Duchess of Windsor was discussed, but the Duchess was too ill to receive her. Instead Queen Elizabeth sent a large bouquet of roses with a signed card of good wishes.29

  The Duchess lingered, her health deteriorating; she died on 24 April 1986, aged eighty-nine. Her body was flown to England and after a service in St George’s Chapel attended by members of the Royal Family including Queen Elizabeth, she was buried next to her husband at Frogmore.

  Public opinion was divided about Queen Elizabeth’s responsibility for the estrangement with the Windsors. After the Duchess’s death, letters between the Duke and Duchess were published in the Daily Mail.* Some of them contained vituperative comments about Queen Elizabeth and other members of the family. She received letters of support and sympathy which she appreciated, while others were less kind and continued to blame her.30 Her own words, reflecting on the abdication in her nineties, bear repetition here. Of the Duke she said, ‘He must have been bemused with love, I suppose … You couldn’t reason with him. Nobody could.’ She added, ‘The only good thing is I think he was quite happy with her.’31

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  IN 1973 PRINCESS ANNE had become the first of Queen Elizabeth’s grandchildren to marry. She chose Captain Mark Phillips, a good-looking army officer who shared her love of horses and showjumping. They had a son, Peter, born in 1977, and a daughter, Zara, in 1981, both of whom inherited their parents sporting prowess.

  But the wedding was followed by less joyful news. Princess Margaret – the target of intolerant attitudes towards divorce in the 1950s, and probably the member of the Royal Family subjected to the most criticism by the Select Committee on the Civil List – became the first in the Queen Mother’s immediate family to divorce. Her marriage to Lord Snowdon had begun with great happiness, enhanced by their two children, David and Sarah. The Princess, who had artistic instincts that went beyond her passionate support of ballet, had enjoyed the art-loving, sophisticated world and the easy-going life to which Snowdon had introduced her. He had resumed his career as a photographer, principally with the Sunday Times, with great success, but he had been attacked in the press for attempting to combine his professional activities with his position in the Royal Family. He did find these increasingly hard to reconcile. Nor was he by nature monogamous. By the 1970s the strains between the couple had become considerable. Their unhappiness was well known within the family and among their friends.

  As the rift between them grew, Princess Margaret seems to have rejected the manners of the society in which her husband was at home and retreated into the certainty and order of the world in which she had grown up. The biographer Kenneth Rose recorded that Chips Channon had observed when she was only eighteen that she had ‘a Marie Antoinette aroma about her’.32 Even her closest friends could not predict when her mood might change from gaiety to hauteur. Although she loved her mother, she was not always kind to her – indeed she could be rude. On one occasion Lady Penn (who was married to Arthur Penn’s nephew Eric) said to Queen Elizabeth, ‘I can’t bear to see the way Princess Margaret treats you.’ To which Queen Elizabeth replied, ‘Oh you mustn’t worry about that. I’m quite used to it.’33

  On the other hand, Princess Margaret’s son David Linley later recalled that ‘she was a fantastic mother to me and Sarah. She was unusual, with strong senses of religion, fun and family.’34 She still wrote the same sort of poems and doggerel that had so entertained guests at Balmoral in the early post-war years. She wrote prayers too. Queen Elizabeth and Snowdon had always had an excellent relationship – she loved his sense of humour as well as admiring his talent as a photographer. Linley recalled that she was adept in trying to defuse arguments between his parents.35

  The Snowdons came to live increasingly separate lives in their apartment at Kensington Palace. In 1973 friends introduced the Princess to a young man named Roddy Llewellyn with whom she embarked on a relationship. Snowdon moved out and in March 1976 an official announcement of their separation was issued. Divorce followed.

  Queen Elizabeth and the Queen were particularly upset by what had happened. Each of them remained close to Lord Snowdon as well as to Princess Margaret in the years that followed. The couple’s children spent a great deal of time with Queen Elizabeth, at Royal Lodge and Birkhall in the school holidays and on many other family occasions, such as Christmas in Norfolk. She loved them both and she worried that they felt the break-up of their parents’ marriage very deeply.36 Over the years ahead she enthusiastically supported David in his later career as a furniture maker, and Sarah as an artist.

  Linley recalled, ‘She was always there for us. She was always such fun. Lunches at Royal Lodge were hilarious. The laughter of my grandmother, my mother and my sister was utterly contagious. She came to every school I went to. She and my mother bought me my first plane and a saw when I was at school. She commissioned me to make a cigar box and then an easel. She had great ideas – including “wasp scissors” – these had paddles instead of blades to catch wasps. Later she became the first shareholder in my furniture company.’37

  Family and family occasions became ever more important to Queen Elizabeth with the years. After her stays at Sandringham, Windsor or Balmoral, she always sent grateful letters to the Queen. ‘I have always been a “family” person,’ she wrote on one occasion, ‘and the chance of being together & occasionally discussing family matters in an unhurried atmosphere, is very helpful.’38 At Sandringham, there were all the familiar outings that she loved: lunch parties with neighbours like Anthony Gurney, going out with the guns, watching their horses jump at Eldred Wilson’s farm, ‘delightful horse chat over the cup of coffee afterwards, visiting the stud grooms, sympathising over Bradley’s knees, Sunday lunch with George Dawnay, oh! it�
�s endless pleasure! … it is the highlight of one’s year.’39*

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  BRITAIN’S PROBLEMS worsened in the late 1970s. Inflation and unemployment rose; the unions seemed to be beyond political control. In February 1974 Edward Heath narrowly lost power after an election fought largely on the question of ‘Who runs Britain?’ Harold Wilson returned to office and, after another election in October that year, strengthened Labour’s position in the Commons. But his government was unable to deal with the country’s structural problems and in March 1976 he suddenly resigned and was succeeded by James Callaghan. Later that year the government had to apply to the International Monetary Fund for a loan – it was granted only on the condition that large cuts in government expenditure be imposed. There was an abiding sense of failure in both Parliament and the country.

  Queen Elizabeth did what she could to ‘keep the old flag flying’. In October 1976 she went to Paris to open the new British Cultural Centre. After a crowded three days which both she and the French enjoyed, the British Ambassador, Sir Nicholas Henderson, wrote, ‘She came to Paris at a time when Britain’s fortunes seemed in French eyes to be at a particularly low ebb: the pound was falling heavily and there was widespread pessimism about the country’s capacity to pull through. Her Majesty, by the way she went about her work, managed to embody those qualities of resilience and good humour in adversity that the French associate with us.’40