The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  The Princess gave the Queen a spirited description of the soldiers and the civilians marching gamely on behind.

  Outstanding amongst the nurses, Guides, Distressed Gentlefolk, Vacani school of dancing, NSPCC etc were all the mayors & maces of the Cinque Ports, Middle Temple judges in their wigs, the Nat Trust (houses, gardens, the Coast) all dressed up & dancing past, followed by two huge bulls in trailers, one Highland, the other Aberdeen Angus looking incredibly stately, the Argonaut & Special Cargo, ridden, and Desert Orchid [racehorses] being led, dear old Sefton, the survivor of the horrible bomb in the Park,* Shetlands, many dogs trotting along very well and – wait for it, could it be – yes it is – it’s the Poultry Club! And 4 little hens were trundled past in cages!

  Then there was ‘a glorious noise’ from the massed bands, a march-past by the King’s Troop, and a fly-past by a Lancaster, a Hurricane, a Spitfire and the Red Arrows; all in all ‘it was stupendous and I wish you had been there.’38

  After the parade, when she arrived home at Clarence House Queen Elizabeth was pleased to see her racing manager Michael Oswald holding up a sign to tell her that the Queen’s horse Starlet had won a race by eight lengths. So the day ended especially well. Later she said that one of its joys had been to see the Sandringham Women’s Institute marching by. ‘The sight of Mrs Beamis, Mrs Emmerson, Mrs Candy, Mrs Hall, Mrs Rispin and Mrs Whittaker stepping out bravely to the rousing tune of Blaydon Races was a great sight.’39

  The celebrations continued. Queen Elizabeth gave audiences and received gifts and loyal birthday addresses from both Houses of Parliament at Clarence House. She embarked in the royal yacht at Portsmouth on 30 July and reviewed at least a thousand small yachts and boats which came out to greet her in the Solent. On 1 August Britannia sailed up the Thames, through Tower Bridge and into the Pool of London. That afternoon, Queen Elizabeth drove around parts of the East End. She was touched that she was still greeted with intense affection half a century after she and the King had comforted people under German attack there. After a reception, a family dinner on board and fireworks, she slept in Britannia, returning to Clarence House the next day. That night Prince Charles gave a concert in her honour at Buckingham Palace.

  The day before her ninetieth birthday, 3 August, was the hottest day recorded since 1911; Queen Elizabeth said she remembered clearly the heat of that distant summer.40 On her birthday itself, she spent an hour in the sun collecting flowers from well-wishers. Lunch with her family was followed by a ballet gala at Covent Garden and then dinner with Ruth Fermoy at her flat – a long day. Then she flew to Mey where she settled down to the pleasure of reading Ted Hughes’s poetic tribute.

  The 1990s were to be much harder.

  *

  AT THE END of 1991, as the Queen approached the fortieth anniversary of her accession to the throne, she used her Christmas broadcast to reflect upon the momentous changes that had taken place during her reign, and particularly upon the recent fall of communism in eastern Europe where the people had ‘broken the mould of autocracy’.

  The fall of communism had an impact within Britain too. For decade after decade established politicians and pedagogues had expressed far greater enthusiasm for the work of centralized state powers than for that of voluntary associations. By the early 1990s the patronages of the Royal Family – including Queen Elizabeth and those younger members whose marital difficulties the press remorselessly chronicled – amounted to almost 3,500 organizations.

  In her Christmas broadcast, the Queen said that she was ‘constantly amazed by the generosity of donors and subscribers, great and small, who give so willingly and often towards the enjoyment of others. Without them … voluntary organizations would not exist.’ She believed that voluntary service was the bedrock of Britain’s democratic way of life and she pledged to continue the royal tradition of public service she had inherited and her own personal commitment to the nation.

  The Queen’s steady determination was reinforced by that of her mother. Indeed, throughout her nineties, despite increasing frailty, Queen Elizabeth continued to work for the organizations to which she had pledged herself. At a time of life when most people do almost nothing she willed herself to carry on. Physically this became more and more of a struggle, but she knew and would consider no other way.

  That March she undertook her usual, pleasant responsibility to the Irish Guards and flew to Berlin to present them with shamrock on St Patrick’s Day. In May she undertook another task that was close to her heart, flying for the day to Valençay in central France to unveil a memorial to the F (France) Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).* She had always admired the courage of the secret agents of SOE charged by Churchill in 1940 to ‘set Europe ablaze’ behind enemy lines. The men and women of SOE were sometimes known as Churchill’s Secret Army and she had become patron of their discreet association, the Special Forces Club, in London. On this occasion, the fiftieth anniversary of the first SOE agent being dropped into France in May 1941, Queen Elizabeth took her piper, Pipe Major King, with her and he played ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ at the memorial ceremony. During the rest of 1991 she carried out seventy-five other public engagements at home during the year, while attending as many race meetings as ever, entertaining and being entertained by her friends, and taking her usual holidays in Scotland.

  On 30 October she lunched, with her daughters, at Ascot racecourse, to celebrate her 400th winner under National Hunt Rules, Nearco Bay. Several hundred people attended this happy occasion, including all the jockeys who had ridden for her. Several of her favourite horses were paraded. On 25 November she flew by helicopter to Portsmouth to visit the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. As with the previous Ark Royal, which she had launched in 1950, she felt a great attachment to this ship. Indeed she looked upon both Ark Royal and HMS Resolution, the first Polaris submarine, which she had launched in 1966, very much as she did on her regiments – as an extension of family for which she was responsible. She often visited both ships over the years, particularly when they were in dock for recommissioning; she had also visited Ark Royal three times at sea, landing on deck by helicopter. Their captains kept in touch with her.

  After the customary family holiday at Sandringham over Christmas and the New Year of 1992, which she described to the Queen as ‘better than ten bottles of tonic or twenty bottles of Arnica’,41 she acted as Counsellor of State during the Queen’s absence in Australia. In March 1992, she attended the service and final parade of the Women’s Royal Army Corps in Guildford: the WRAC was to be incorporated into the army. As so often when her regiments were disbanded, she was not only sad but felt strongly that it was a wrong decision that would be regretted in the future.42

  At the end of April she spent two days in Scotland for public engagements; she then flew for a weekend to Spain to stay privately with the Duke and Duchess of Wellington, and then before the last of her private European visits, to Umbria, she went back to Birkhall for her annual two weeks’ fishing with friends.

  Ted Hughes was again among the guests and at a picnic below Lochnagar, as they listened to the wind in the trees, they had a conversation typical of their friendship. She asked him if he thought that trees could communicate with each other. The exchange kept coming back to him and he wrote a poem about the picnic. Sending it to her, he told her that he thought the verses were ‘rough and playful’, but there was also a mystical quality to them.43 He wrote of her question:

  And what were the great pines whispering?

  We would have liked to know.

  With rooty thoughts and needle tongues

  They murmured: ‘There they go

  Looking for mountain sunshine just

  In time to meet the snow!

  Toasting Queen Victoria

  For blazing the trail to Lochnagar.’44

  She was at Royal Lodge when she received the poem, and wrote to tell Hughes that it transported her ‘at once to my beloved hills, and to the “steep frowning glories of dark Lochnaga
r” (Lord Byron!!), and to the birds and the deer and the elusive salmon and the dear creaking pines. It is such a wonderful and loving poem, and I send you my most hearty thanks for giving us something so special.’45

  She had a summer full of engagements. At the end of May 1992 she unveiled a statue of one of her heroes, Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, the wartime leader of Bomber Command, outside the RAF Church, St Clement Dane’s, in the Strand. (In 1988 she had unveiled a statue of Lord Dowding of Fighter Command near by.) Charged with destroying German industry, Bomber Command had a higher casualty rate than any other unit in the British armed forces. Queen Elizabeth knew well that, despite the appalling odds, its young airmen had flown into danger night after night, month after month. The missions included the saturation bombing of Dresden, where 35,000 people died in British attacks in February 1945. Dresden was an important military communications centre through which German troops passed to the Eastern Front, but after the war was won Harris had been the subject of fierce criticism because of such attacks. Some post-war historians even called British bombing policies war crimes’.

  Queen Elizabeth had no time for such views. She knew that Britain now had a completely new relationship with the democratic state of Germany, but her heart was still with the heroes of the war against Nazi Germany.* She believed that Bomber Command, and Harris in particular, had been treated badly since the war. Far from seeing them as criminals, she thought that the young bomber pilots, whose airfields she and the King had often visited, were the bravest of the brave.† In April 1983 she had opened the Bomber Command Museum at Hendon, where Harris had come to welcome her. It was, according to the lady in waiting’s diary, ‘A very moving occasion, so full of memories for all concerned’.46

  Now, eight years after Sir Arthur’s death, as she unveiled his memorial, demonstrators tried to interrupt Queen Elizabeth’s speech. She seemed surprised, but after a moment’s pause she continued. (Subsequently the statue had to be protected by police because it was frequently defaced with red paint.) That day she entertained some of the RAF officers present to lunch at Clarence House and one of them, Air Marshal Sir John Grandy, wrote to her to say, ‘We were all worried but your great calm and disarming smile, courage and brave example against that ridiculous attempt to upset you was superb.’47

  *

  FAR MORE upsetting than transient demonstrations was the turmoil afflicting her own family. It was the misfortune of the Royal Family that the globalization of the media was now making the so-called cult of celebrity into an ever more valuable commodity. Newspapers, fearful of losing market share to television and other media, became more invasive. Tabloid editors juggled the lives of real people with those of fictional characters from television soap operas for space on front pages. Actors and actresses were deliberately confused with their screen personalities. The borderlines between fact and fantasy became ever more blurred.

  Exaggerations, inventions, lies about different members of the Royal Family became commonplace. The editor of the Sun, Kelvin Mackenzie, was reported to have instructed his staff, ‘Give me a Monday splash on the royals. Don’t worry if it’s not true – so long as there’s not too much fuss about it afterwards.’48 Donald Trelford, editor of the Observer, a more sober paper, wrote, ‘The royal soap opera has now reached such a pitch of public interest that the boundary between fact and fiction has been lost sight of … it is not just that some papers don’t check their facts or accept denials: they don’t care if the stories are true or not.’49 No other European royal family was being subjected to such ruthless and sententious assault.

  The revelation of problems and peccadilloes in the family was highly profitable. But there was a more important cause of tension. Though many journalists sought to deny or belittle the idea, a large majority of the population still believed that one of the Royal Family’s functions was, in the words of the writer Rebecca West, to hold up to the public ‘a presentation of ourselves doing well’.50 When some of them did badly, we did not like what we saw of ourselves. And all too often we found it difficult to remember that the mirror of the media distorted as much as it revealed.

  The marriages and divorces of younger members of the Royal Family have since been written about endlessly and often cruelly. These crises obviously touched Queen Elizabeth profoundly; she worried constantly about her grandchildren. But she rarely committed her views to paper. Such caution was characteristic: since joining the Royal Family in 1923 she had always made it a rule not to talk about members of the family with anyone outside it, not even with her own Bowes Lyon relations. Still less did she write to anyone about family matters. Given the ever increasing danger of leaks, her discretion was well placed.

  What one can venture to say is that Queen Elizabeth, like other members of the Royal Family, had welcomed Lady Diana Spencer’s entry into the family. In her public life, the Princess of Wales gradually showed that she could use her natural warmth and spontaneity to good effect. After a tour of Australia in early 1983 in which she had been the centre of obsessive media attention, Queen Elizabeth wrote to congratulate her. The Princess replied that she was ‘enormously touched by your letter – the thought gave me a lot of happiness. Charles is the one who deserves all the credit by showing me what to do & how to do it, always patient & ready to explain. The whole Tour seems to have helped me a great deal on how to cope with my public duties, so all in all, a good experience!’51

  Her success as a new member of the Royal Family was similar to that of the young Duchess of York in 1923. But, unlike the Duchess of York, personal contentment eluded her, as it did her husband. The births of their two much loved sons, Prince William in 1982 and Prince Harry in 1984, gave joy to them as well as to everyone else in the family. But hopes that motherhood would bring the Princess fulfilment proved illusory. Within the family, enthusiasm and hopes for the marriage gave way to anxiety and concern. The Prince’s response was to retreat into his grandmother’s concept of duty. He had always been diligent; now his work became ever more important to him. The Princess was younger and her unhappiness was more volatile. She began to move along a separate trajectory in both her personal life and her official duties, which she continued to carry out with aplomb. By 1986 the marriage had all but broken down.

  The Waleses were not alone in their problems. Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, had become the first of Queen Elizabeth’s grandchildren to separate from her husband. She and Captain Mark Phillips were divorced in April 1992. By this time the marriage of Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s second grandson, was also in trouble. He had met Sarah Ferguson in 1985 and they had subsequently fallen in love. She was a friendly, outspoken young woman and the match was welcomed not only by journalists who considered that Miss Ferguson was that famous cliche ‘a breath of fresh air’, but also by most of the Prince’s family. Queen Elizabeth thought she was ‘such a cheerful person, and seems to be so thankful & pleased to be part of a united family’.52 (Sarah Ferguson’s parents had divorced when she was a child.) The wedding, in July 1986, engendered widespread pleasure and on the same day the Queen created the Prince duke of York, the title held by both his grandfather, King George VI, and his great-grandfather, King George V. The new Duke and Duchess had two daughters, Princess Beatrice, born in 1988, and Princess Eugenie, born in 1990. But their marriage also deteriorated.

  In these hard times Queen Elizabeth gave her grandchildren, particularly the Prince of Wales, as much support as she could. The Prince visited her often and loved to bring his sons to stay with her at either Birkhall or Royal Lodge. There were some in the Royal Household who wished Queen Elizabeth would give him robust advice. But that was not her style. She never liked to acknowledge, let alone confront, disagreeableness within the family. It was a characteristic which had earned her the nickname ‘imperial ostrich’ among some members of the Household. She thought her role was not to try and change people’s courses but to be an anchor.

  Nineteen-ninety-two began well with the sort of holida
y which Queen Elizabeth most enjoyed, a family Christmas and New Year at Sandringham. In thanking her sister, Princess Margaret urged her, ‘Do keep Mummy there as long as poss. And please say it to her otherwise she gets in a tizz about being there for so long.’53

  While she was in Norfolk Queen Elizabeth received from Ted Hughes a special edition of his poems, Rain-Charm for the Duchy. She thanked him for the ‘enchanting’ book with its ‘rich and rustling’ paper, and for his accompanying letter ‘with its thrilling description of landing a fish in such wild & stormy conditions. It must have been too exciting for words, & I felt an envious thrill myself when reading of the battle with the fish and the wind and the rocks.’54

  The happy start to the year was brought to an abrupt end by the announcement that the Duke and Duchess of York were to separate. Worse was to come. In June 1992 the Sunday Times began to serialize a book called Diana: Her True Story. Highly sympathetic to Diana, this work created a sensation, particularly when it was revealed that the Princess had collaborated covertly with the author, Andrew Morton. This was deeply shocking to Queen Elizabeth. She had been sympathetic to both the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York over the enormous pressures they faced from the media. But the washing of dirty linen in public was utterly abhorrent to Queen Elizabeth. Her entire life was based upon obligation, discretion and restraint. The Princess’s public rejection of her husband and his life was contrary to everything that Queen Elizabeth believed and practised. She also regretted it when, subsequently, Prince Charles discussed his private life in a wide-ranging series of interviews with Jonathan Dimbleby for a film and a book. ‘It’s always a mistake to talk about your marriage,’ she said to Eric Anderson. But she was proud of the Prince’s achievements, such as the Prince’s Trust,* and she hoped that the book, a serious study of his career,† would help history to judge him better.55