All of her regiments and organizations wished to be included in the pageant, and Parker arranged that they should march past in motley groups of people, animals and vehicles, each supervised by two Guardsmen. ‘You can have anything in your group, from an Aberdeen Angus bull to a Field Marshal,’ Parker told the Guardsmen; ‘but you are in charge. You must get them to keep up and move at the right speed.’
The plan was that the National Anthem would be played after Queen Elizabeth arrived in Horse Guards Parade, before she got out of her carriage to inspect the troops. Then came a message from Clarence House that Queen Elizabeth insisted on standing up in the carriage for the Anthem. Parker was alarmed, for it would be dangerous if the horses moved. He consulted precedents and found that Queen Victoria had remained seated in a coach while the Anthem was played. But the message came back: ‘Queen Elizabeth is not Queen Victoria. She will stand.’ Eventually he persuaded her that the National Anthem should be played as she drove on to the parade ground, rather than after she had arrived.
As we have seen, the day itself began badly with IRA bomb scares in London, cancelled trains and even the controlled explosion of a suspected bomb in Whitehall. The police were nervous. The officer in charge told Mike Parker that the whole event might have to be cancelled. Parker replied that such a surrender was out of the question, but if that was his considered view the officer would have to go and give the news to Queen Elizabeth himself. The man was horrified. The parade went ahead.13
It was a balmy evening, and on her dais Queen Elizabeth stood a great deal, chatted with Prince Charles, and clearly enjoyed the music and the singing. Beside her stood Major General Evelyn Webb-Carter, the General Officer Commanding London District, who told her what was passing in front of her so that she could react appropriately – and she did. The veteran actor Sir John Mills, aged ninety-two and totally blind, stood up before her in an open vintage Rolls-Royce and made a moving speech in her honour. Few of the thousands of people who took part realized how little of the festivities she herself could see.
Afterwards, Queen Elizabeth wrote to Parker to say that she had loved the contrast between the smart soldiers and the ‘orderly rabble’ which followed them. She said the parade had cheered people up all over the country – ‘I thought it was marvellous.’14
*
THE CELEBRATIONS continued, and on 29 July Queen Elizabeth went to Ascot for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes. As she drove down the course, children paraded wearing the colours of previous winners of the race and the band played ‘Happy Birthday’.
Congratulations poured in – among them one heartfelt letter from Queen Fabiola of Belgium, widow of King Baudouin, who praised ‘your generous gestures, your unique hats and striking dresses, together with your ever-present and welcoming smile’;15 Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, recalled her wartime concern for the people of Stalingrad; Tony Blair said she was being honoured for being ‘a great example to us all of service’. Andrew Motion, who had succeeded Ted Hughes as poet laureate, wrote a long affectionate tribute to her birthday.16 It ended:
My dream of your birthday
is more like a wedding,
the August sky
confused with confetti,
and lit with the flash
of our camera-gaze –
the century’s eyes
of homage and duty
which understand best
the persistence of love.
On the morning of her actual birthday, 4 August, her long-serving page Reginald Wilcock brought her morning teatray to her study as usual. On it was a silver cream jug, a birthday present from her staff. Wilcock was ill with leukaemia but had been determined to see this day. That evening he was taken to hospital and within days he was dead. Queen Elizabeth wrote a tender letter to his partner and friend, William Tallon, who, like Wilcock, had served her lovingly since the 1950s.
After her traditional appearance at the gates of Clarence House and the opening of the telegram from the Queen, came the carriage ride to Buckingham Palace with Prince Charles. She had been nervous about this, fearing that she might have to drive up an empty Mall. Sitting in the hall at Clarence House, she still seemed strangely reluctant. In the end Prince Charles gave her his arm and said, ‘Come on, Granny – remember Hitler said you were the most dangerous woman in Europe.’ Laughing together they set off in her landau – and to her relief the large crowds in the Mall cheered enthusiastically, particularly when she came out on to the balcony to wave.17 After lunch with her family she went to see the team of people recruited to answer all the letters of good wishes that she had received, and in the evening she and the Queen and Princess Margaret went to see the Kirov Ballet perform at Covent Garden.
It was in every way a happy day and Prince Charles wrote to her, ‘I will never forget the magical atmosphere that surrounded you with love, devotion and gratitude for all that you mean to people.’18 As for Queen Elizabeth herself, she said to one friend that she could not understand what all the fuss was about. ‘I was just doing my job.’19
*
HER 101ST SUMMER was spent, as usual, at Mey and then Birkhall. Back in London at the end of October, she received one more birthday tribute: the Governor General of Canada came to Clarence House to present her with the insignia of the Order of Canada. The autumn seemed set fair, until on the morning of 3 November she tripped and fell in her bedroom at Clarence House. She had broken her collar bone and had to remain in bed for six weeks. She was looked after principally by her dresser Jacqui Meakin and her page Leslie Chappell; these two cared for her with the utmost devotion in the months ahead.20
Outwardly, her final year, 2001, followed the pattern of the others which it seamlessly followed. She grew frailer and she suffered more pain, but she was determined to conceal it. Her real sadness was the constant deterioration in the health of her younger daughter. Princess Margaret had frequently been unwell since the 1970s, suffering migraines, laryngitis, bronchitis. She had endured depression, she had had part of her lung removed and in 1998 she had her first stroke. In March 1999 she severely scalded her feet in a bath in her house in Mustique and never really recovered from these burns, nor from a second stroke she suffered there.
In February 2001 Queen Elizabeth made her first public appearance after her collar-bone fracture, at the memorial service for Lady Elizabeth Basset, who had died on 30 November 2000 and with whom she had shared her devout faith. The service took place in the Savoy Chapel and according to the chaplain, the Rev. John Robson, Queen Elizabeth seemed serious, sad and wistful in remembrance of her old friend. But still lively too – when he showed her to her car, ‘she FLUNG her sticks into it in a most eloquent gesture as if to say, “Let us be rid of these pesky things!” ’21 That same month she presided as usual over the lawn meet of the Eton Beagles. Then she had her annual house party for the Grand Military Race Meeting at Sandown Park in March, but to her disappointment foot-and-mouth disease forced the cancellation of Cheltenham races.
In early June 2001 she lunched privately at All Souls in Oxford, an annual custom she much enjoyed. At the Sandringham Flower Show in July she toured every stall in her buggy and entertained her usual house party, including the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Her grandson, as always, marvelled at her stamina and wrote to her that ‘no-one would ever have known that you were actually feeling pretty tired.’22
She was even more tired a few days later, during her racing house party at Royal Lodge for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot. She insisted on going to the races but when she returned home she almost collapsed. She was taken to King Edward VII hospital where she was discovered to be suffering seriously from anaemia. Blood transfusions were prescribed to make good the iron deficiency. Determined as ever, she demanded that the treatment be carried out overnight so that she could be back at Clarence House in time for her 101st birthday.23
In these circumstances, members of her Household expected her merely to wav
e from the window to the crowd which always gathered on 4 August.24 But no, she insisted on going to the gate and greeting people in the street as she had always done. She then gave lunch to the Queen, the Prince of Wales and others in the family and that evening she went to the ballet at the Royal Opera House. Then, once again, she flew to her Castle in the north. Prince Charles wrote to thank her for the joy of being with her on her 101st birthday. ‘It was so wonderful to see Your Majesty so transfused and with your iron constitution so comprehensively “re-ironed”.’ He thought that ‘Evidence of the ironing operation was there for all to see when Your Majesty stepped boldly off the aeroplane … The fact that your dogs were carried down the steps reinforced the message about your “rude” health!’25
He was right, but it was to be her last summer in her Castle. Among the guests were many of those friends who loved her most.* There was the familiar merriment, the jokes, the toasts to favourites high in the air and to unfavourites below the table, the video evenings, the pervading sense of happiness. But behind everything there was a sense of frailty if not finality. In the Guest Book are photographs of her sitting in the sun and walking in the mist, always clad in her familiar blue hat and coat and tartan skirt. Although the weather was unspeakable on the day of the Mey Highland Games she insisted on attending, buttoned up against driving rain and fierce wind.
In September, after saying goodbye with unusual emphasis to her staff, neighbours and friends at Mey, she drove south to Balmoral and Birkhall. And, again as usual, she stopped for lunch at Foulis Castle in Ross-shire, the home of Mrs Timmy Munro, a tradition that had been maintained since 1959. At lunch she engaged in a long conversation with the younger members of the family about the teenage fad for body piercing, a phenomenon of which she may have been aware because her great-granddaughter, Zara Phillips, had a pierced tongue. A few days later a three-page, handwritten thank-you letter arrived for Mrs Munro.26
At Birkhall she found that the Queen had had a stairlift installed for her. Prince Charles wrote to cheer the fact that ‘you now have a form of mechanized assistance to ascend “les escaliers” without Your Majesty’s feet touching the floor. Thank God for the wonders of science …!’27 Her guests – many of them Prince Charles’s stalking friends – enjoyed the usual fishing expeditions, picnics and evening videos. One night there was dancing and, twirling her sticks, she took part in an eightsome reel. She went with Prince Charles to Aberdeen for the unveiling of a statue of a bull for the North East Aberdeen Angus Breeders, to the pleasure of them all.28
But there was an elegiac note to her days. She said that she wanted to see her old ghillie, Charlie Wright, who had fished with her for decades. Wright, now eighty-two, had been captured with the 51st Highland Division at Saint-Valery, covering the retreat at Dunkirk in June 1940; as a result, he had spent five years as a prisoner of war. His father had been a stalker for the King, and Charlie Wright had himself worked at Balmoral first as a stalker and then as a river ghillie. After he retired from the river he still turned out for Queen Elizabeth’s spring fishing parties.
She insisted on going to his home rather than asking him to hers. She was driven on a track along the bank of the Dee to the little humpbacked stone bridge, the Brig O’Dee,* which led across the river to his cottage. There is a photograph of Queen Elizabeth pulling herself on her sticks across the bridge by sheer will power. She took tea with Wright and his daughter Jane. Then she forced herself back across the bridge to the car. Charlie and Jane Wright were touched by her determination and her courtesy.29
One of the happiest occasions at Birkhall that year was a convivial picnic lunch at Loch Callater. Her guests and Household were all worried that she was too frail and should not go. As usual, she insisted. It was a blithe gathering and she enjoyed herself immensely. Many times in the months to come, as she grew weaker, she would say, ‘I wish I was at Loch Callater.’
In November 2001, just before the annual Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph, she was strong enough to make her customary visit to the Garden of Remembrance at St Margaret’s, Westminster. The Duke of Kent accompanied her and he was struck by the fact that, despite the cold, she spent an hour in the open air, greeting and talking to old soldiers.30 A few days later she watched the Remembrance Day Parade from a window of the Home Office looking over Whitehall.
On 22 November she made an extraordinary trip – another visit to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, which she had launched in 1981 and which was now being recommissioned and rededicated after an extensive refit. She flew by helicopter to Portsmouth, landed on the carrier and was lowered into the ship’s great hangar. It was a touching spectacle: 1,200 people were there to greet her and to take part in the rededication service. She summoned the strength to make a short speech and then, to the pleasure of the audience, she said to Captain David Snelson, ‘Captain, splice the mainbrace.’31
Before Christmas she felt strong enough to give interviews to two authors – one writing a PhD thesis on Dr Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the abdication, and the other the biographer of the Grand Duchess Xenia of Russia, who had spent forty years in exile in Britain and whom Queen Elizabeth had liked.32
And still she went on and on: she attended the Middle Temple Family Night dinner on 5 December and the next day she went to lunch with the Trustees of the Injured Jockeys Fund at the Goring Hotel. She went racing, for the last time, at Sandown Park on 9 December and to her great pleasure she saw her own horse First Love win – she delighted the crowd by going to the winner’s enclosure to congratulate the jockey. She had had seventy-five winners at Sandown Park over her racing career – more than at any other racecourse.33
She had another fall before Christmas but, as usual, she refused to admit she was in pain. She carried out the engagements to which she had agreed; the last was the staff Christmas party in St James’s Palace. There were about 200 people there; she consented to be wheeled around but whenever she stopped to talk to a group of people she insisted on standing up out of the chair. She did this some twenty times.34
Christmas, of course, was with her family at Sandringham. She and Princess Margaret flew there together by helicopter and landed in a blizzard. After her two strokes, Princess Margaret was now in a wheelchair. Queen Elizabeth was not well either; she developed a cough over Christmas and had to spend much of the holiday in her room. By early January 2002 she was better and able to come down and mingle with her family, but then she caught another virus which she could not shake off and she stayed in Norfolk when the Queen returned to Buckingham Palace. Princess Margaret was, if anything, in worse pain than her mother; she barely spoke. When the Princess left for London Queen Elizabeth carried out the family tradition of waving a white handkerchief in farewell as her daughter was wheeled out of the saloon to the car. It was their final parting.
The 6th of February marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the King, but Queen Elizabeth was not well enough to go to Royal Lodge for her customary service in the Royal Chapel. Instead, Canon John Ovenden, the chaplain there, drove up to Norfolk. He and Canon George Hall conducted the service in a small sitting room at Sandringham.
Queen Elizabeth would probably have stayed on in Norfolk, but three days later, on 9 February, the Queen telephoned her mother to say that Princess Margaret had died. The Princess had suffered another stroke the previous afternoon and then developed cardiac problems. She was taken to King Edward VII Hospital during the night and she had died there on Saturday morning. She was seventy-one. The death of a child is an intolerable burden to a parent, whatever their respective ages. But Queen Elizabeth knew her daughter had been suffering with no hope of respite.35
Prince Charles immediately went to Sandringham to comfort his grandmother. She told him that ‘Margot’s’ death had probably been a merciful release. He agreed and shortly afterwards he sent her a letter in which he related that Anne Glenconner, one of the Princess’s ladies in waiting and a good friend, ‘told me that she had see
n Margot on Wednesday last week and that she had said to Anne that she felt so ill that she longed “to join Papa” ’. He added, ‘I thought that this was so incredibly touching.’36
A few days after the Princess’s death Queen Elizabeth fell again; she damaged her arm, which had to be carefully dressed by Dr Campbell. But she insisted on attending her daughter’s funeral in St George’s Chapel at Windsor. She was flown there by helicopter and manoeuvred with difficulty into a car to be taken to the Chapel. The service was tranquil; the melancholy but reassuring words of the 23rd Psalm – ‘I will dwell in the house of the Lord’ – seemed to many in the congregation to be apposite to the life and death of the devout, talented but troubled Princess, whose greatest joy was to be a loving mother to her two children. As the coffin was borne out of the Chapel, Queen Elizabeth struggled to her feet. Princess Margaret was cremated; she had asked that her ashes be interred in the King George VI Memorial Chapel in St George’s. After the funeral, Queen Elizabeth went home to Royal Lodge for the last time.
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