Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  On Wednesday the Queen’s London advisers suggested that she put aside tradition and fly the Union Jack at half-staff, but she was unyielding, as was Philip. “Robin had to describe the feeling in London,” said Malcolm Ross. “It was a torturous process because she felt so strongly. Robin said he metaphorically had blood pouring down his face because she had scratched his face metaphorically. He had to come back to her again and again.”

  Later that day a Palace spokesman tried to defuse the growing pressure by saying that “all the royal family … are taking strength from the overwhelming support of the public who are sharing their tremendous sense of loss and grief.” Tony Blair publicly defended the Queen as well, although he knew, he later said, that “the fact that I was speaking only served to emphasize the fact that she wasn’t.” Reluctant to confront Elizabeth II himself and be “as blunt as I needed to be” with “very direct advice,” Blair called Charles, who said he would speak to his mother. Charles told Blair that he agreed the Queen could no longer “hide away” and needed to “come to London to respond to the public outpouring.”

  There is a Brigadoon quality at Balmoral that makes it difficult to appreciate the emotional temperature 550 miles away. But the Queen had been willing on a number of occasions to fly south when duty called—to accept Macmillan’s resignation when he was hospitalized, to have lunch with Richard Nixon at Chequers, to greet her son Andrew at Portsmouth after the Falklands campaign, and to attend Bobo MacDonald’s funeral. Her unwillingness this time was impelled by a desire to shield her grandsons from further upset. For the Queen it was an ironic turnabout. After being criticized so often for putting duty over family, she found herself being pilloried for doing the reverse. “If she had come down, there would have been adverse press about the heartless grandmother leaving her grandchildren in a time of grief,” said Dickie Arbiter, a former press spokesman for the Queen.

  The tabloids on Thursday morning turned up the heat with headlines screaming “SHOW US YOU CARE” (The Daily Express); “WHERE IS OUR QUEEN? WHERE IS HER FLAG?” (The Sun); and “YOUR PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING: SPEAK TO US, MA’AM” (The Daily Mirror). A survey by MORI (Market & Opinion Research International) found that 25 percent of the public felt the monarchy should be replaced, a significant rise from the 19 percent average dating back to 1969. Alastair Campbell called Fellowes and Janvrin to report that the mood on the street had become “dangerous and unpleasant.” “Robin Janvrin told me the Queen was composed but distressed by the way the nation assumed she did not care,” said George Carey. In a conference call that morning with the London team, the Queen grasped the gravity of the situation—not only that her absence was endangering the monarchy itself, but that she needed to fulfill her role as the nation’s leader in a time of crisis.

  The vehemence of the press played a part in her decision, but more important was the persuasiveness of her advisers. Rather than traveling to London overnight by train for arrival shortly before the 11 A.M. funeral on Saturday, she and the family would fly down on Friday. That evening, she would make a televised speech, and she would pay her respects at Diana’s coffin in the Chapel Royal. Once she left Buckingham Palace on Saturday for the funeral, the Royal Standard would be lowered, and for the first time a Union Jack would rise on the flagpole, to remain at half-staff in tribute to Diana.

  The Queen also asked Andrew and Edward to visit Diana’s coffin on Thursday afternoon and then walk among the crowds on the Mall back to Buckingham Palace—the family’s first overt gesture of public sympathy. The princes chatted with the mourners, who greeted them warmly. “It was an extraordinary experience feeling the atmosphere outside the Palace,” Andrew recalled. “It was unreal … completely unreal, beyond anybody’s expectation or understanding.”

  At midday Blair called the Queen at her request so they could discuss the new plans. “It was the first time I’d heard him one on one with the Queen, and he really did the ma’am stuff pretty well,” recalled his press spokesman, Alastair Campbell, who was listening in. “He said he felt she had to show that she was vulnerable and they really were feeling it. He said, ‘I really do feel for you. There can be nothing more miserable than feeling as you do and having your motives questioned.’ ” Blair remembered that the Queen “was now very focused and totally persuaded. It wasn’t easy, but it was certain.”

  That afternoon, Palace press secretary Geoffrey Crawford stood in front of St. James’s Palace to read an unusual statement that not only explained what would happen the next day, but displayed a new softness in describing the Queen’s feelings. “The royal family have been hurt by suggestions that they are indifferent to the country’s sorrow,” he said, adding that Diana’s sons “miss her deeply.” Crawford reiterated the wish of William and Harry to be in the “quiet haven” of Balmoral and the Queen’s efforts to help them “come to terms with their loss” as they prepared themselves “for the public ordeal of mourning their mother with the nation.”

  Though she was willing to show some emotion in order to comfort her people, above all, Elizabeth II had to be a strong leader for her family as well as the nation. Her sister, Margaret, later thanked her for “how you kindly arranged everybody’s lives after the accident and made life tolerable for the two poor boys … there, always in command, was you, listening to everyone and deciding on all the issues.… I just felt you were wonderful.”

  Philip suggested that on the eve of their return to London the family attend a service at Crathie. Unlike the previous Sunday, Diana’s name was mentioned by the minister, Bob Sloan, this time in a prayer of comfort for the grieving royal family. Afterward, they stopped in front of a horde of photographers at the Balmoral gates—the boys in dark suits and the men in their customary tweed jackets and tartan kilts—to inspect the flowers left by mourners. At 2:40 P.M. on Friday—five days after Diana’s death—Elizabeth II and Philip arrived at the Buckingham Palace gates, with the unannounced intention of making the same gesture.

  When they emerged from their Rolls-Royce, the royal couple faced crowds extending twenty deep to the Victoria Memorial, and thousands of bouquets wrapped in cellophane heaped six feet high along the Palace railings. “There was a very ugly atmosphere in the crowd that was lining the Mall,” said assistant private secretary Mary Francis. Uncertain how the people would react, the Queen betrayed a trace of anxiety in her expression. As she and Philip walked toward the floral display, the crowd began clapping.

  “It wasn’t completely over with, but you could feel the atmosphere change,” said Francis. One young girl held out a bouquet. “Would you like me to place them for you?” asked the Queen. “No, Your Majesty, they’re for you,” the girl replied. The Queen spoke to a few more women in the line of mourners, asking them questions (“Have you been queuing a long time?”), and leaning in to listen to their comments. “I just said how sorry I was,” recalled Laura Trani, a student from Hampshire. “I said that William and Harry were now her main concern. She must take great care of them. She said she would. She said it was so hard for them because they were so young and loved their mother very much.”

  Inside the Palace, the Queen and Philip “spent a long time talking about what the mood was, and what was on people’s minds,” said Mary Francis, “wanting to understand but not quite being able to be just out there and mingle and hear as private individuals.”

  Elizabeth II was preparing for her much awaited speech—only the second such special televised address of her reign (the first was on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991). She was meant to tape her remarks in the late afternoon for airing later that evening. “She knew it was something she should do,” said one of her senior advisers. “She was clear about what she wanted to say.”

  Robert Fellowes had written the first draft, assisted by David Airlie and Geoffrey Crawford, and transmitted it to Robin Janvrin at Balmoral. In a collaboration similar to the Christmas broadcasts, the Queen and Philip discussed and amended the remarks with her senior staff. Like her annual telecast, her words
would reflect her own views, not those of the government.

  As she did with her Christmas message, the Queen sent the speech to 10 Downing Street as a courtesy. Both Blair and Campbell read the text, and Campbell suggested that the Queen say she was speaking not only as the Queen, but “as a grandmother”—one of the most affecting phrases, as it turned out. “There were some last-minute discussions about her precise words,” recalled Blair. “But it was plain from the language and tone that once she had decided to move, she moved with considerable skill.”

  Late on Friday afternoon, the Queen’s advisers decided she would be more effective if she read the speech live. They also agreed—with encouragement from Alastair Campbell—to seat her in the Chinese Dining Room in front of an open window with the crowds outside the Palace as a backdrop. A technician placed an additional microphone adjacent to the window to capture the ambient murmur outdoors.

  The Queen wasn’t a fan of live broadcasts—decades earlier she had switched to tape for her Christmas message—but always rose to the occasion when asked. Wesley Kerr of the BBC could hear her rehearsing from the TelePrompTer on an open line. “One run-through,” she said.

  At 6 P.M. she appeared, bespectacled and perfectly coiffed, wearing a simple black dress adorned with a triangular diamond brooch, a triple strand of pearls, and pearl earrings. She spoke for three minutes and nine seconds, and the thousands of people behind her—walking about, sitting on the Victoria Memorial—lent a dramatic, almost eerie, touch.

  Her speech was pitched perfectly: her mien sober, with just a hint of emotion. She said what she meant, straightforwardly and with no gush. She knew all too well Diana’s failings, and the damage she had done to her eldest son. But she also recognized that her difficult daughter-in-law had struck a chord with the public, and that elements of her approach—her informality and her empathy—had been a force for good.

  Diana’s death had caused “an overwhelming expression of sadness,” she said. “We have all been trying in our different ways to cope.” Speaking “from my heart,” she praised the late princess as “an exceptional and gifted human being.” In an oblique reference to Diana’s emotional troubles, she said, “In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness.”

  Elizabeth II said—no more or less than she felt—“I admired and respected her, for her energy and commitment to others and especially for her devotion to her two boys.” She emphasized that “we have all been trying to help William and Harry come to terms with the devastating loss that they and the rest of us have suffered.” Signaling her understanding of the need to adapt to changing times, the Queen said, “I for one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death. I share in your determination to cherish her memory.”

  After thanking everyone for their outpouring of support and “acts of kindness,” she exhorted her viewers to think of Diana’s family and the families of the others who died in the accident, and to unite “in grief and respect” at her funeral. She closed in typically understated fashion, by thanking God “for someone who made many, many people happy,” a tacit acknowledgment that others may have been less than happy.

  Reaction to the speech was overwhelmingly positive. The Queen’s long-ago arch-critic John Grigg, the former Lord Altrincham, pronounced it “one of the very best speeches” and said she had “stabilized the situation.” George Carey thought it “showed her compassion and understanding. It went a very long way towards silencing her critics and removing the misunderstanding that had developed.” Tony Blair considered the broadcast “near perfect. She managed to be a Queen and a grandmother at one and the same time.”

  A dissenting view came from playwright and novelist Alan Bennett, who had cleverly portrayed the Queen in his play A Question of Attribution. Bennett found the broadcast “unconvincing” because Elizabeth II “is not a good actress, indeed not an actress at all.” He regretted that the Queen had not been directed “to throw in a few pauses and seem to be searching for words,” and expressed disappointment that “she reels her message off, as she always does.” The “difference between Princess Diana and the Queen,” he wrote, was “one could act, the other can’t.”

  Yet the Queen’s inability to pretend, much less to prevaricate, has always been one of her greatest assets. After forty-five years on the throne, her character was clear as she sat in front of the television camera. Her uncomplicated authenticity made her words that much more powerful. “There’s no putting on of a face in order to be more popular,” said Simon Walker, who would serve as her communications secretary from 2000 to 2002, “because it just wouldn’t work.”

  That night at dinner in Buckingham Palace, Prince Philip helped resolve one of the lingering questions about the funeral: would William and Harry follow the tradition of royal males and walk with their father and uncle Charles Spencer behind their mother’s coffin? Both boys, especially William, had been reluctant all week to commit to something so public. William had resisted mainly because he was “consumed by a total hatred of the media” after their hounding of his mother, according to Alastair Campbell. Palace officials feared that if the Prince of Wales walked without his sons, he risked “being publicly attacked,” Campbell recorded in his diary.

  On Friday evening, Philip—who as a seventy-six-year-old former father-in-law had not been scheduled to walk—said to William: “If you don’t walk, you may regret it later. I think you should do it. If I walk, will you walk with me?” William and his brother unhesitatingly agreed. They would join the procession as it passed St. James’s Palace—a solemn row of four royal princes and an earl behind Diana’s coffin.

  THE ATMOSPHERE ON the sunny morning of Saturday, September 6, 1997, was uncannily calm. Central London was closed to all traffic except security vehicles and cars transporting mourners to the Abbey, and airplane routes had been redirected. Over a million people lined the four-mile funeral route and filled the city’s parks. The crowds stood still and silent, making the clip-clop of the horses drawing the gun carriage all the more pronounced.

  The funeral cortege headed down Constitutional Hill from Kensington Palace toward Buckingham Palace. In yet another surprise, the Queen led her sister and the rest of the family through the gates to stand near the crowd. As the gun carriage passed, Elizabeth II spontaneously bowed to Diana’s coffin. “It was completely unexpected,” said Mary Francis, who was standing nearby. “I don’t think there had been any discussion of it, certainly not with her advisers beforehand. But instinctively she had done it, and it was the right thing to do.” It was also a vivid demonstration “that there was already a readiness to be more flexible,” said Ronald Allison, the Queen’s former press secretary.

  The royal family joined the congregation of two thousand inside the Abbey. Loudspeakers enabled the nearby crowds outside to hear the entire proceedings, which were also visible on the giant video screens. The television audience in Britain was an estimated 31 million, with 2.5 billion tuning in around the world. The service, presided over by the Very Reverend Dr. Wesley Carr, Dean of Westminster, and George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, was “unashamedly populist and raw with emotion,” Carey recalled. Diana’s sisters each read inspirational poems, and Tony Blair offered a somewhat overheated reading from First Corinthians. The musical selections were eclectic, from traditional hymns and an excerpt from Verdi’s Requiem to Elton John’s reworking of “Candle in the Wind” for “England’s Rose” and the haunting strains of a contemporary composition by John Tavener.

  An unexpected flash point came toward the end of Charles Spencer’s eloquent and emotional tribute to Diana when he turned to the sorrow of William and Harry, pledging that the Spencers, “your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way” their mother was raising them. The Spencers had no more claim as a “blood family” than the Windsors, and “those unnecessary words,” as Carey late
r called them, insulted the Queen, Prince Philip, and their family seated in a row of scarlet and gilt chairs next to Diana’s coffin on the catafalque. Even worse, as Spencer’s remarks echoed outside the Abbey, the crowd began applauding. “It sounded like a rustle of leaves,” recalled Charles Moore, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, who was in the Abbey. Members of the congregation picked up the clapping—itself a breach of Church of England practice—even William and Harry, although the Queen and Philip refrained from joining in. “It was a Shakespearean moment,” said Moore, “one family’s blood against the other. It was an incredibly powerful speech.”

  After the funeral, the royal family returned to its Highlands redoubt. Tony and Cherie Blair arrived the next day. It was supposed to have been their first prime minister’s weekend at Balmoral, but under the circumstances they came only for luncheon with Elizabeth II and some of her friends. The Queen and Philip “were very kind,” Cherie Blair recalled, but not a word was spoken about Diana or the previous week’s earth-shaking events. Listening to the conversation about deer stalking, agriculture, and fishing, Cherie thought, “This is really weird. Yesterday at the lunch in Number 10 following the funeral, there I was sitting next to Hillary Clinton and Queen Noor of Jordan, talking about current affairs, and here I am today with our head of state talking about the price of sheep.”

  The prime minister had his audience with the Queen in the drawing room. As he made the rookie’s mistake of trying to sit in Queen Victoria’s chair, he heard a “strangled cry” from a footman and saw “a set of queenly eyebrows raised in horror.” Blair was admittedly tense, and he later felt he had been presumptuous and somewhat insensitive in their conversation. When he spoke about possible lessons to be learned, he thought that she “assumed a certain hauteur.” But she acknowledged his points generally and he “could see her own wisdom at work, reflecting, considering and adjusting.”