A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II

by Michael Paterson

  There was a palpable yearning for splendour. This was to be the first time since 1939 that the coaches and colourful ceremonial uniforms – so vital a part of Britain’s life and self-image – had been seen. It was more than a wish for something to look at, however. The bride and groom were both attractive, wholesome and personable. They featured heavily in the illustrated press, and something of a cult built around them. She was the nation’s daughter. He looked like a film star, and the public had now accepted him. Moreover, they knew she had set her heart on him and had won him in spite of widespread disapproval (not least their own). This was a fairy tale that promised a happy ending. There was a rising tide of goodwill and popularity and expectation.

  For her dress, Princess Elizabeth was granted a hundred additional clothing coupons, while each of her bridesmaids had 23. Norman Hartnell, who had already once outfitted her for a wedding (when she was bridesmaid to the Kents), produced 12 designs from which she could choose. She selected a pearl-white satin dress with a 15-foot train that fastened to the shoulders. It was embroidered with drop-pearls, seed-pearls and crystals, and had appliquéd orange-blossoms and star-flowers.

  She wanted the music at her wedding to be memorable, and put much effort into this. The Abbey organist sent suggestions, and some were accepted, but her own memory provided other possibilities. She did not have a well-known bridal march, but opted for a piece by Parry from Aristophanes’ The Birds. She requested ‘Praise My Soul the King of Heaven’, her favourite hymn, and ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’ in its Crimmond setting. For this, she favoured a descant that she had once heard in Scotland. No copy could be found anywhere but she sang it and Doctor McKie, the organist, wrote it down. It was eventually traced to a composer in Stirling who had written it for an Edinburgh girls’ school.

  There were to be 2,000 guests. Although a number of these were official, a surprising percentage were not and – apart from relations (Philip’s sisters were not asked, because they were all married to Germans and feelings were still raw so soon after the war) many were there through appreciation of mundane services rendered. Their names had been found in letters, lists, diaries, or acquired by word of mouth. They included the stationmaster from Wolferton, the stop for Sandringham, the schoolmistress from Birkhall, the riding-instructors from Elizabeth’s childhood, the young women who had made her wedding dress, and an American lady who had sent parcels to Philip throughout the war.

  The event was to have film coverage, or rather cameras were to be positioned outside the Abbey. The service itself would be broadcast, but there was disquiet among some clergymen that it might be listened to by people drinking in public houses!

  Presents poured in from all over the world. The Royal Family could not accept gifts other than from personal friends, and normal procedure would be to return them with a letter of thanks. The King, however, was so touched by his people’s generosity that it was decided to keep them. They were put on display at St James’s Palace and the public queued in droves to inspect them. At the suggestion of the Princess, a reception was also held for the donors. In total, 1,347 gifts were received – half the number that would be offered to her eldest son some 34 years later – and 20 of them came from Queen Mary alone. Some gifts have been in storage ever since. The largesse included a refrigerator, Purdey shotguns, and a Rolls-Royce that was a present from the RAF, as well as over a hundred pairs of nylon stockings – still a considerable luxury at the time – and numerous ration coupons. Some things could not be exhibited: the racehorse given by the Aga Khan and wittily named Astrakhan by Elizabeth, or the lodge presented by the government of Kenya.

  Philip was also busy with preparations. He went, unobtrusively, to Lambeth Palace where in a brief ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury he converted from Greek orthodoxy to the Church of England. He was also spoken to quietly, but extremely firmly, by one or two of his elders. Churchill, no longer premier but still wielding immense prestige, ensured that he realised the importance of the step he was taking. The King spoke to him in the way any future father-in-law is likely to do. In this case, he laid stress on Philip’s tendency to flirt, and on his reckless driving. Interestingly, this latter gave the Princess an experience in common with many girls of her age. Her young man drove with impatient abandon. He had once put his sports car in a ditch and on another occasion, when with Elizabeth, had a contretemps with a taxi. She had wailed that this was not his fault but that her parents would not believe it. The King’s concern was understandable. While every parent would worry about his daughter ending up in an accident, the implications in this case were very serious indeed.

  The groom had lost his Greek citizenship, and his title, when naturalised. He was now simply Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN. Shortly before the wedding, however, the King made him Duke of Edinburgh – a title last used by one of Queen Victoria’s sons – and he was installed as a Knight of the Garter. His fiancée had herself received the Garter a week earlier. Her father had been determined that she should precede her husband in membership, since she would in due course become head of the Order.

  The evening before the wedding he had a bachelor party at the Dorchester hosted by his uncle. He stayed the night at Kensington Palace and the next day left for the Abbey with the best man, David Milford Haven. If he suffered any pre-wedding jitters, he did not let them show. Nor did he have a cigarette, as he might normally have done. He had been a smoker, but had now promised his wife-to-be that he would give up as a wedding present, and as far as is known he never touched another one.

  There was a near mishap for the bride. When dressing at Buckingham Palace on the morning, she could not find the pearl necklace – a present – that she intended to wear. It transpired that it was still at St James’s Palace where it was on display. Her Private Secretary, John Colville, had to be sent at once to fetch it. He arrived with no written authorisation, and was not known to the staff guarding the collection. Using all the charm and persuasiveness at his command, he managed to retrieve the necklace and get it to the Princess just in time.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury, who officiated, stated in his address that the service ‘is in all its essentials the same as it would be for any cottager who might be married this afternoon in some small country church’, and that is how it was seen by many. The Royal Family, as maintained by George VI, was the middle class writ large. This was a family event on a national scale.

  The bride showed impeccable poise. Her father later wrote of escorting her to the altar: ‘You were so calm and composed during the Service & said your words with such conviction, that I knew everything was all right.’ Elizabeth, of course, already knew more than most about solemn public declarations.

  When the service ended, the guests returned to Buckingham Palace for the wedding breakfast. It comprised four courses, one of which was partridge from the Sandringham estate.

  The couple went to Broadlands, the Hampshire country house of Lord Mountbatten, for the first days of their honeymoon (as Charles and Diana would later do). Travelling by carriage down Whitehall through the crowds to Waterloo Station – in an open carriage to allow people a good view, despite the bitter cold – there was sudden movement beneath the rug on their knees, and there appeared the head of Susan, the Princess’s pet corgi. She had been smuggled along.

  Such was the King’s devotion to his daughter that she received a letter from him while at Broadlands and, when travelling through London to Scotland a few days later, she visited him at the Palace. While subsequent generations of royals have, on their honeymoons, been able to use Britannia, the Princess and the Duke went to Balmoral. However much their wedding had lifted the spirits of a country in the throes of austerity, their honeymoon was surely appropriate to the gloom of that time. November is arguably the dreariest month in the British calendar and, set between the foliage of autumn and the snows of Christmas, even a place so loved by the Princess might have seemed uninspiring.

  This was the beginning of a mar
riage that has been extremely happy – a marriage of sympathetic companionship and mutual support in circumstances that would break most relationships. It was to cost Philip the naval career that he loved and was good at. Although he had the opportunity for a few years to live a normal life, he had to give it up, first gradually and then with awful suddenness, when his wife became Queen. He is a practical man, devoid of introspection, and that was just what the situation would need. He was to prove, in any case, equally successful in his new role. Not for nothing would Her Majesty describe him, decades later, as ‘my rock’.

  Despite their mutual devotion they were never to be demonstrative in public. Unlike American presidents, or British prime ministers before the advent of Blair, they would never hold hands, put their arms around each other, or be seen to kiss affectionately. That is their way, and it adds greatly to their dignity. A few years after their marriage Michael Parker, the Duke’s Equerry, attempted to coax from him some spontaneity with regard to his wife, but in vain. Philip may not have had the Princess’s sense of quiet reticence, but he has never believed in being emotional in public. As a naval officer he would have had views about appropriate – and inappropriate – behaviour while on duty. Elizabeth, too, has regarded herself as bound by the dignity of her position. Her parents, despite overwhelming mutual devotion, had never been given to such display. Royals believed that affection was a matter that could wait until they were out of sight.

  Returning to London the young couple, in common with many people of their age in a country beset by a serious housing-shortage, moved in with their parents. They occupied the same suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace that the Princess had lived in when single and, by royal standards, this meant that they were somewhat cramped. They were supposed to reside at Clarence House in the Mall, one of several royal residences in the neighbourhood, but the building was so dilapidated that it required lengthy renovation, and brought public criticism for the £55,000 cost of this. There were so many work stoppages by the labourers involved that the King personally ordered them to ‘stop taking so damned many tea-breaks’. Whether they followed this instruction is not known, but the house was still not ready when the couple began their family.

  They did not move into Clarence House until the summer of 1949. They took great pleasure in planning the decor and installing the furniture and, like most young couples, they enjoyed the feeling that they had a home of their own. There was noisy public criticism regarding the lavishness of the interiors, which involved panelling in exotic woods, but in fact virtually all of these had been given by dominion governments or municipalities. The Duke’s study, fitted with Canadian maple, was a wedding present. The Princess’s bedroom was a gift from Glasgow.

  The King had given them a country house at which to spend weekends. It was Sunningdale Park (a rebuilt version of this was to be bestowed on Prince Andrew at his wedding), near Windsor. Before they could occupy it, however, the house was destroyed by fire – perhaps the result of squatters. A replacement had quickly to be found and this was Windlesham Moor, a lavishly appointed house set in 50 acres of landscaped grounds not far from Ascot. It was described by the Princess’s mother as ‘more palatial than a palace’ and was rented rather than bought. It was so big that its occupants could easily have got lost in either the house or the grounds. While it promised them all the privacy they could hope for, it was ironic that Elizabeth faced the prospect of spending time there alone. Her husband, still a serving naval officer, was soon to be posted overseas.

  In the meantime, their first child was born. ‘It’s a boy!’ announced the policeman on duty in the Palace forecourt, on 14 November 1948, to the crowd that had waited hours for news. Charles Philip Arthur George was born inside and, like his mother, by Caesarean section. Many people both within and without the family had expected a girl, given the preponderance of female children on both sides (Philip had four older sisters) and the public was delighted that the question of succession had been settled at once – had it been a girl, they might have had to wait years to see if a brother would follow. The Princess was an indulgent mother and she had, at that stage in her life, time to devote to her son. They would soon be separated.

  Charles’s birth was the first occasion on which such an event had taken place without the presence of the Home Secretary, a tradition that went back to 1688. The latest arrival was 82 years younger than the family’s oldest member, and Queen Mary thus became a great-grandmother at a time when this was still unusual. Yet while the dowager queen still showed indomitable fitness, her son the King was failing. In 1949 he was only just well enough to appear at his birthday parade, and even then he was not mounted but in a carriage. He had been diagnosed with something called Buerger’s disease, a condition that affects the arteries, and he also had bronchial carcinoma. There was considerable anxiety about his long-term, as well as short-term, health.

  Philip had been working at the Admiralty and then at the Naval Staff College at Greenwich, appointments that kept him usefully within London. Indeed when at the Admiralty he lived no more than 10 minutes’ walk from his desk and – amazingly, in view of the security that is necessary now – he travelled there alone and on foot. He could be seen leaving the Palace at half-past eight in the mornings to walk down the Mall, and the Princess could sometimes be glimpsed in late afternoon, looking out for his return from an upstairs window. He needed experience at sea, however, for career progress, and in 1949 he was sent to Malta to join the Mediterranean Fleet. His uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was there as commander of a cruiser squadron. The King was not happy about this posting for he knew Elizabeth would want to go too, and allowed her only on condition that she made regular returns to Britain. This was not merely a matter of sentiment – he was as reluctant as ever to part with her – but of duty. He needed his daughter to be able to deputise for him. His health had not recovered from the war (a chain-smoker, he was found to have lung cancer) but she was told only after Charles’s birth how frail it was – and he was finding it harder to meet the physical demands of his role. On occasions that required the physical stamina to sit or stand for long periods, he was increasingly unable to cope. His daughter also had duties of her own. In the months and years after her wedding, she and Philip made tours of the United Kingdom so that her future peoples could see her, and her husband, at close quarters.

  Nevertheless Elizabeth joined her husband. Charles stayed in London, and was looked after by his grandparents. The climate was considered unsuitable for a child of his years, and her own sense of duty dictated that she be with Philip. She had, after all, been left at home by her own parents at about the same age, and she was not going away for more than months at a time. She arrived in Valetta with 40 cases of clothing, her car and a polo pony. This game was a passion among servicemen on the island and Philip, who had already proved an extremely sound cricketer, was in the process of learning it.

  The couple remained in Malta, on and off, between 1949 and 1951. Despite interruptions and increasing worry over the King’s health, it was to be a golden interlude in their lives, a period upon which they would look back with warm nostalgia. As well as the pleasure of serving at sea, Philip was able to feel relatively free from the strait-jacket of Court life, and Elizabeth could experience the nearest thing she would ever know to normal existence. Their surroundings were glorious and the pace of life agreeably slow, with much time given to polo and other sporting events. Philip was given his own ship, HMS Magpie. Command was the ambition of every naval officer, and he lost no time in putting on the vessel and its crew the stamp of his personality. Like his uncle he had a passion for winning trophies, showing off and being the best at everything. He drove his men in competition but took part himself, pulling an oar in the races that won Magpie the title Cock of the Flotilla.

  ‘The Med’ was not a Cold War flashpoint and Britain’s problems in the region – Suez and Cyprus – were several years off. The Navy could devote time to fostering international goodwill, and its roya
l officer and his wife were ideal for this. Magpie made a number of leisurely official visits to Heads of State in the region. Between calls there were cocktail parties, receptions, picnics and swimming. Small wonder that Magpie was known in the Navy as ‘Edinburgh’s private yacht’. This would, in normal circumstances, have been the first of many commands in a career alternating between sea and shore duty. Philip was not to know that it would be the height of his active service, and the only vessel he ever commanded.

  Elizabeth was in some respects able to live as an officer’s wife, but this must not be overstated. She was scarcely more a ‘normal’ wife than she had been a normal officer in the ATS. As with so many things, she could experience it only partially, fleetingly, under strictly controlled and largely artificial conditions. Although she enjoyed expeditions to shops and markets and the hairdresser, to dances and swimming-parties and even to sit in the back row of the cinema, she was not in any sense anonymous. She was not in a foreign country – Malta was, at the time, as British as any other colony – and she was thus the daughter of the ruler. She was living not in Married Quarters but, initially at least, in the villa of her husband’s uncle. Unlike other wives she had a dresser and a footman, was followed everywhere by a detective, and had always to be addressed as ‘Ma’am’. She carried out some low-key official duties, visiting servicemens’ clubs or giving out trophies. She also had to commute home on a regular basis. She was required to deputise for the King in receiving visits from the French President and the kings of Denmark and Norway. She travelled by air between Britain and the Mediterranean to save time.

  She was, in fact, never able to settle down in Malta. In the midst of Philip’s posting – on 15 August 1950 – her second child Princess Anne was born, in England. The Princess was therefore at home for several months, and her husband for several weeks. When she eventually rejoined him, there were pointed comments in the press about her neglect of her children.