A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II

by Michael Paterson

  Yet with the engagement a powerful new element was to enter the House of Windsor, and the Queen may well have been somewhat irked at the attention this new member received from the press, for she herself was now overtaken in media attention by her daughter-in-law.

  The wedding was as glorious an occasion as it had promised to be. Held at St Paul’s – Prince Charles’s choice of setting – it was a magnificent set-piece of music, architecture and costume. Vestments and uniforms dazzled, trumpets and choir, organ and soloists sent collective goose bumps through the congregation. The groom was in the dress uniform of a senior naval officer, the bride – on whom the watching millions focused their attention – wore a dress of white silk taffeta with a train 25 feet long. It was not seen until she emerged from her coach at the cathedral steps and, as she walked up the long aisle (a journey that took three-and-a-half minutes) it was shown to greatest advantage on television screens by cameras looking down from the gallery. Viewers noticed how much Prince Philip and the Queen were smiling throughout. The day’s most memorable moment occurred later when, on the Palace balcony, the bride and groom kissed in front of cheering crowds.

  The service was the most popular Royal event since the Coronation. Some 600,000 people waited in the streets to see the procession, and 3,500 were in the Cathedral. A truly staggering number – 750 million – watched it on television throughout the world. This audience included a Soviet warship anchored just outside British territorial waters. It was also reported that one man, who had taken a ferry to France to escape all the fuss, was furious when the vessel’s crew stopped engines in mid-Channel and settled down to watch.

  However, Charles and Diana were not, by any stretch of the imagination, a well-matched couple. The gap in their ages was much greater than the 12 years that separated them. He had always been old for his age, and the women whose company he most enjoyed tended to be mature and somewhat maternal. A product of the 1950s and 1960s, there had never been a time when he embraced the culture of youth that was then sweeping away everything in its path. He has never cared for rock music and has never dressed like a member of his age group. Never attracted to the passing fads of his own generation, he was unlikely to feel any empathy with hers. His traditional nature gave him a gravitas for which many are thankful, and which suits him well for the position he holds, but it meant that he and Diana seemed more like a middle-aged father and his teenage daughter than husband and wife. She did not share his love of opera and high culture, nor did she like his friends, who were of his age group or even older and who – by definition – shared his conservative tastes. There was absolutely no meeting of minds or pleasure in serious discussion, which for Charles was very important. She demanded a level of attention that he was not accustomed to giving anyone, and she became strident, moody and argumentative. Obsessed with the notion that Camilla Parker Bowles was still part of his life, she became possessive. Like his mother, Charles hated confrontation and preferred to wish problems away. Diana favoured having things out and goading him into a response. He could not relate to someone whose level of cultural awareness was so far below his own, and he greatly resented the fact that his own personality and achievements were nudged aside by a media that was interested only in his wife’s wardrobe and hairstyles.

  Diana was horrified at what she saw as the cold formality of her husband’s family. No one, she complained, gave her the guidance necessary to fulfil her role. She was expected to accustom to a world of state banquets, speech-making, inspection of troops and participating in walkabouts, without anyone – including her husband, to whom all this was second nature – showing her properly how it was done. All this was understandably intimidating for a nursery-school assistant, even one with an aristocratic background. Her frustration often vented itself in rage.

  Her criticism was unfair. Charles was often touchingly concerned about the pressure to which she was subjected. Courtiers were on hand to explain what was necessary (she saw them instead as always telling her what to do). Her parents-in-law, under no illusions that life would be difficult, stood ready to help her should she ask, though effective communications were somehow never established between them. Help was not consistently given – all those around her were busy – and she was expected to learn more quickly than she perhaps felt was reasonable.

  Diana had, before her marriage, naturally been used to all the freedoms of a well-off young woman in London. She simply could not accustom to the restrictions of living within the Household – having her life planned for months or even years in advance, being expected to be on duty when she did not feel like it, being accompanied everywhere by a protection officer. Having a more impulsive nature than the members of her husband’s family could ever have afforded, she felt trapped.

  At the end of that year the Princess, who found it increasingly hard no longer to be able to run ordinary errands, was photographed going from her home at Highgrove to buy sweets. She was sufficiently upset by this unrelenting attention for the Queen to call a conference of newspaper editors and request a gentler approach. She was persuasive and reasonable, but when asked by the editor of the News of the World why the Princess could not ‘send a servant to buy her Fruit Gums’, Her Majesty retorted: ‘That’s the most pompous thing I have ever heard.’ Perhaps so, but it highlighted an important problem – that it was not possible to have privacy and celebrity at the same time.

  The very notion of ‘celebrity’ is not what the Royal Family is about. Many people confuse being in the public eye with being famous, exciting and glamorous. Diana was quickly described as having ‘star quality’, as if she were a Hollywood actress, and this concept will probably have irritated the Queen. It is not the purpose of Royalty to entertain or to provide fashion tips. Her family’s function is to be constant, dutiful and, if necessary, dull. Their mission is to set a quiet example, to reflect the lives of her subjects, not that of the international rich. Royals need no publicity, they do not draw attention to themselves, their clothes, their lifestyle. They are just there, doing their job regardless of changing fashion. They do not want to be associated with the self-promoting, tinsel world of the cinema or the weather-cock nature of changing fashion. With Diana, the press decided she was both a celebrity and a Royal. The distinction became blurred, and traditionalists were horrified by the tide of media attention that resulted. Diana undoubtedly won friends for the monarchy in her early years, but the image she represented was not the one the Queen believed was right.

  The cracks in her marriage did not appear at once, and for several years the Family enjoyed a level of positive press interest that was tantamount to a honeymoon. Since her engagement she had had something of a makeover. With advice and assistance from the fashion press and from stylists, her clothing, hair and make-up became steadily more sophisticated, replacing the artless, schoolgirlish look that the public had found so endearing. With her statuesque build, photogenic features and the high exposure of her position, she had everything necessary to be a fashion leader. That she also smiled readily, had a nice sense of humour and a genuine way with people (she spoke to strangers with more spontaneous warmth than the other Royals) made her yet more popular. When in March 1983 she and her husband visited Australia, they took with them the nine-month-old Prince William. It was a joint decision – though Diana got the credit – and proved immensely popular with Australians. It was believed, erroneously, that she had brought him against the Queen’s wishes. Nevertheless, the days when Royal infants were left at home while their parents went on official tours were clearly over. This change was seen as evidence that Diana had brought a greater humanity to the House of Windsor.

  Yet whatever she brought in terms of popular appeal, it had become apparent that Diana would not fit easily into the routine of the Family. The young woman who had looked so shy in photographs proved to be stubborn and wilful. She admired the Queen enormously and said so often. She was impressed by the monarch’s stamina and unflagging devotion to duty, but she did not w
ant to emulate it. She committed numerous small gaffes – or deliberate floutings of etiquette – arriving late for meals, deciding to go to bed in the midst of an evening when guests were present, and using ill-health and, especially, headaches (that catch-all excuse for avoiding anything unpleasant) to get out of official duties. Although she was both loyal and enthusiastic regarding the charities she took up, she never learned the lesson that Royalty cannot do things – or cancel things – on impulse. The Queen, to whom illness was simply weakness and who had never been seriously unwell, had little sympathy with Diana’s protestations. When, in November 1984, Diana attended the State Opening of Parliament, she famously sported a new, swept-up hairstyle, designed to set off the tiara she wore. This received massive newspaper coverage and diverted attention completely from the Queen’s speech. Her Majesty was clearly deeply irritated. She was to refer to her daughter-in-law as ‘that impossible girl’.

  But there had been other preoccupations. In April 1982, Argentine forces suddenly seized the Falkland Islands, a British dependency in the South Atlantic to which they had long laid claim. The government in Buenos Aires, attempting to divert attention from a surging economic crisis, expected a cheap victory because a nation 8,000 miles away would not – or could not – fight to recapture them. They had seriously underestimated the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who came into her own in this crisis. Without hesitation the British Government assembled a task force and sent it, in whatever vessels could be scraped together, to the rescue of the islanders. While America tried to settle the dispute peacefully through exhaustive shuttle diplomacy, the toughest members of the British Armed forces – marines, paratroops, ghurkas – made the long voyage southward. Also in the task force was Prince Andrew, the Queen’s favourite child. A Sub-Lieutenant aboard HMS Invincible, he had recently qualified as a pilot on Sea King helicopters. Although his skills were needed in the conflict, the Ministry of Defence had wished to shunt him out of danger into some administrative job. It was the Queen who insisted he take the same risks as his comrades, and so he went. Yet again, she drew on personal courage.

  The campaign (neither side ever actually declared war) lasted for 74 days. It cost the lives of 257 British personnel and more than twice that number of Argentines, as well as three local people. There were moments of tragedy, horror and triumph, and there was considerable heroism among men fighting in difficult terrain and conditions. Andrew fulfilled the tasks he was set: anti-submarine patrols, evacuating casualties and – not without danger – acting as a decoy for Exocets. His mother, like that of other servicemen, avidly and apprehensively watched the television news each day. Since this was heavily censored and gave little real information, she also gleaned all she could from the other sources at her disposal – the Ministry of Defence, the Admiralty and Downing Street. Once the war ended, on 14 June 1982, she was able to speak to him by telephone in the capital, Port Stanley, and asked him to convey her pride and gratitude to all of those there. When the task force arrived back in Portsmouth, the Queen and Prince Philip were waiting, as were thousands of others, to greet them. In this conflict it had been Mrs Thatcher who played the role of Elizabeth at Tilbury, but Elizabeth II had expressed her people’s anxiety and pride. Her son had been the first of the born-Royal family members to take part in action since her father had been at Jutland in 1916. One wonders how she – and the nation – would have reacted had he been lost.

  Just after 7:15 on the morning of 9 July 1982, Her Majesty awoke at the Palace to find a strange man in her bedroom, drawing the curtains. He sat on her bed. Agitated and rambling, he was barefoot and wore jeans. His right hand was dripping blood onto the counterpane and he held a broken glass ashtray. He spoke to her about his personal problems, which involved complex family relationships. The Queen kept him talking, but pressed a bell that connected with the police control room. Nothing happened. She tried another that linked with the corridor outside. Again, there was no response.

  She was not normally alone. Her husband, with official duties that day, had slept elsewhere so as not to disturb her when setting off early. A policeman guarded her bedroom every night, wearing slippers so that his footsteps would not disturb her, but he had gone off duty at six o’clock as usual. At that time he was replaced by a footman, who was at that moment walking the corgis in the gardens. A maid who might have heard the bell was cleaning in a nearby room with the door closed. When the man asked for a cigarette, the Queen seized the opportunity by telling him she had none but could find some. Opening the door into the corridor she encountered the maid, who famously exclaimed: ‘Bloody hell, Ma’am! What’s he doing here?’ Just then the Page returned and, keeping the visitor calm with promises to find him a drink, led him through a door and grabbed hold of him. The police arrived, about 10 minutes after the first of the Queen’s calls. As an officer appeared in the corridor, Her Majesty shouted ‘Get in there!’ and the man was apprehended.

  The kidnap attempt on Princess Anne, the shots in the Mall and now this. The Royal Family has been fortunate that, given the scale of international terrorism in recent years, the occasions on which their personal safety has been most compromised have all involved not sophisticated or fanatical political operatives but solitary obsessives who have either not sought to kill or have lacked the means to do so. This one was the least harmful of them. Michael Fagan was an unemployed, 31-year-old schizophrenic. He had, it transpired, visited the Palace before, climbing through an open window and taking a bottle of wine. On this occasion, he had got over the garden wall and in through a window that proved to contain George V’s stamp collection. Unable to open a locked door into the corridor, he had exited through the window and, climbing a drainpipe, entered another – ironically, finding himself in the office of the man responsible for the Queen’s security. He wandered along a corridor, having acquired the ashtray, which he broke. He passed a housekeeper and greeted her, and he found his way to Her Majesty’s bedroom (which has a name-card on the door). He had apparently thought of committing suicide there, slashing his wrists with the glass, but decided that after all this ‘wasn’t a nice thing to do’. His mother later said that he was a great admirer of the Queen and had probably just wanted to tell her his troubles.

  The public was outraged. The Prime Minister apologised for the lapse of vigilance. Several police officers were abruptly removed from the Palace. It was discovered that Fagan had been seen entering the grounds by an off-duty officer who had reported him, but that he could not be found when a search was made. It was also learned that the alarm the Queen had twice pressed was not taken seriously because it tended to go off by accident. ‘It’s that bloody bell again!’ said the man on duty in the control room – switching it off for the second time.

  Her Majesty was much admired for her handling of the situation. She had experienced every woman’s nightmare, and had had no idea if Fagan was armed or determined to harm her. Yet she made light of the experience, quipping: ‘Well, I meet so many mad people that it didn’t surprise me so much.’ Once Fagan had been taken away, she apparently returned to bed and drank her morning tea. She had wanted no word of the incident to be made public, but the press found out and it became one of the major news stories of the year. A very considerable review of security, needless to say, followed. Apart from anything else, the officer outside the Queen’s door at night was now armed.

  Protection of the Royal Family has to be unobtrusive. In the USA, the presence around the President of large men with sunglasses and bulging jackets is seen as a useful deterrent to evil-doers. The Royal Family prefer discretion, and wish to look as ordinary as possible. Protection officers dress according to their surroundings – wearing tailcoats at Ascot, for example – and are remarkably difficult to identify or to distinguish from the other men who surround the sovereign. Individual members of the Family, both past and present, have hated the sight of uniformed officers in their vicinity and have wanted their police attendants to be invisible.

  For
the whole of the 1980s, and for the first time, her Prime Minister was a woman. Some in the media had predicted that the two ladies would enjoy a warm rapport, for they were not only the same gender but also the same age. Once the working relationship had begun, however, it was widely rumoured that the atmosphere was frigid, even hostile. The truth is somewhere in between. Because their dealings lasted more than 10 years, there will naturally have been ups and downs, moments of agreement and empathy as well as aloofness and irritation. It is unarguable that they were entirely different personalities, and had very little in common (though the Queen Mother, whose opinions carried great weight with her daughter, thoroughly approved of Mrs Thatcher). Like her predecessor, Edward Heath, the Prime Minister had no liking for small talk. She was not interested in racing or country pursuits, and did not enjoy visits to Balmoral. She also had a commanding manner, which, while it had made her an effective party leader, could tend to seem like lecturing when she explained policy at weekly audiences. The Prime Minister’s gender will not have been helpful, for the Queen happens to prefer dealing with men – her senior advisors have all been – and she does not like having to share the stage with other high-profile females. Nevertheless, Mrs Thatcher was a devout monarchist and admired the Queen’s sense of duty. Her Majesty has always been punctilious in respecting the choice of the electorate. Each was therefore inclined toward willingness to cooperate, no matter what their personal feelings may have been.