A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II

by Michael Paterson

  Relations, however, depended to a large extent on the shifting circumstances of a very stormy decade. It is likely that the Queen approved of Mrs Thatcher’s stand over the Falklands, while the nadir was perhaps reached in 1983 when American forces invaded Grenada – part of the British Commonwealth – without informing London. The Queen was reported to be incandescent, and demanded to see Mrs Thatcher at once to discuss the situation. So insistent was she that the Prime Minister was obliged to leave halfway through an emergency Cabinet meeting on the matter to go to the Palace.

  There were other causes of friction. Mrs Thatcher’s refusal to support sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa was a massive disruption at the 1985 Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference, over which the Queen presided. The British Prime Minister’s unyielding opposition to the use of such measures, in the face of overwhelming contrary opinion, caused such ill-feeling that it threatened to destroy – by provoking widespread boycotts – the Commonwealth Games in 1986. The Queen, whose commitment to good race relations was unimpeachable, was at best anguished and at worst furious.

  It was reported, in a Sunday Times article in 1986, that Her Majesty was horrified by the Prime Minister’s authoritarian personal style and her confrontational approach to industrial relations, that her methods were ‘divisive’ and that she ‘lacked compassion’, especially towards the less privileged. This was speculation, even though the source of information was believed to be the Palace Press Office. It is safe to say that the Queen was indeed horrified by strikes and riots during those years – who would not have been? – and that she deplored any threat to the stability of her realm, but it can also be said with certainty that she would never have expressed views on the governance of the country that could have been heard by anyone, let alone communicated to the press. To do so would have been a breach of her carefully maintained political neutrality, and to leak such notions to the media would surely have cost someone in her Press Office their job.

  The perception of hostility between monarch and Prime Minister was heightened considerably by a Channel 4 programme broadcast in 2009. Part of a series on the Queen, it dramatised the relationship with a good deal of invented dialogue (Prince Philip sneers at ‘That bloody grocer’s daughter’, while Her Majesty crows that ‘I actually managed to get a word in edgeways!’ at a weekly audience). Between scenes, there were interviews with political figures whose memories seemed to support the thesis. It is worth remembering that even if the quoted outbursts were true, it is not unlikely that the Queen – in the heat of the moment and the privacy of her home – might say such things, without these being taken as permanent views or official pronouncements. It is also worth remembering that Her Majesty was to attend Mrs Thatcher’s 70th birthday party, and that she would make her a Baroness – an honour that, according to the Palace, ‘would not have been given without the utmost respect for the recipient’.

  On 23 July 1986, the second royal wedding of the decade took place. Prince Andrew, a career naval officer, married Sarah Ferguson, a young woman he had known as a child. She was the second daughter of a former Household Cavalry major who was polo manager to Prince Charles. She was also a friend of Princess Diana, whom she had met when she was 14. Diana, feeling out of place in the Family, saw the benefits of bringing in this lively and compatible girl as an ally, and was active in putting her in Andrew’s way, though Sarah was vivacious enough to catch his eye in any case. The couple sat together at lunch at a Windsor house party during Ascot Week in 1985. Flame-haired and boisterous, Sarah was patently good company for him. They shared a somewhat knockabout sense of humour, and mutual attraction was swift. Their engagement was announced the following March. This couple were entirely unlike the Waleses. There was no gap in years. Both were the same age, with Sarah a few months older, and there was no danger of introspection – or high cultural awareness – on the part of either.

  This time the wedding was at Westminster Abbey. As befitted a more modest event, things were on a smaller scale: the television audience was 500 million and the bride – who arrived in the Glass Coach just as Diana had done – had a 17-foot-long train. Shortly before the ceremony, the groom was created Duke of York, a title traditionally given to second sons and last held by the Queen’s father. At the ceremony, Sarah looked splendid – even if there were unkind mutterings about her weight – and she pleased traditionalists by promising in her vows to ‘obey’ her husband, not least because this was a phrase Diana had omitted. She was popular with the public, which had taken to using her nickname, ‘Fergie’, and which saw her as a no-nonsense, sensible country girl whose sense of fun would save her from being infected by the stuffiness of the Court. The Queen liked her, too. They often rode together at Windsor (the Yorks lived at nearby Sunningdale), and Her Majesty sometimes referred to her as ‘my daughter’.

  Yet Sarah somehow could not do anything right. Remarkably quickly she was being sniped at in the press for being too large, too noisy, too free-spending, too undignified. At Ascot in 1987, photographers captured a moment of juvenile horseplay – Sarah and Diana poking, with their umbrellas, the behind of another young woman. The newspapers reacted with annoyance, calling them ‘silly, simpering girls’ and accusing them of ‘fooling about in a most childish manner’, and this image stuck. The Duchess also became infamous for the number of expense-paid holidays she took, as well as for the fact that when her first child was born she did not even come up with a name for the girl for several weeks. For her part, Sarah found herself bored because her husband was at sea for lengthy periods and, like Diana, she found the constant expectations that went with royal status irksome and constricting. She was to admit, years later, that ‘I didn’t understand the rules’, but she seemed to make little attempt to learn them. Another later comment – ‘I was never cut out for Royalty’ – was one with which few would disagree.

  The creeping notion of monarchy as ‘just like the rest of us’ was seen to embarrassing effect in the case of Prince Edward. With Gordonstoun and a spell in New Zealand under his belt, he wished to attend Cambridge University. In past generations some of his forebears, including his grandfather, had done so (Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, was sent to Oxford as well – so as not to show favouritism), while his great uncle, later Edward VIII, was at Oxford. It was a mere formality to enrol, and the university was honoured to have them, though they tended to be kept apart from other undergraduates and tutored privately. Prince Charles – the first Royal to go to school, and whose parents had wanted him to be treated the same as any other pupil – had passed into Trinity despite having results that were modest by Cambridge standards. Half a generation later, Edward only just got away with the same trick. His enrolment at Jesus College provoked a protest from other students and objections from the faculty. He was pilloried in the satirical press, even though his tutor was subsequently to say that his mind was impressive. It was obvious that the notion of Royalty automatically helping themselves to the best of everything would no longer be accepted by public opinion, and the mistake was not made in the case of Prince Charles’s sons, or any of the younger Royals. It was clear that they would now have to work for, and earn, the respect that used to be automatic.

  Edward’s troubles were not over. He had been sponsored through Cambridge by the Royal Marines, in which he had enlisted as an officer, with a commitment – after graduation – to undertake its famously exacting training course. His interests by that time had crystallised, and led him in other directions. Joining in the summer of 1986, he initially did well in training, but his doubts increased and he decided that he would ‘wrap’, to use the Corps term for requesting discharge. Apart from earning his father’s fury, he faced the prospect of having to repay the cost of his university education. His decision to abandon the course took a great deal of courage, considering the humiliation that was heaped upon him and which he had known was coming. The standards involved were extremely high and beyond the reach of most people. Merely
trying was commendable and to fail was no shame whatever, and his reason for going was a change of mind rather than a failure to meet demands, but because people expect Royalty to have an inside edge – expert guidance, endless practice, all manner of behind-the-scenes assistance – for them seemingly to flounder in open competition suggests inadequacy indeed. The notion that they would compete on equal terms with their subjects in classrooms, playing fields and assault courses was one that appealed to the spirit of an egalitarian age. Sometimes it worked, as when Princess Anne gained success in equestrian events and competed in the Olympics. When there were mistakes, misfortunes or outright failures, however, the monarchy found itself vulnerable to ridicule. Just as bad, for them, was the notion that if they did succeed at something it could be attributed to some bending of the rules.

  As members of the Family – the younger generation, at least – became more accessible through interviews, the public came to see them as increasingly ordinary. Edward continued to court derision by taking a job as a production assistant with Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Really Useful Theatre Company, despite the fact that he was working for a living and experiencing a closer brush with ‘ordinary life’ than anyone in his family had known. He naturally wanted to progress to staging his own productions, and an attempt was made with the screening of It’s a Royal Knockout, a charity fundraising event organised by the Prince and involving his brother Andrew and sister-in-law Sarah as well as Princess Anne. It was modelled on a highly popular television programme, but stuffed with celebrities in a manner that is now commonplace. The event was intended to be slapstick; it raised money for good causes and it was not the Royals – who, in period dress, were team captains – that had to look and behave idiotically, running about and falling over. Nevertheless it was seen as undignified, the press did not like it and the Prince made no friends when he lost his temper with them afterwards. The endless replaying on television of the moment he stalked out of the press conference is a particular cruelty to a young man who had meant well and whose only crime had been a certain cockiness. In a family that lives constantly under scrutiny, youthful errors of judgement simply do not go away.

  Only Princess Anne’s conduct seemed to give complete satisfaction. She was created Princess Royal by the Queen in 1987 to acknowledge her work for charity. Whatever the problems caused or endured by her children, Her Majesty remained officially silent. She had disapproved of her son’s television programme, but made no public comment. Lord Mountbatten had admired the calm with which she weathered such squalls, once remarking that: ‘Most people can hide their family difficulties, but hers are always the focus of public attention.’ Where her children are concerned she will, in any case, hear no criticism.

  For them, and by extension for her, this was a painful transitional period between the privileged past and the meritocratic future.

  HORRIBILIS, 1990–2000

  ‘This is not a year on which I will look back with undiluted pleasure.’

  In 1992 the BBC released a documentary called Elizabeth R. In the year that commemorated the 40th anniversary of her accession, it was thought worthwhile to remind the public what Her Majesty did. This happens periodically. Because so much of her work goes on out of sight, or is too routine to merit mention, it is through this sort of vehicle with its ‘fly on the wall’ or ‘year in the life’ approach that both a national and an international audience can see how hard she works, how varied is the round of duties she performs and – through glimpses of her when off duty – how attractive her personality is in private. The footage had been filmed during 1990 and 1991. Viewers watched her hosting a visit by the President of Poland, chatting easily with the Prime Minister at Balmoral, welcoming troops home from the first Gulf War, touring parts of the United Kingdom, and – a note of mild farce – speaking on the White House lawn into a microphone that had not been adjusted after the much-taller President Bush had welcomed her. Only her hat and glasses were visible. She retrieved the situation when later she addressed another audience – the US Congress – by opening with the words: ‘I hope you can all see me today.’

  The programme was a great success. It was notable for the mirth, the banter and the sense of fun that the Queen displayed. She looked delighted to be doing her job. There was a sense of enjoyment, of pleasure and light-heartedness at going through the pre-arranged and formal functions that filled her days. She also showed a genuine curiosity about those who came to the Palace, a desire to meet people whose achievements had brought them to her notice – while awaiting one visitor, she rubbed her hands with excited glee. She laughed out loud at jokes or at mild mishaps that befell those around her. She seemed to smile more often in the course of this single programme than in four decades of public appearances.

  Perhaps the most revealing glimpse was of Her Majesty attending the 1991 Derby. Here she was especially in her element, peering through binoculars with her spectacles perched on her forehead. At one moment she rushed, like an excited schoolgirl, to the rail of the Royal Box to witness a thrilling moment (her horse came in fourth). That few seconds of footage made her seem less remote, and more likeably human, than any Christmas broadcast she has ever delivered.

  She was going to need a cheerful nature, for in the same year a bomb exploded under the house of Windsor, metaphorically if not literally. It was the publication of a book, Diana: Her True Story, by the journalist Andrew Morton. At first, it had not been taken entirely seriously, and most newspapers had not wished to serialise it, assuming that its contents were speculation or even the inventions of a ‘tabloid vulgarian’. The Sunday Times eventually agreed to publish parts of Morton’s work, and the revelations this offered were to make it one of the two or three most talked-about books of the decade. People read it with horrified fascination.

  Diana: Her True Story made claims that Diana had been miserable throughout her married life, that her husband had had an affair with his long-term friend Mrs Parker Bowles after their marriage, that she suffered from the eating disorder bulimia and that she had a tendency towards self-harm – indeed, that she had attempted suicide by throwing herself down a flight of stairs at Sandringham. These were extraordinary allegations. The public was astonished to read such things about a woman who seemed to have everything – beauty, health, position, attractive children and a limitless clothing budget. Millions had subscribed to the fairy-tale-come-true image of the Waleses. Could it really be such a sham?

  Many people, however, were aware that husband and wife had grown increasingly separate and bitter. Diana was newsworthy where Charles was merely dutiful. She courted the media, he did not (‘I’m not very good at being a performing monkey,’ he said). She was photographed extravagantly hugging their children; he subscribed to the view that family affection was a private matter. Their differences in outlook and attitude were to become rallying-points once open conflict broke out.

  Even if Morton was an experienced royal correspondent, however, and had access to ‘inside sources’, how could he have discovered so much that was deeply personal? And was he, in any case, a reliable chronicler? It happened that he had, since 1990, been working on a book about Diana. This might have become just another coffee-table ornament had she not authorised others to speak for her. Morton had – readers learned – been given extensive access to her friends, who had described her troubled life in considerable detail. Only after the Princess’s death was it revealed that, in fact, it was she herself who had provided most of the information – the posthumous reprint of his book contained dozens of pages of tape transcripts.

  By the early 1990s, Diana was in a state of armed rebellion against the Royal Family, the Court and her husband. She wanted to get her side of the story published, and having a journalist in her proximity provided the opportunity. Although she wished to do no damage to a throne her son would one day inherit, she wanted to exact a form of revenge on Charles and on the Court officials she saw as personal enemies – most notably her brother-in-law, Robert Fellowes,
the Queen’s Private Secretary. She resented the need to live behind a façade of hypocritical, pretended normality, and wanted the nation to know what she really had to endure. This was to be the first volley in what would be dubbed ‘the war of the Waleses’.

  The Queen was, predictably, horrified. Although it was not clear to what extent her daughter-in-law had been involved, it was rank treason to cooperate even indirectly with a book that presented the entire Family in such a bad light. The lack of comment from the Palace – this is a standard and effective way of staying out of disputes – seemed to confirm Morton’s allegations. In truth, there was a great deal Her Majesty had not known about the state of the marriage. The Windsors are capable of great family feeling. Their unique experience and isolation from others can draw them together so that Christmases, for instance, are boisterous occasions. They do not, however, share their problems. During years of mounting strife and estrangement, Charles did not inform the Queen of the full extent of his difficulties, and she did not ask. She had a strong aversion to interfering in her children’s lives. By the time he did explain the situation to her, in 1992, it was too late.

  It seemed that divorce was the likely outcome, the only solution to a marriage that had become too painful to continue. The Queen could not countenance this. Not only had she a strong personal belief in the sanctity of marriage, but it was also unthinkable that the heir to the throne – the next Supreme Governor of the Anglican Church – should be separated and publicly labelled as an adulterer. She contemplated the damage to the monarchy with even greater disquiet. She doubtless thought of the millions who had watched the wedding just over a decade earlier, and who had shown such kindness, loyalty and enthusiasm. These were Charles’s future subjects. How could they be let down so badly? How would they react? The monarchy relies on precedent to guide its actions, but there was no precedent for this. And then, of course, there were the personal allegations about Charles that had appeared in the book. He was a highly popular Prince of Wales. Although he lacked the flamboyance of his predecessor, the later Duke of Windsor, he was greatly liked. He was – and is – immensely conscientious. With a passionate concern for social problems and the environment, and the means to exert influence in these areas, he has made a massive contribution to national life. His only perceived fault had been an amiable eccentricity, reflected in a tendency to talk to plants (‘How long have you been a tulip?’ one cartoonist had him ask). Now for the first time in his life he was beginning to draw hostility as members of the public took sides.