Elizabeth the Queen

by Sally Bedell Smith

  The proposed ban united animal rights activists concerned about the well-being of the foxes (typically killed by a pack of hounds at the end of each hunt) with a populist assault on the aristocracy. Blair embraced the measure as a purely political ploy to assuage the left wing of his party. Debate over the ban consumed more than seven hundred hours in Parliament—the largest amount for any piece of legislation during the Blair era. It also galvanized a series of protests by a “countryside alliance” in London that attracted vast peaceful crowds ranging from landed peers to humble countrymen dependent on the sport for their livelihood. Although the Prince of Wales didn’t join the protest, he and his sons were avid hunters, and he openly defended the sport, telling Tony Blair the ban was “absurd.” Blair, in turn, warned Charles against trying to “play politics with him.” Sophie Wessex reflected the prevailing view in the royal family when she said, “Fox hunting is just vermin control but people think it’s the aristocracy running round doing what the hell they like.” She added that Blair was “ignorant of the countryside,” which he later acknowledged was correct.

  Elizabeth II necessarily had to remain neutral. But as her cousin Margaret Rhodes observed, “She is a countrywoman at heart. She would defend hunting as one of the glues to keep the countryside together.” In her own quiet way, the Queen lobbied Blair during a weekend at Balmoral several years before the ban came to a vote. She patiently explained to him over dinner that hunting was an activity not only for the upper class but for regular people as well. Some of the riders, she said, were far from well-off and rented their horses from livery stables. She naturally assumed that Blair knew about these facilities, which were a staple of rural areas, but he had never heard of them.

  Her briefing helped him understand the economic as well as social significance of hunting for rural communities, and he later admitted that the ban was “one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret.” He claimed he could do nothing to stop the momentum toward eventual passage of the Hunting Act of 2004. In fact, he “allowed a compromise proposal to be overruled by his own party,” wrote Charles Moore in The Spectator, permitting a bill “to be invoked … to force through a total ban.” As a practical matter, fox hunting with hounds continued as clever huntsmen found various loopholes, and the anticipated widespread arrests never happened. Still, all members of the royal family had to stop fox hunting since it had become technically illegal.

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  ON SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2005, the Prince of Wales finally married the love of his life, Camilla Parker Bowles, thirty-four years after they first met, and nearly two decades after they resumed their romance in the mid-1980s. He was fifty-six and she fifty-seven.

  Camilla and her first husband had divorced in 1995, and she had been gradually brought into the fold in the years since Diana’s death. Her appearance at the two Golden Jubilee concerts in the Buckingham Palace gardens was the first time she had been seen in public with the Queen and the rest of the royal family. Although Camilla’s love affair with Charles had aggravated his problems with Diana, the Queen recognized her good qualities—salty humor, resilience, warmth, common sense, and above all devotion to Charles. Camilla enjoyed the field sports so important to the royal family, and she embraced all their traditions. Through years of vilification, Camilla maintained a discreet silence, which also impressed the Queen. “Camilla never whines,” said one of her longtime friends. “She takes things as they come and tries to turn them into something humorous.” When the tabloids were stirring up trouble in the weeks before the wedding, Camilla joked, “It’s just two old people getting hitched.”

  Under liberalized Church of England guidelines, the two divorcés could have been married in a religious ceremony, but church leaders agreed that given the couple’s well-known adultery, such a service would have offended too many priests and parishioners. Instead, they exchanged their vows at the Windsor Guildhall.

  As Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Queen decided it would be inappropriate to attend the civil service at the Guildhall, which was witnessed by twenty-eight family members. “Her decision assuredly had nothing to do with her private feelings but everything to do with her public role,” wrote Jonathan Dimbleby at the time. “Much as they might have wished otherwise, her advisers knew that they had no chance of persuading her otherwise—however un-motherly or even out of date it may have made her appear.” The Queen and Philip did attend the “Service of Prayer and Dedication” afterward at St. George’s Chapel.

  The congregation of 720 guests that filled St. George’s Chapel included the Blairs and other political leaders as well as representatives from royal houses in Europe and the Middle East, numerous titled aristocrats, and television and film stars such as Kenneth Branagh and Prunella Scales. The traditional service conducted by Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which Charles preferred to the more modern version. In contrast to the elaborate naval commander’s uniform he wore in Westminster Abbey a quarter century earlier, Charles was dressed in a morning suit, and Camilla chose an elegant floor-length pale blue silk coat dress with gold embroidery. When they emerged from the West Door of the chapel, they declined to kiss before two thousand well-wishers who had been admitted by ticket to the castle grounds, although Charles and Camilla, now known as the Duchess of Cornwall, did a five-minute walkabout, shaking hands and accepting congratulations.

  Everyone was in high spirits at the reception hosted by the prince’s mother in the state apartments at the castle. “I have two very important announcements to make,” said the Queen. “I know you will want to know who was the winner of the Grand National. It was Hedgehunter.” After the applause died down, she turned to Charles and Camilla, and said, “Having cleared Becher’s Brook and the Chair [the most dangerous and highest fences on the steeplechase course] the happy couple are now in the winners’ enclosure.” “There was a huge roar of approval, very un-monarchical,” wrote veteran broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, who was thrilled to be among “the great gangs of England” celebrating the marriage. Charles paid tribute to “my darling Camilla,” thanking her for “taking on the task of being married to me.” When Joan Rivers, a friend of the couple, was introduced to the Queen, the comedian said, “I’m going on Larry King tonight, and I’m going to tell him how beautiful your pin is.” “Thank you,” replied the slightly puzzled Queen.

  As the newlyweds left the castle for their honeymoon at Birkhall, they paused at the sovereign’s entrance where Camilla and the Queen kissed goodbye, the first time they had done so publicly. Princes William and Harry kissed their new stepmother as well before she climbed into the waiting car with “Prince” and “Duchess” scrawled across its windshield.

  WILLIAM GRADUATED FROM St. Andrews University in Scotland the following June. His younger brother, Harry, had already embarked on a career in the military, and William wanted to do the same. But first he worked on his father’s farm in Gloucestershire and at Chatsworth, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, to gain experience in estate management. He spent three weeks visiting financial institutions including the Bank of England, the London Stock Exchange, and Lloyd’s of London, which gave him “a better understanding of how all the different financial institutions work and how they fit together.” By January 2006 he was enrolled at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where Harry was completing his training.

  At twenty-two, William was already showing he knew how to meet royal expectations with a determination, not unlike his mother’s, to do things in his own way. When he sensed he was being “pushed,” he could be “quite stubborn,” yet he said he remained “open for people saying I’m wrong because most of the time I am.” He had learned to live in the glare of publicity, though he found being in the spotlight “kind of awkward.” At the same time, he emphasized that he valued “the normality I can get, doing simple things, doing normal things, more than anything, rather than getting things done for me.” He even liked to do his o
wn shopping, paying with his credit card because “I’m not organized enough to have cash.”

  The Queen and Prince Philip were a visible and important force in the lives of their grandchildren, who now numbered seven with the addition of Edward and Sophie’s first child, Louise, in November 2003. Elizabeth II paid particular attention to William as second in line to the throne. During his student days at Eton, he had often come to tea with his grandmother at Windsor Castle, and he had observed her from the time he was a little boy.

  In a November 2004 interview he said he was “very close” to both his grandparents. The Queen had been “brilliant. She’s a real role model,” he said. “She’s just very helpful on any sort of difficulties or problems I might be having. But I’m quite a private person as well, so I don’t really talk that much about what I sort of feel or think.” His grandfather “makes me laugh. He’s very funny. He’s also someone who will tell me something that maybe I don’t want to hear, but still tell me anyway and he won’t care if I get upset about it. He knows it’s the right thing to say, and I’m glad he tells me because the last thing I want is lots of people telling me what I want to hear.” William flashed his own self-deprecating wit when asked if he ever had to wear a disguise like a wig. “That’s a different issue actually,” said the prematurely balding prince. “But no, I haven’t.”

  ON THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2005, Islamist terrorists detonated bombs on London’s subways and buses, killing fifty-two people and injuring seven hundred others. That day the Queen ordered the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace lowered to half-staff. The next day she made the rounds of hospitals to console the injured, and she visited the wreckage of one of the bombings. Epitomizing the “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude of Londoners during the Blitz and years of terror attacks by the IRA, she said, “I want to express my admiration for the people of our capital city, who in the aftermath of yesterday’s bombings are calmly determined to resume their normal lives.” Looking up for emphasis, she added, with a trace of steel in her voice “That is the answer to this outrage.”

  A week after the bombings, a moment of silence was observed throughout Europe to honor the dead. The Queen assembled the royal family in the Palace forecourt as Big Ben chimed to 12 and everything came to a standstill. “There in one of the archways stood the Queen,” said a courtier, “with her handbag, for two minutes, all alone, symbolizing unity and stability.”

  That October, Margaret Thatcher celebrated her eightieth birthday with a reception at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Hyde Park. Unlike her royal contemporary, the erstwhile Iron Lady had slowed considerably, her mind impaired by several strokes. But she was visibly excited that the Queen was coming to the party. “Is it all right if I touch her?” asked Thatcher as Elizabeth II was approaching. She extended her hand, which the Queen held steady as her former prime minister curtseyed, although not as low as before. The Queen then tenderly guided Thatcher through the crowd of 650 guests. “That was unusual for the British, who know you are not supposed to touch the Queen,” said Charles Powell. “But they were hand in hand, and the Queen led her around the room.”

  By the time Elizabeth II reached her own eightieth birthday six months later, she and her children had reached a welcome state of equipoise. Charles did a televised tribute to his “darling mama” and hosted a formal dinner for twenty-five family members at Kew Palace with the Queen seated between himself and William. The heir to the throne was happily settled with Camilla, dedicating himself to his hundreds of charities and causes, Andrew had been working for five years as Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment, Anne and her husband assiduously went about their duties, and Edward and Sophie had left the private sector to work full-time for the “Firm.” On Edward’s marriage in 1999, the Queen had announced that he would become Duke of Edinburgh when his father died. Although Philip at age eighty-five continued to keep a heavy schedule of engagements, his youngest son was now sharing a number of commitments including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme for young people who had met high standards for physical stamina and community service.

  On serious issues, Elizabeth II remained vigilant about avoiding public comment unless advised by government officials, and her advisers were continually on guard to shield her political views. But on duty in private settings, she occasionally let her commonsense opinions slip out. Her friend Will Farish had been unhappy as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s and had resigned in the summer of 2004. When his successor, Robert H. Tuttle, was presenting his credentials to the Queen the following year, the American embassy was embroiled in a controversy with Ken Livingstone, the left-wing mayor of London, who had imposed a “congestion charge” on vehicles entering the city, ostensibly to reduce traffic. Officials at the embassy had decided not to pay the charge, contending that it was a form of taxation from which Americans were exempt.

  After the credentials ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the Queen said to Tuttle, “I understand you think the congestion charge is a tax.” “Yes, ma’am,” replied Tuttle. “Well, it is a tax,” she said. “I looked at Michael Jay, who was the head of the diplomatic corps,” recalled Tuttle, “and he sort of blanched.”

  The Queen seemed to take pleasure in being less formal, and less inclined to stand on ceremony. On her fifteenth visit to Australia, in March 2006, she attended the Commonwealth Games, which she liked to call the “Friendly Games.” In that spirit, she joined the competitors in their canteen for lunch, and happily posed with one woman athlete who put her arm around the Queen’s back. Nor did Elizabeth II flinch when Eddie Daniel, a twenty-year-old boxer from the Cook Islands, slid into a seat next to her and enthusiastically kissed her on the cheek. She “just smiled back” at what he called his mark of respect. “She is so cool, man,” he added.

  On the first day of Royal Ascot that June, the Queen opened a completely rebuilt racecourse and grandstand. The complex had been demolished two years earlier (with Royal Ascot in the intervening year held at York Racecourse), and both Elizabeth II and Philip had been intensely involved in the plans and £200 million redevelopment of the site, which is leased from the Crown Estate. Peregrine Cavendish, the 12th Duke of Devonshire (known as Stoker to his friends), whom the Queen appointed as her representative at Ascot, oversaw the project and consulted with the royal couple from the inception of the plans in 1996. “Prince Philip has experience with all sorts of building projects,” explained Devonshire, “so he looked at it from a practical use angle, while she looked from a racing angle.”

  The Queen’s interest was far-reaching and at times surprisingly detailed—from the particulars of the turf to the construction of the smaller but no less well-appointed royal box: two curved rows of four comfortable armchairs, television monitors below showing four different angles of the course, an area in the rear of the box where the other guests could stand to watch the race, and a tearoom with round tables behind. “She was most interested in the actual racing surface,” said Stoker Devonshire, “and in how it would affect the horses.” They grew special grass on seventy acres in Lincolnshire, harvested it at the right time, and returfed the track.

  The new stand was a soaring structure with a light-filled galleria behind the boxes and general admission seats. Numerous old-timers complained about its sleek modernity and said its escalators reminded them of an airline terminal. They also objected to diminished sight lines for some racegoers, a less picturesque paddock, the quality of the food, and the general difficulty getting around.

  The Ascot management spent an additional £10 million to improve the viewing at the lower levels, and the Queen brought in her cousin Lady Elizabeth Anson, a veteran party planner, to enhance the look and feel of the hospitality tents in the Royal Enclosure, and to improve the menus.

  TO MARK HER eightieth year, the Queen permitted two anodyne documentaries devoted to her life and work, neither of which presented the personal glimpses she had allowed nearly four decades earlier in Royal Family. She also part
icipated in a somewhat contrived film about a new portrait of her being painted by seventy-five-year-old Rolf Harris, an Australian-born television entertainer and artist. When the BBC proposed the project, the Palace took only two days to say yes—further evidence of the Queen’s willingness to be seen by the public in less traditional ways.

  All efforts by her advisers to shape the Queen’s image paled beside the impact of The Queen when it appeared in theaters in the autumn of 2006 to popular and critical acclaim. The director, Stephen Frears, said, “We made the Queen a Hollywood star”—not a notion she would savor. But the film did serve to define her anew and, odd as it seems, merged the real Queen in the public imagination with Helen Mirren, a lifelong republican whose newfound admiration for Elizabeth II made her into a “Queenist.” Although much of the dialogue and many of the scenes were pure invention by screenwriter Peter Morgan (Prince Philip may have called his wife “Sausage,” but never “Cabbage”), the film was thoroughly researched and grounded in reality.

  Its appeal lay in imagining moments that contrasted the Queen’s exalted status with her appearance in curlers as her worst nightmare unfolded after Diana’s death, in balancing her shortcomings with an essential goodness, and in satisfying the public’s need for her to reflect their own anxieties, doubts, and sadness. “What is brilliant is that the film has a mythical quality,” said Frances Campbell-Preston, lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother for thirty-seven years. Although the words were “not necessarily the Queen’s words,” she said, “there is a truth.”

  “I gather there’s a film,” Elizabeth II said to Tony Blair in an audience just after the movie opened. “I’d just like you to know that I’m not going to watch it. Are you?” “No, of course not,” said Blair. One of her relatives gave her a full rundown on the telephone as the Queen listened silently. When told the film was good for the monarchy, she asked why. “Because it showed why you didn’t come down to London, that you were being a grandmother as opposed to temporarily not being queen,” said her relative, who added that she shouldn’t see it because it would be “a reminder of a really ghastly week” and that “to see herself portrayed by someone would be irritating.”