A Brief History of the House of Windsor
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Michael Paterson is the author of A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II and Private Life in Britain’s Stately Homes, also published by Constable & Robinson.
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First published in the UK by Robinson,
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Copyright © Michael Paterson, 2013
The right of Michael Paterson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
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UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-804-0 (ebook)
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This book is dedicated to
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Royal Wedding
Chapter 1 The House of Windsor, 1917–present
Chapter 2 George V, 1910–36
Chapter 3 Edward VIII, ‘David’, January–December 1936
Chapter 4 George VI, ‘Bertie’, 1936–52
Chapter 5 Elizabeth II, 1952–present
Chapter 6 Charles, Prince of Wales
Chapter 7 Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, ‘Wills’
Chapter 8 A Middle-class Monarchy
Epilogue
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank several people for their time or trouble or interest with regard to this book. My wife Sarah has, with customary good grace, put up with the disturbance to our lives. Duncan Proudfoot and Becca Allen at Constable & Robinson have both shown a good deal more kindness and patience than I deserved. I have relied on my charming editor, Lynn Curtis, to make sense of the text. Her criticism has been very useful and her chatty emails a pleasure to receive. I would also like to thank two young friends: Yasmin and Adam al-Hassani, whose interest in the royal family spurred my efforts.
ROYAL WEDDING
‘The genius of an event like this is its simplicity. It’s simultaneously magnificent and very simple.’
Simon Schama, historian
April 2011
London is about to witness a national celebration that will – it is taken for granted – also be of interest globally. It will be followed with fascination, in some quarters even with hysteria, in countries all over the world. The audience will run into the tens of millions and the television rights will command a king’s ransom.
In the city all is in readiness. The flags and bunting are hung out, the souvenirs are in the shops, the bands and troops are rehearsed, the journey to Westminster Abbey has been timed to the second. The route has been scoured by anti-terrorist officers and the public chastened by the reminder that such a high-profile event provides a tempting opportunity for extremists.
On the day itself the crowds, blessed on this occasion by unseasonable, summer weather, have slept in the parks and on kerbsides, or have caught trains at hideous hours of the morning to ensure that they will see something. In a televisual age it goes without saying that the whole event can be more comfortably, and more comprehensively, enjoyed by those who have stayed at home. Such is the magnetic pull of atmosphere, however, that the desire to ‘be there’ has driven many thousands to the pavements of Westminster and St James’s. There they will endure long hours of boredom and discomfort for the sake of the few minutes’ excitement they will experience. It is obviously worth it, to judge by their swelling numbers.
The crowds wait, fortified with thermos coffee and by anecdotes swapped about similar events, or about the adventures experienced in getting here from Croydon, Rochdale, Toronto or Auckland. Vendors patrol up and down the crush-barriers with armfuls of little Union Jacks, calling their mantra: ‘WAVE yer flag!’ Where do these men go between such state occasions? One only sees them here.
Somehow the interminable hours will pass, the anticipation and excitement will increase. Eventually there will be cheering in the distance, swiftly coming closer. The noise will swell into genuine, spontaneous delight and the flags will be waved with impressive vigour. There will be the slow purr of a car engine or the swift clip-clop of carriage horses. Though the principal participants – the bride and groom, the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh �
�� will be immediately obvious, many others will not be recognized until their vehicle has passed. People will ask: ‘Who was that? Who did we just see? Was that Beatrice and Eugenie? Which was which?’
In the Abbey itself there are television cameras everywhere. Can it really have been within living memory – the time of the queen’s own wedding and then her coronation – that there was reluctance to allow filming of the ceremonies, or even their broadcasting on radio? The arguments that these are either private family occasions or religious services too holy to be treated as public entertainment have been decisively lost. Now it is entirely expected that the viewing public will see the occasion from start to finish. This even includes the empty moments before the service begins, as the congregation arrives. Men dressed in suits or uniforms or tailcoats wander in, sit down, gaze about them. Most are unknown to those watching at home, though a smattering of foreign royals will be recognized by those who read the glossy social magazines. Here is Prince Albert of Monaco, there is Haakon Magnus, Crown Prince of Norway, over there is what’s-her-name from somewhere else. The faces are known although the names and even the countries are not. In attendance, too, are the usual celebrities, picked out by the cameras as they sit and fidget. No state occasion seems to be complete without their over-familiar faces appearing somewhere in the background, a blurring of the boundary between ceremonial and entertainment. The royals arrive, the men mostly in uniform. Where does this notion come from that they dress to attend a wedding as if they were going to a war? Nevertheless, the splendour of scarlet and blue and gold adds considerably to the look of the occasion. This is one of those rare moments when it is the costume of the men and not of the women that most impresses.
There are reportedly not so many of the Great and Good – if that term can be applied to official guests – as might be expected. The couple allegedly chose the attendees largely themselves, so protocol has been kept to a minimum. Such was the level of worldwide interest that the public has heard the story of a Mexican woman, apparently obsessed with Britain’s royal family, so determined to attend the wedding that she has gone on hunger strike. If her plight fails to move the Palace into issuing her with an invitation, she has let it be known that for her to be given one would go some way to erasing a recent insult to her country that was broadcast on a British television programme. The British Ambassador has presumably been asked to tell her, as gently as possible, that this is not the basis on which wedding guests are chosen. If she got away with it, imagine the scale of self-inflicted harm that might result on future occasions. Populism can only go so far. But it is ironic that those who stand in the very shadow of the Abbey will, unless they are within sight and sound of one of the big screens that relay the service, see far less of what goes on than the woman watching in Mexico.
Why is there such interest in this occasion? Other countries have royal families too, and these are often filled with people who are attractive, charismatic and interesting, yet lack the same widespread appeal. In 2002 the Crown Prince of the Netherlands, Willem Alexander, was married in Amsterdam to a charming and beautiful young Argentinian woman. Interest within the country itself was immense, but scarcely a ripple reached the wider world. Two years later Felipe, son of Spain’s King Juan Carlos, married in Madrid. The television audience was huge . . . within the Hispanic world. The occasion made little impact elsewhere. Each groom was heir to a throne, his marriage a matter of national interest. In both cases the brides were middle-class women, sharing with Kate Middleton a comfortable background and an unfamiliarity with court protocol. They represented, in other words, the same fairy tale come true as she did. Yet no one, as far as is known, went on hunger strike in the hope of being invited to these weddings.
The British monarchy sets more store by ceremony than any other monarchy in the world. The United Kingdom is larger than any European country – other than Spain – that is ruled by a royal house. There is therefore an expectation that Prince William’s wedding will be bigger, better, more spectacular, than such an occasion would be elsewhere. There is also a feeling that – principally because the BBC has such experience and expertise in relaying state occasions – it guarantees to make good viewing. The British monarchy, like the Spanish, can stir a sense of affinity not only in their home country but wherever in the wider world their language is spoken or their culture has taken root. In the case of Britain this is, of course, greatly helped by the existence of the Commonwealth. For viewers in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and a host of smaller countries, the wedding they are watching is a matter of immediate interest because the queen is their head of state and this couple are their future rulers. Even other lands – principally of course the United States, whose citizens have long since rejected monarchical rule – still enjoy certain aspects of royalty: the televised ceremonial, the sense of continuity, even the occasional juicy scandal.
Naturally there has been general fascination with a photogenic young couple whose relationship has been followed by the media almost since it began. Celebrity magazines have made William and Kate their own, despite the fact that royalty and celebrity should be two entirely different things. It matters, of course, that the two of them appear to be so similar to other young people of their age group. He has managed to seem, despite an upbringing in surroundings that few would find comfortable, a very ordinary young man. Today he is wearing, for the first time in public, the uniform of the Irish Guards (he has just been appointed Colonel), and this is perhaps the most formal he has ever looked. His grandmother’s subjects are accustomed to seeing him in more casual attire – the jeans and sweatshirts of his teenage years, the combats of a soldier during his military training, the green jumpsuit of a helicopter pilot while serving in the Royal Air Force. Because these images are familiar to people and represent the stages of life through which they have followed William’s progress, they feel they know him well. The bride, naturally the focus of attention today, is also well known. The details of her short life and her family background have already been extensively raked over by the media. Everyone with an interest in these matters knows that her mother was an air stewardess, that her parents run a company that supplies accessories for children’s parties, that she was bullied at one of her schools and was captain of the hockey team at another. Even Kate’s childhood piano teacher has been interviewed on television to say that, though a pleasant little girl, she was not destined for greatness as a musician.
People of course enjoy the Cinderella aspect of the story – the notion that someone without social prominence or connections could win the heart of a prince on the basis of personal merit. If Kate could do such a thing, so could thousands, millions, of others. It is as if fate has reached into the crowd and plucked out one of them at random. She comes, of course, from a solidly upper-middle-class and public-school background, and has lived in a wealthy community in one of the most snobbish corners of England (‘the M4 Corridor’). There is no rags-to-riches element here, though the media has been able to score one or two points by tracing the differences in background between bride and groom. One newspaper published photographs of their respective great-great-grandfathers, taken during the First World War. Hers was a private in the Army, his was Commander-in-Chief. It has also been revealed that she has relations who run a chip shop in Sunderland, an emphatically working-class part of the north east of England, a world away from the green acres of Bucklebury in Wiltshire where she grew up. Though she has never met them, the mere fact that she is linked with Sunderland through her family will enable its inhabitants – and the owners of chip shops everywhere – to feel that they too have a stake in this event.
Her parents have been caught up in this to an extent that they must have been expecting ever since their daughter first brought William home. Their house has been shown on television, their wealth has been speculated about in the press (it is estimated to be costing her father over half a million pounds to finance his daughter’s big day), her mother has been criticized for an
unfortunate habit of chewing gum during solemn occasions. Her sister will become a celebrity through the events of today, her figure much admired – especially from behind – in her tight bridesmaid’s dress. From now on she will appear regularly in gossip columns, though the bride’s brother James will, by contrast, be largely ignored both during the service and afterward, despite the fact that he reads a lesson in front of what must be the world’s most intimidating audience with complete confidence and absolute perfection.
Once the ceremony is over and the principals have returned to the Palace, the crowd in the Mall is allowed to stream, slowly and under police control, toward the railings. This is the usual climax to any royal event that takes place in London. After an interval, while thousands wait patiently outside, the French windows on to the balcony will be opened by invisible hands and the family will appear, the signal for general uproar. Down on the street itself there is often pushing and jostling. Those who find themselves in the centre of the roadway can see nothing at all because their view is blocked by the great white bulk of the Victoria Memorial. Others are still struggling to get through one of the narrow gaps in the barriers between the pavement and the roadway, and to line up their cameras, when a sudden roar tells them they have already missed the great moment. Nevertheless they will stand there in the crush until the appearance is over and the family retreats inside.
The British monarchy, it is obvious, is popular. Its various celebrations – weddings and jubilees (of which there have been several in recent years) and coronations (the last was in 1953) – are regarded as national events. Though the queen and her husband are spoken of with respect, for the younger generations the public uses first names – Charles, Andrew, William, Harry, Kate – as if they were personal acquaintances. Only the minor members of the family, about whom much less is known, are referred to by their titles – the Duke of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester, Princess Michael. The immediate family, with its divorces, its outspoken patriarch, its tearaway younger son, is public property. There is a feeling that people know them, and are privy to their secrets. They know about their clothes, their tastes, their sense of humour, their love lives.