It had been agreed they could travel despite the tense situation in Kenya, which was facing the beginning of the Mau Mau uprising. The highlight of that leg of their tour was to spend a night at Treetops, a renowned game-viewing lodge in the Aberdare Forest game reserve, 100 miles from Nairobi. The lodge was built in the branches of an enormous tree, accessible only by ladder, overlooking a lake with a salt lick, a favourite watering hole for big game.
A dining area and three narrow bedrooms led onto the elevated viewing platform where the royal party, including the princess’s maid Bobo MacDonald, lady-in-waiting Lady Pamela Mountbatten and Prince Philip’s equerry Mike Parker, were to spend the night. They had been warned there was a possibility of being charged by an elephant on the way to the lodge, but unsurprisingly Prince Philip wanted to continue, and the group moved as silently as they could. There was a fifty-yard run of comparative open ground to cross before reaching the narrow wooden struts of a ladder into the tree. The princess did not falter and walked straight towards the ladder, ignoring the nearest elephant, which was standing right underneath, flapping her ears menacingly.
Once in the tree, the princess filmed the unfolding scene with her cine camera and couldn’t be drawn from the array of game that gathered at the water hole. When the sunset had faded and it was no longer possible to use the cameras, the group talked in hushed voices about the game they had seen and what they might expect later. Concern was expressed for the princess’s father, who had stood hatless at London airport on a bitterly cold day to wave her goodbye. Eric Sherbrooke Walker, the owner, recalls in his book, Treetops Hotel, that the princess replied warmly: ‘He is like that. He never thinks of himself.’
‘She then referred to her father’s long illness and the family’s great pleasure when it was believed he had reached the turning point. She told us that one day he raised his walking stick to his shoulder and declared, “I believe I could shoot now.” She was closely informed of her father’s plans and was able to say he was planning to shoot on the following day. Clearly from the tone of her conversation when she said good-bye to her father, she was hoping for a complete recovery.’
At sunrise, the princess – or the Queen, as she had unknowingly become during the night – was out on the balcony with her cine camera adjusting the light filter to film a rhino, silhouetted against the African dawn, at the salt lick. Prince Philip was keeping an eye on another rhino, which arrived at the scene puffing and blowing as if a bitter battle might ensue. Mike Parker went onto the balcony and believed he was with the Queen when the new reign began, as they looked at the dawn coming up over the jungle and saw an eagle hovering over their heads.
‘I never thought about it until later,’ he recalled, ‘but that was roughly the time when the King died.’
After a breakfast of bacon and eggs cooked over the wood-burning stove, they all climbed down from the tree and walked back through the clearing, this time without incident. Mindful of the previous afternoon, Walker turned to the princess and said rather pompously, but still unaware of what had happened in London, ‘If you have the same courage, Ma’am, in facing what the future sends you as you have at facing an elephant at eight yards, we are going to be very fortunate indeed.’
As the princess drove away, she waved and called, ‘I will come again!’ After Kenya became a republic within the Commonwealth in 1964, it was to be another twenty years before she returned.
Four hours later, the royal party were resting back at Sagana Lodge some twenty miles away when the editor of the East African Standard telephoned the princess’s private secretary, Martin Charteris, who was staying at the only local hotel. The editor anxiously enquired if the teleprinter reports coming in from London about the King’s death were true. It was news to Charteris. By a twist of fate, a telegram sent to Government House in Nairobi had not been decoded because the keys to the safe holding the codebook had been misplaced. A thoroughly unnerved Charteris checked the news with Buckingham Palace and immediately contacted Sagana Lodge. He spoke to Mike Parker, who turned on his shortwave radio and heard the announcement from the BBC. He then woke a slumbering Prince Philip to tell him of the news. It was 2.45pm local time and already 11.45am in London.
According to Parker, Philip looked as if the whole world had dropped on his shoulders. ‘He took the Queen up to the garden and they walked up and down the lawn while he talked and talked to her.’ Pamela Mountbatten, who had known Philip since he was a child and had come to stay with her family, remembers his reaction: ‘It was as though the world had fallen on him. I mean, he put a newspaper over his face and just remained like that for about five minutes. And then he pulled himself together and said he must go and find the princess . . . she was having a rest in her bedroom . . . and so they went for a walk in the garden and you could tell, walking up and down, up and down, that he was telling her. And then she came back to the Lodge – and one just thought, this poor girl who really adored her father, they were very close. And I think I gave her a hug and said how sorry I was. And then suddenly, I thought, my God, but she’s Queen!’
The Queen has never spoken about her reaction to her father’s sudden death except to say, ‘My father died much too young and so it was all very sudden kind of taking on and making the best job you can.’ She was in shock as she had not expected it. As Princess Margaret said, ‘He died as he was getting better.’ Three months later, there is a clue to her feelings in a touching letter to her father’s assistant, Sir Eric Miéville.
‘It all seems so unbelievable still,’ she wrote, ‘that my father is no longer here and it is only after some time has passed one begins to realise how much he is missed.’ She added: ‘My mother and sister have been wonderful, for they have lost so much – I do have my own family to help me.’
In the following hours, when preparations were made to return to England as quickly as possible, the Queen calmly and mechanically wrote letters and telegrams while Philip sat beside her. ‘She was sitting erect fully accepting her destiny,’ Martin Charteris recalled. ‘I asked her what name she would take and she said, “My own of course.” ’
‘Poor guy,’ Parker recalled, talking about Prince Philip in 1999. ‘He needed something to do. But he was there with the Queen; that was the thing; he was like a bloody great pillar.’ Back in London, the news had been relayed to Prime Minister Winston Churchill four hours previously. Operation Hyde Park Corner, with coded plans for the death of the King, was already in full swing. Churchill’s private secretary, Jock Colville, recalled that when he went to Churchill’s bedroom, he was sitting alone with tears in his eyes staring into space. ‘I had not realised how much the King meant to him,’ he said. ‘I tried to cheer him up by saying how well he would get on with the new Queen, but all he could say was that he did not know her and that she was only a child.’
A child she was not. The mourning clothes which had been packed so carefully had gone on ahead with the official luggage, and the new Queen was forced to wear a floral frock and white sandals instead of her black dress, which she was not happy about, as she wanted to show proper respect for her father. She requested no photographs be taken as she left the lodge for London, but there were a couple of photographers already gathered outside.
‘We stood silently outside the lodge,’ one recalled, ‘as the cars drove away in a cloud of dust, not one of us taking a shot at that historic moment. Seeing the young girl as Queen of Great Britain as she drove away, I felt her sadness, as she just raised her hand to us as we stood there silent, our cameras on the ground.’
When the Queen arrived back in London on 7 February, she found a nation in mourning. Flags were at half mast, cinemas and theatres were closed and sports fixtures cancelled. The diplomat Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh described the poignant scene as they walked down the steps of the aircraft. ‘There was a touching picture of [the Queen] walking down the steps from the aircraft with the Privy Council lined up to greet her. One could just see the backs of their poor old heads: Winston,
Attlee, AE [Eden], Woolton and so on. The twentieth-century version of Melbourne galloping to Kensington Palace, falling on his knees before Victoria in her nightdress.’
Philip had waited his turn to exit the plane. He knew that his role as head of the household had changed for ever. Furthermore, his hopes for a continuing career in the Royal Navy were dashed. Although the death of the King at such an early age could not have been foreseen, the Queen’s whole life had prepared her for the change of circumstances. Not so Philip, who described his feelings years later: ‘Within the house, whatever we did, it was together. I suppose I naturally filled that position. People used to come to me and ask me what to do. In 1952 the whole thing changed, very, very considerably.’
As the sovereign, the Queen had duties from which Philip was excluded. She had her weekly meetings with the prime minister. Every day she was sent red boxes full of papers – Cabinet minutes, Foreign Office telegrams, documents, briefs and drafts – none of which were shown to Philip. ‘It was bloody difficult for him,’ said Mike Parker. ‘In the navy, he was in command of his own ship – literally. At Clarence House, it was very much his show. When we got to Buckingham Palace, all that changed.’
In his new role as consort, Philip sought the guidance of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who as the husband of Queen Juliana had fifteen years’ experience as consort, four of them since she took the throne. Bernhard was one of the founders of the World Wildlife Fund and its president before Philip took on that role. Bernhard gave him the benefit of his advice: ‘You are new at this thing and you probably don’t realise what you are up against. Practically everything you do will be a subject of criticism. You can’t ignore it because some of it may be justified. And even if it isn’t it may be politic to heed it. But don’t let it get you down. In this job, you need a skin like an elephant.’
The move from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace was insisted upon by Winston Churchill. This was an enormous wrench for Philip, who had put so much time and effort in the refurbishment of Clarence House, the only home he had ever been able to call his own. For the Queen, she was quite simply going back to the place where she had lived for much of her life, so she felt at ease there. The palace was staffed with courtiers who answered only to the monarch. ‘Philip was constantly being squashed, snubbed, ticked off, rapped over the knuckles,’ according to Mike Parker. ‘It was intolerable. The problem was simply that Philip had energy, ideas, get-up-and-go, and that didn’t suit the Establishment, not one bit.’ The same thing went for Windsor Castle, which became the weekend retreat of the royal family.
Another major blow to Philip that year came when it was decided that their children and their children’s children should bear the name Windsor, after the Queen’s family, not his name, Mountbatten. Philip was not just furious, he was deeply wounded. It was emasculating. It was cruel. ‘I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children,’ he protested.
‘It hurt him, it really hurt him,’ Countess Mountbatten recalled. ‘He had given up everything – and now this, the final insult. It was a terrible blow. It upset him very deeply and left him feeling unsettled and unhappy for a long while. Of course, I don’t blame the Queen.’ It was of course Churchill, encouraged by Tommy Lascelles, who had decided on this, and together they forced the Queen’s hand. She was too young and inexperienced to stand up for what she wanted for her husband, which was the name Mountbatten-Windsor.
Frustration, irritation and disappointment were daily occurrences for Philip, but outside the palace, he soon found roles to which he could apply his energies. The Queen made him Ranger of Windsor Great Park, in effect estate manager. He subsequently took an overseeing role at all the royal estates and greatly improved their efficiency. He was also made chairman of the Coronation Commission, which included the Duke of Norfolk, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The commission would consider every aspect of the Coronation, including the question of whether to permit the ceremony to be televised. Meanwhile, the Royal Mint had to issue new coins bearing the Queen’s head, and Philip was made president of the committee to advise on the design of new coins and medals.
With the help of Mike Parker, who had become his private secretary, Prince Philip set about the reorganisation of Buckingham Palace, much to the consternation of the old guard. It was a struggle, but slowly he set about modernising things. He initiated a footman training programme. ‘The old boys here hadn’t had anything quite like it before,’ he said. ‘They expected the footmen just to keep on coming.’
He set up an organisation and methods review and he worked his way around every one of the palace’s 600 rooms – discovering a deep underground wine cellar in the process that went on for ‘miles and miles’, with vintages and menus that dated back to Victorian times. He set in hand the redecoration of the private apartments on the second floor, installing a kitchen so that food did not have to be delivered along miles of draughty corridors. It was a massive and important job, albeit largely an unseen one, but it was clear that if he wanted to have an influence on how they lived their lives it would have to be done in ways such as this, as his public role was always going to be secondary to the Queen’s.
Two days before the Coronation on Tuesday 2 June 1953, those who had not secured seats in the platforms along the processional route began to camp out on the streets to get a standing place. Eventually, half a million people would line the route in the lashing rain and wind. In typical British spirit, the crowd shared cups of tea with the occasional nip of brandy. ‘A raincoat city’ was how the Daily Mail described it as an estimated 10,000 people camped on the pavements that stretched from Marble Arch to Hyde Park Corner, many in what they described as their ‘tent homes’. ‘Children played hide and seek around the trees and tents and families from all over Great Britain and the Commonwealth joined in community singing. Everyone was having a wonderful time,’ the newspaper reported.
Back at Buckingham Palace, Prince Philip had been told that Everest had been conquered when word reached Britain just before dawn that the Union Jack had been planted on the summit of the 29,002ft mountain by two members of the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition, led by Colonel John Hunt. New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his guide Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on Friday 29 May 1953. The conquest of Everest was probably the last major news item to be delivered to the world by runner and the encoded message to The Times was received and understood in London in time for the news to be released on the morning of the Coronation. ‘The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and other members of the royal family were delighted,’ the Daily Mail wrote. ‘She sent her congratulations to the expedition.’ Eileen Parker recalled pithily: ‘My husband and Prince Philip were more interested in watching that than going to the ceremony.’
Although the war had ended eight years previously, there was still some rationing in place for sugar, meat and many other types of food, with confectionery rationing having ended earlier in the year. Because of this, the mood in Britain at the time of the Coronation was still gloomy as austerity continued to play a part in everyone’s life, so the news of the conquest of the great mountain combined with the Coronation itself was a symbol of hope and the dawn of a new era. It was almost as if the new Queen was some sort of priestess who was going to make everything right again.
‘Now with Elizabeth as our guiding star, and given a respite from monstrous calamity,’ the Daily Mail commented, ‘there is every prospect that this island and its sister countries will go forward into a future better even than the best of the past.’ It was an awesome responsibility even for a woman of her will and determination. Without Philip at her side, she would have been daunted by the expectations that lay ahead of her, but he could make her laugh and take a more prosaic view about the challenges and just get on with it.
‘All our hopes rested with this one woman and how she was going to change everything,’ said Lady Jane Rayne, one of Elizabeth’s maids of honour. ‘The
war had changed an awful lot of things,’ Lady Anne Glenconner, another of the Queen’s maids of honour at the Coronation observed, ‘but for the Coronation, we really went back to before the war, you know. Everything started again as though the war hadn’t been.’
Indeed, at this point, the couple were adored in very much the same way as the Prince and Princess of Wales were thirty years later. Thousands of people would turn out to cheer them on foreign tours and they were talked about and written about as characters from a fairy tale. ‘In the first years of the Queen’s reign, the level of adulation – you wouldn’t believe it,’ Prince Philip said years later. ‘You really wouldn’t. It could have been corroding. It would have been very easy to play to the gallery, but I took a conscious decision not to do that. Safer not to be too popular. You can’t fall too far.’
Philip’s role in the Coronation was to kneel before his wife, taking the ancient oath of fealty: ‘I Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, do become your liege man of life and limb and of earthly worship; and faith and truth will I bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks. So help me God.’ He then had to stand and kiss her cheek and back away. At the rehearsal, possibly feeling a bit emasculated, he did not play his part with any conviction. In fact, he mumbled the words at high speed, missed the Queen’s cheek and retired backwards fast. The Queen told him off: ‘Don’t be silly, Philip. Come back here and do it properly.’
Of course, he performed seriously on the day, but his touch on the crown was a little heavy-handed and the Queen had to fleetingly adjust it. But the incident in the rehearsal illustrated just how committed the Queen was to doing things right at all times; she understood it was an important part of her role, and that she had a duty to fulfil.
My Husband and I Page 9