My Husband and I

by Ingrid Seward

  Around the time Edward left the school in the summer of 1977, he wasn’t the only one moving on. For the Queen and Prince Philip, they were about to become grandparents for the first time as the Silver Jubilee got underway; his eldest brother, now the Prince of Wales, was beginning to develop his own career and charitable interests; his aunt would soon be caught up in divorce. And while people would be singing ‘God Save the Queen’, it wasn’t always the version that the royal family would appreciate. This truly was a period of change for the royal marriage.

  Chapter 9

  WATCHING THE FAMILY GROW

  In November 1972, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. At a speech at the Guildhall in London, the Queen uttered those words which have made it into the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations: ‘I think everybody really will concede that on this, of all days, I should begin my speech with the words, “My husband and I”.’

  She went on to say: ‘A marriage begins by joining man and wife together, but this relationship between two people, however deep at the time, needs to develop and mature with the passing years . . . When the bishop was asked what he thought about sin he replied with simple conviction that he was against it. If I am asked today what I think about family life after twenty-five years I can answer with equal simplicity and conviction. I am for it.’

  For most people, family is the most important thing in their lives. It is what keeps them together and it is what keeps civilisation together. Life revolves around significant family events – education, career, marriage, children and grandchildren. Family life is also central to the monarchy, as Prince Philip explained. ‘If you have a monarchy, you have got to have a family and the family has got to be in the public eye.’

  But as at first one, then all but one, of the marriages of the Queen and Prince Philip’s children came to their bitter ends, the methods by which they were raised appeared to be woefully inadequate training for dealing with the demands and pressures of the modern age.

  Princess Margaret’s doomed marriage to man-about-town photographer Tony Armstrong-Jones in 1960 set a precedent. After numerous rows and affairs and two children, they divorced in 1978 – the first royal divorce since Henry VIII split from Anne of Cleves in 1540.

  The divorces of the Queen’s children were not because they didn’t have a loving and united family life. Despite the demands of their parents’ position, they all always had family time together – Christmas at Sandringham, holidays at Balmoral and Windsor – but to a very large extent they were left to their own devices or to other people to educate and bring them up. Their career opportunities were limited and for some of them were mapped out in advance. They either went into the forces or they did charity work or, in most cases, both.

  Trade has never worked for the immediate royal family as, whether they liked it or not, they were automatically separated by their heritage from the rest of the world. A royal prince or princess must act like one and not be seen to exploit their status for commercial gain, and this distinction has caused Prince Andrew some awkward moments. For the senior branch of the family, the isolation is reinforced by a protocol so rigid that even her children must bow or curtsey to the Queen.

  This problem with commercial activities became even clearer in 2001, when Prince Edward’s wife Sophie was duped by the ‘fake sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood – an undercover reporter for the now-defunct News of the World – into revealing all kinds of indiscretions about the royal family. She was terrified of the repercussions when, in order to promote her company R-JH, she was recorded mocking the then prime minister, calling him President Blair, and referring to his wife Cherie as ‘horrid, absolutely horrid’. She also described the Queen as the ‘old dear’.

  Both the Queen and Philip stood by her, but insisted she withdrew from her business life and that Edward gave up work at his film company, Ardent Productions. Prince Philip had wanted Edward to learn accountancy, or at the very least take a management training course, but it was not what Edward had wanted. To even suggest it was something of a radical step; for the son of a reigning sovereign to be directly involved in business was a new and worrying notion to some. Commerce had always been an anathema to the royal family. It was partly a snobbish thing; the British upper classes, bought up to regard land as the only honourable measure of wealth, traditionally looked down on ‘trade’. That was not going to influence Philip’s judgement. He had always been impatient and, on occasion, rudely dismissive of the establishment’s prejudices as patronising and old-fashioned.

  But direct involvement also went against the grain of the impartiality so vital to the good name of the royal family, and even Philip had to take that into consideration. It is why they prefer to play the role of ‘ambassador’ for all British industry, rather than be a salesman for any one company. As Philip acknowledged: ‘Any member of the family who has been anywhere near a commercial activity is always criticised because it is going to give them an unfair advantage.’

  Only Princess Anne managed to break free from the royal conventions to bring up her children in a relaxed and truly normal way, and she could do that only by turning her back on her royal inheritance. She was the first of the Queen’s children to marry. In keeping with royal tradition, the Queen offered her husband, commoner Mark Phillips, an earldom on their wedding day, but he declined, meaning that the couple’s children were the first grandchildren of the sovereign to have no title. Princess Anne had said she would prefer a quiet wedding, but in deference to her mother she eventually agreed to Westminster Abbey, the traditional venue for royal weddings.

  The ceremony on 14 November 1973, a showcase event for the royal family, was watched by an estimated 500 million television viewers around the world, and on the streets of London, crowds of people lined the streets to share in the celebrations, which had been declared a national holiday. Prince Philip walked his daughter up the aisle in much the same way he once did the Queen’s sister at her wedding. The bridegroom was a likeable man, educated at Marlborough College and Sandhurst, and eventually became a captain in the army. He was an excellent horseman, which was very important for Princess Anne at the time, and the Queen and Philip had high hopes for the marriage. They also liked Mark’s parents, Peter and Anne Phillips, who were the first in-laws to be integrated into the immediate royal family.

  When her first grandchild, Peter, was born on 15 November 1977, the Queen was about to conduct an investiture in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace. The baby was born at 10.46am and the investiture scheduled to start at 11, but she was so overjoyed she delayed the ceremony for an unprecedented ten minutes, while she asked for a call to be put through to Prince Philip, who was in Germany at the time, so she could tell him the good news. He was equally delighted. He admired his forthright daughter and had always been close to her. He was convinced motherhood would soften her edges and give her another dimension to her life.

  Four years later, on 15 May 1981, Anne gave birth to a daughter, Zara, meaning ‘bright as the dawn’, due to her somewhat prompt arrival into the world. As they grew up, the Queen loved having her grandchildren to stay with nanny Pat Moss, but she was firm with the discipline. She might have been a doting granny but she was a strict one too. ‘She was always chastising them,’ a rating on board the royal yacht Britannia recalled. ‘I’ve seen her shake Zara as she was so naughty running up and down the main stairs on board the yacht and refusing to stop even when the Queen told her to do so.’

  From the start, Anne refused to be influenced by public opinion or the opinion of her parents as to the way she brought up her children. That meant country pursuits and country schools. And so it was that the Queen and Prince Philip’s first grandchild, the great-great-grandson of King George V, began his education, not with a governess in the peaceful atmosphere of the Buckingham Palace schoolroom, but in a local nursery school in Minchinhampton. ‘I think the Queen found it all rather alarming,’ said a former footman. ‘But Anne wanted to do things her way an
d deal with the children herself.’

  Her father understood. ‘It’s only too easy to think of education as a process of teaching young people about conventional academic subjects in schools,’ he said. ‘That is a very important aspect, but to give education this exclusive quality is to imply that young people need no other instruction or experience to prepare them for adult life.’

  Despite her royal duties, including her increasing work with Save the Children (her chosen charity), Anne still found time to be with the children. It had been the idea of her private secretary, the late Peter Gibbs, to affiliate her with Save the Children, and the choice was nothing to do with her parents. It was the same with the way she brought up her children; they let her get on with motherhood and running her working life and were proud of her for doing so.

  For Prince Charles, however, there was no such escape. He was a prisoner of his position and he had to find a suitable wife, with every move he made closely scrutinised by the press. He eventually did – in the gangling, teenage form of a local Norfolk girl, who also happened to be a family friend and the granddaughter of an earl. Lady Diana Spencer was young, she was a potential beauty and, most important of all, she was unsullied by any sort of scandal or romantic past, as most of Charles’s previous girlfriends had been.

  In November 1980, while Diana was visiting Sandringham as their guest, the press interest in her peaked and photographers surrounded the estate hoping to get a picture or at least a sighting. It bothered the Queen, who was both irritated and worried by the attention being caused by Diana’s presence at the big house. She was uncomfortable with it but characteristically said nothing to Charles directly, but instead discussed it with Philip, who wrote their eldest son a carefully considered letter. Media pressure was creating an intolerable situation, said Philip, which meant that Charles must come to a rapid decision. Either he must offer Diana his hand or he must break off the relationship to avoid compromising her reputation.

  ‘Read it!’ Charles would furiously exclaim to friends in later years, whipping the letter out of his breast pocket. ‘It was his attempt to say that he was forced into the marriage,’ recalled one who saw the note. However, another who read it confided: ‘It was actually very constructive and trying to be helpful. It certainly did not read as an ultimatum.’

  On 24 February 1981, Prince Charles announced his engagement to the twenty-year-old Lady Diana Spencer. She was the youngest daughter of Viscount Althorp and his wife, Frances Shand Kydd, and the maternal granddaughter of Lady Fermoy, who was a friend and lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother. Diana’s father, later the 8th Earl Spencer, had served as an equerry to the Queen between 1952 and 1954 and to George VI for the two years before that. The family lived at Park House on the Sandringham estate and the Queen had known Diana fleetingly most of her life. Diana’s elder sister Sarah had been a girlfriend of Prince Charles’s and her other sister, Jane, was married to Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s assistant and later her private secretary.

  ‘She is one of us,’ the Queen wrote to a friend. ‘I am very fond of all three of the Spencer girls.’ Whether or not she realised the troubles brewing with Diana during the months leading up to the wedding, she chose to ignore them.

  It had started so well in Scotland the previous summer, when Diana had joined in with the after-dinner games, laughed at Prince Philip’s jokes, got wet, fallen into bogs, said all the right things. The nineteen-year-old passed into their august royal circle with flying colours. She had now received a magnificent oval sapphire and diamond engagement ring and was dazzled by romantic ambition, having caught what she called ‘the big fish’. But she had given little thought to what that actually meant for the future and hadn’t really considered what being a member of the royal family entailed. Now she would be condemned to live with the consequences. She was given a police escort wherever she went, moved into Buckingham Palace’s old nursery suite on the second floor and found that her freedom was gone.

  The Queen was sympathetic to Diana’s anxieties, but had no inkling that she was already suffering from the bulimia that was to plague her for years to come. As much as she wanted to help, the Queen had the affairs of state to deal with and many of her own problems. On 14 June 1981, she had been riding on her faithful horse Burmese at Trooping the Colour when six pistol cracks rang out. Sudden fear gripped onlookers – had the Queen been shot? Fortunately, they were blanks and the Queen was unharmed and, thanks to her excellent horsemanship, not unseated.

  ‘It wasn’t the shots that frightened her – but the cavalry,’ the Queen said of her horse afterwards. ‘If someone wants to get me it’s too easy,’ she added. It was a serious threat to her personal security and in the light of the forthcoming royal wedding, security in general and surveillance were stepped up.

  Just over six weeks later, the Queen and Prince Philip threw a pre-wedding party at Buckingham Palace for Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. It was the most lavish royal ball in over half a century, with a guest list that included just about every European royal, both major and minor, as well as America’s first lady, Nancy Reagan, a raft of prime ministers and heads of the Commonwealth. There were footmen and maids in attendance on each floor and every room in the palace was full, such was the pressure for accommodation. From the Queen’s point of view, the party was a showcase to entertain princes, kings and politicians. The wedding two days later was a state occasion and a showcase for the nation.

  On the Prince of Wales’s insistence, the wedding ceremony took place in St Paul’s, not Westminster Abbey, because the cathedral could accommodate the three orchestras he wanted and the vast number of guests deemed necessary to be invited for such an event. Weddings are a declaration of hope for the future and this one was seen and shared in by more people than any in history.

  That night the Queen and many of the important guests from the wedding attended a party at Claridge’s Hotel in London’s Brook Street given by party supremo Lady Elizabeth Anson. ‘I arranged for video screens to be erected so the guests could see the ceremony replayed,’ she recalled. ‘The Queen sat next to Nancy Reagan and Princess Grace on a circular sofa, all glued to the screens. There was a wonderful atmosphere as people were elated by the day and we all fell about laughing when someone thought the man in Lester Lanin’s band was the King of Tonga.’

  By the time November came around, Diana was expecting a baby and the press frenzy reached a new peak. After she was photographed pregnant wearing her bikini on a beach on the private Mountbatten estate in the Bahamas, the Queen was genuinely worried about Diana’s ability to cope and instructed her press secretary to invite all the Fleet Street editors to Buckingham Palace for a meeting to ask them to rein back. In an unprecedented move, the Queen appealed to them personally. It worked, but not for long.

  In April 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced Britain was at war when Argentina invaded the remote Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic in a dispute over sovereignty. A task force was sent to take back control of the islands by amphibious assault. Among the serving helicopter pilots onboard HMS Invincible was 22-year-old Prince Andrew. He had joined the Royal Navy in 1979, and had only recently completed his training. There were some in the government who felt he should not be sent into combat, and the Queen was concerned, not only as head of state but as a mother. However, Buckingham Palace issued a statement confirming she had no doubts that her son should take part and stay with his ship.

  Within a few days of the victorious conclusion of the war, the Queen had further good news. On Monday 21 June at 9.03pm, Diana gave birth to a son, who was to be second in line to the throne. ‘I am very pleased that we have another heir,’ the Queen told injured Falklands servicemen with characteristic understatement. She was of course delighted and saw the birth as one of the few positive things in an otherwise difficult year. It was about to get much worse.

  A couple of weeks later, Michael Fagan overcame the supposedly foolproof security system of Buckingham Palace and br
oke into the Queen’s bedroom on 9 July. By unfortunate coincidence, all the Queen’s family were out of London and her page, Paul Whybrew, was taking the corgis for their morning walk. The Queen’s first reaction on waking and seeing a man at the foot of her bed was that it must be member of staff and she told them to get out. Fagan has told many versions of the story, but suffice to say the Queen bravely kept him talking while she tried to summon security with the panic button – but there was no response. Eventually her housemaid appeared and screamed with shock when she saw the intruder. The Queen, still in her nightdress, managed to lure Fagan out of her bedroom and into the pages’ pantry, where her maid gave him a cigarette.

  When Whybrew returned with the dogs, she signalled to him to go into the pantry, which he duly did, plying Fagan with whisky until security arrived. The Queen claims she was not unnerved as it was so surreal she didn’t have time to be frightened. But she must have been rattled that such a thing could happen, although she has dined out on the story and imitated her maid’s horrified reaction ever since.

  What was particularly alarming was that someone could scale a wall of the palace, get through an open window, walk along a couple of corridors and enter the Queen’s bedroom undetected. Prince Philip, who had been sleeping in the adjoining bedroom, had left the palace early and was furious when the story broke that the entire world should know their sleeping arrangements. He was, of course, incandescent with rage that such a thing should be allowed to happen and applauded the bravery of his wife in remaining calm and collected in the face of the intruder.