My Husband and I

by Ingrid Seward

  The Queen’s response was to listen to what those in the younger generation had to say, and by that stage she had much to listen to: Diana’s tearful accounts of the state of her marriage; Princess Anne’s horror over love letters addressed to her being stolen from Buckingham Palace and offered for sale; Prince Charles’s despair at Diana and his reunion with Camilla Parker Bowles. The Queen, aware of the broader picture, did just what she always did and counselled patience. She told Diana what she told her own children: ‘Just wait and see what happens.’

  She was about to find out that things could get very much worse.

  Chapter 10

  TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

  Throughout their seventy-year marriage, the Queen and Prince Philip have carried out their duties according to their own beliefs about how to uphold the institution of the monarchy. Together they have met nearly all the great leaders of the age, some good, some bad and some utterly deranged, and together they have visited most of the world’s countries. But nothing, including bereavement, death and disaster, could have prepared them for the troubles which overwhelmed the royal family in what she would term the Annus Horribilis of 1992. Early in her reign, the Queen had faced some challenging times as she struggled to cope with her new role as monarch, but these were small by comparison.

  During her first Commonwealth tour of Australia in 1954, the Queen was welcomed with great warmth and enthusiasm. With her handsome and cheerful husband at her side, they were the picture of a truly romantic couple and heralded a brighter and more successful future. But, despite the success of the trip, there were times when it became overwhelming. She came from a very sheltered background and she remained painfully shy. She was still only twenty-eight, in a distant land, and her children and her family were half a world away. She had been Queen for only two years and the responsibility still terrified and confused her.

  She was head of a great and venerable institution and, by her way of thinking, it would have been an egotistical abjuration of a sacred obligation to surrender to self-doubt. But with Philip by her side, she felt she would always be able to cope. He made her see the funny side of situations, and he was often the only person she could talk to in a superficial vein about what they had seen and done; she didn’t have to be on her guard with him, worrying in case she might say the wrong thing, or create the wrong impression that would provoke a minor controversy. He gave her some much-needed courage when she was meeting the hundreds of people who were waiting for her. Sometimes he could be brusque, sometimes he made what became known as his gaffes – but they were often his way of relieving the tension. What was important was that he always managed to make her laugh as they faced the tedium, pitfalls and difficulties of royal duties together. In short, they learned how to work together to overcome the normal type of obstacles and challenges that life in the public eye threw up, but this sort of experience – honed through the following decades – was not going to be sufficient in 1992.

  For all that their lives were extremely comfortable, there were also some major and very personal issues to deal with early on. The troubles had started immediately after the Coronation, when the British press picked up on Princess Margaret brushing an imaginary bit of fluff off Group Captain Peter Townsend’s uniform. This tiny but intimate gesture was noticed, and people immediately recognised the significance of it. Townsend had been an RAF pilot during the war, before moving to work in the royal household in 1944. What made the whole thing more significant was that Townsend had recently divorced his wife, and in those days that was deemed to be beyond the pale in polite society – especially when a member of the royal family was involved.

  The Queen’s closest friend was always her sister. She loved the mercurial, whisky-drinking, cigarette-smoking beauty whose life held such promise. She would tolerate in Margo, as she called her, things she wouldn’t consider in anyone else and, together with the Queen Mother, they formed a tight, impenetrable trio. They sometimes conversed in French (the Queen’s French is better than Philip’s, despite his cosmopolitan background) and they had no need to leave their own enclosed, privileged circle. If they could, they lunched together, dined together, holidayed together and spoke to each other on the telephone at least once a day. If the Queen Mother thought anyone in the family was shirking, she would tell her daughter to remind them of their duty or ‘devoir’ as she called it. Sometimes in a loud stage whisper she would say ‘devoir’, and the Queen knew exactly what she meant.

  Prince Philip was wary of the trio. The popular conception is that Margaret and Philip never particularly liked one another. That is not true, but when she was younger Margaret said she found him ‘cold’. He made a play of his disapproval of her and subjected her to his constant sarcastic teasing, but she became used to him and would not allow him to upset her. Eventually her wit triumphed over his and they became sparring equals, if not the closest friends, and her only comment on him was that she liked him. He was there for her when she needed him as an impassive and often wise counsellor, who was not swayed by the snobbery or restrictions of those rather pretentious times. Philip had been an outsider, Townsend was made an outsider and Margaret became an outsider by her own volition.

  As far as the Townsend affair was concerned, Philip kept out of it as much as possible, only listening to what he was told and then trying to make light of it. He recognised that his duty lay with his wife and trying to keep her on an even keel when dealing with the dramas caused by her sister and Townsend’s love. In November 1952, Townsend had told both him and the Queen that he and Margaret were madly in love and wanted to marry, for which he had to obtain her consent. He had just obtained his divorce, but chose not to inform the Queen Mother of his intentions regarding her daughter for another three months. Philip’s advice to his wife was to keep as quiet as possible, unless there was something constructive they could do. Eventually she suggested that they wait while she went on her Commonwealth tour in 1953, perhaps hoping things would blow over and thus avoiding any sort of repetition of the scandal with Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson.

  When the Queen Mother was eventually told, she was upset, although she put on a brave front. She discussed it with her daughter and wrote to Tommy Lascelles, now her daughter’s private secretary. ‘I would like to talk to you soon, please,’ she wrote to Lascelles. ‘I have nobody I can talk to about such dreadful things.’ When she finally spoke to him she wept, which was understandable: her husband was gone, her elder daughter was Queen and her younger daughter looked as if she might bring disrepute on the new reign they were trying so hard to put in place. She believed that only heartache could come out of such a liaison and she felt that if the King had still been alive it would not have happened. They had both had such high hopes for their younger daughter, believing that she would find a suitably distinguished husband. We will never know, but the King might have intervened to stop the affair sooner than the Queen Mother, who was inclined to ignore tricky situations and hope they would go away, in very much the same way her daughter did with the Princess of Wales forty years later.

  In his autobiography, Time and Chance, Townsend eloquently describes the tension and drama which led up to the end of the affair. The press were essentially on the side of the lovers, but complained that, after two years since their relationship became public, they should make up their minds. The Queen was portrayed as being on the side of the Church as its Supreme Governor, and the establishment figures of the day, which included the Privy Council, were described as antagonistic and unhelpful. They could not prevent the marriage, but they could influence Parliament, to whom the veto, when relinquished by the sovereign, then passed. ‘She would have nothing left – except me,’ Townsend wrote. ‘It was too much to ask of her, too much for her to give. We should be left with nothing, but our devotion to face the world.’

  The dénouement of the whole affair came to a head in October 1955. ‘We felt mute and numbed at the centre of this maelstrom,’ Townsend wrote as Princess Margaret drove
to Windsor Castle to join her mother, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for lunch. All that was said or what happened has never been disclosed, but facing up to the gravity of the situation, they discussed the princess’s situation together for once. It cannot have been easy, and when the Queen Mother said her daughter ‘hadn’t even thought where they were going to live’, Prince Philip was incensed at the triviality of the statement and replied with heavy sarcasm, ‘It is still possible, even nowadays, to buy a house.’ The Queen Mother was so annoyed by him she ‘left the room angrily, slamming the door’. Later that day, Margaret rang Townsend ‘in great distress’. She did not say what had passed between her and her sister and brother-in-law, ‘but doubtless the stern truth was dawning on her,’ he observed.

  Prince Philip had largely kept his silence during the discussions, but he was there to lend a private ear to the Queen when she needed his support, which of course she did. She was just too close and emotionally involved to decide between her wish for her sister’s happiness and the need for the royal family to do the right thing.

  On Monday 31 October 1955, Margaret and Townsend met for the last time at Clarence House. Their love story ended with words crafted by Townsend on a rough piece of paper. This became the princess’s statement later broadcast to the world. When she read out what Townsend had written, she quietly and sadly agreed: ‘I have decided not to marry Group Captain Townsend,’ she began, when the statement was issued that evening at 7pm, and continued: ‘I have reached this decision entirely alone, and in doing so I have been strengthened by the unfailing support and devotion of Group Captain Townsend.’

  Although he may not have been close to her, if proof of his loyalty to his sister-in-law was needed, four years later Prince Philip walked Princess Margaret down the aisle on her wedding day. It was the first royal wedding to be fully televised and the Duke of Edinburgh accompanied Margaret from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in the Glass Coach. Before they left he kept hurrying Margaret as, being a naval man, he hated the thought of being late, even by a couple of minutes. As a fanfare of trumpets heralded her arrival at the abbey, Prince Philip turned to her and whispered, ‘Don’t know who’s more nervous, you or me,’ adding: ‘Am I holding on to you or are you holding on to me?’

  ‘I am holding on to you,’ the princess whispered in reply. Her husband-to-be, Antony Armstrong-Jones, couldn’t have been more different from Peter Townsend, as he was a photographer. But at that moment at least he appeared to make her happy, and the Queen was pleased her sister had found what she thought was a more suitable kind of love. She remained the Queen’s adored sister and was very much a royal princess, never letting anyone forget it if they did not treat her with due respect.

  During the difficult years leading up to the separation and eventual divorce of the Prince and Princess of Wales, it was Margaret’s turn to support her sister. By that time, she could feel pleased by the professional success of her own children, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto. Linley had set up as a furniture maker, and in 1993 would marry Serena Stanhope, while Sarah became a painter and married a year later than her brother. For the first time in years, Margaret felt that perhaps her life had been a fulfilling one.

  As a young woman, she always felt that the Queen was so good and perfect while she was very much the opposite, doomed to an unhappy marriage and a succession of unsuitable romances. Then she found a new kind of confidence and, for the first time in her life, she felt able to give the Queen advice, rather than the other way around. The ironic poignancy of this reversal of their situations was not lost on the Queen or Prince Philip. This was not how anyone could ever have seen things turning out, with Margaret at ease with herself and her children happily settled, while the Queen and Philip were faced with a parent’s failure in their own family.

  Margaret had no sympathy for the Princess of Wales, despite the similarity of their predicaments. Once supportive of the princess, she became almost as vocal as Prince Philip in her condemnation. She felt Diana had let the Queen down. And if there was a touch of hypocrisy in her reaction – and Margaret’s life was hardly a shining example – there was no doubting the sincerity of her devotion to her sister. But if that was a comfort, it was not a solution. There was no escaping the fact that the early 1990s were joyless times for the Queen. At a time of life when she should have been enjoying the fruits of a lifetime’s dutiful labour, she was facing the gravest crisis of her reign.

  Prince Philip tried to talk to Prince Charles about his marital difficulties and the effect they were having on the institution he was born to head. It was meant as fatherly advice, but because of the distant nature of their relationship, the two found it uncomfortable to exchange confidences and their conversations usually ended with Charles looking at his watch and making an excuse to leave the room. Thwarted in his own efforts to introduce some sense into an increasingly senseless situation, Philip asked his wife to bring her considerable authority to bear. The Queen consistently refused to do this, much to Philip’s exasperation. Often so intimidating to those outside her own family who overstepped the mark, the Queen was unwilling to confront those within it.

  Left to her own devices, she would have let the situation drift. The Queen Mother had made a habit of contracting a diplomatic illness whenever she came under stress (she contracted pneumonia on her honeymoon and spent the week of the abdication crisis in bed with flu). Her daughter’s natural inclination was to ignore the situation and hope it would go away. It was a policy that had hitherto served her well. What was more, the Queen Mother had warned her against becoming too involved in the problems of her offspring and their families. When the Queen had turned to her hoping for sympathy, she got none. On one occasion when they were discussing the children’s problems, the Queen Mother looked up from her game of patience. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you care any more. It’s another generation . . . just let them get on with it.’ She then dealt herself another hand.

  But the truth was that the Queen was alarmed by her daughter-in-law. She was not scared of Diana as a person, but she was deeply suspicious of Diana’s Hollywood glamour and the way she used it to manipulate public opinion. Although she regarded Diana as hard working, she doubted if she had any real sense of commitment to the institution which had elevated her to public prominence in the first place. Diana dismissed the monarchy as ‘old-fashioned’ and behind the times, while to the Queen those were its very strengths. The monarchy is hierarchical and the Queen, as its head, was mistrustful of the way Diana ignored the parameters of her position.

  When troubles overwhelm the Queen, she has a habit of switching off and going for a walk with her dogs. Sometimes she will even feed them under the table at lunchtime to avoid a disconcerting question. Prince Philip calls this displacement activity ‘her dog mechanism’. It is the equivalent of the Queen Mother’s games of cards and everyone in the family has experienced it. It took the Duke of York three weeks to fight his way past the dogs to tell his mother that his marriage was in trouble. The meeting was brief and painful. Andrew muttered words like ‘mutual incompatibility’ and Sarah apologised for her behaviour, which she agreed had been a long way short of what was both expected and required. The floodgates were bursting, yet the Queen still clung to the delusion that time would heal the breach. Sarah wrote of that moment: ‘She asked me to reconsider, to be strong, to go forward.’ According to the duchess: ‘The Queen looked sadder than I have ever seen her.’

  The Queen might have been sad, but Prince Philip was not. He was, according to a member of the household, ‘incandescent’ with anger. There was an element of personal animosity in this. There had been several occasions when Sarah had come to Andrew’s defence when he was being berated by his father for some perceived weakness or other and, as the Queen has noted, Philip is not a man who likes to be contradicted. However, it was her public deportment rather than any private disagreements which most annoyed the prince. An outsider himself who had to learn to ad
apt to the exigencies of royal life, he was able to take an objective view of its requirements and regarded his daughter-in-law’s behaviour as selfish and reprehensible. He kept up the refrain: ‘If she wants out she can get out.’ He felt he same about Diana but wisely held back from expressing his views in public.

  On 19 March 1992, a statement from the Palace broke with normal protocol and expressed the Queen’s personal unhappiness over the matter.

  ‘In view of the media speculation which the Queen finds especially undesirable during the general election campaign, Her Majesty is issuing the following statement: “Last week, lawyers acting for the Duchess of York initiated discussions about a formal separation for the Duke and Duchess. These discussions are not yet completed and nothing will be said until they are. The Queen hopes that the media will spare the Duke and Duchess of York and their children any intrusion.” ’

  Then, the following month, Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were finally divorced. If all of that was bad, worse was to come as, in June 1992, the Sunday Times began to serialise Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story. The Queen and Philip were at Windsor that weekend and were stunned by what they read. They were aware of how unhappy their daughter in-law was, but they never thought for one moment she would resort to airing her dirty linen in such a public way. Their whole royal life was based on obligation, discretion and duty. Prince Philip had tried to help and had written to Diana saying he wished ‘to do my utmost to help you and Charles to the best of my ability. But I am quite ready to concede that I have no talent as a marriage counsellor!’ It was to no avail; it was too little too late.