My Husband and I

by Ingrid Seward

  As far as the public were concerned, however, Lord Spencer had hit precisely the right note. He had articulated what so many of them were feeling. His address was relayed by loudspeakers to the multitude packing the square outside and as he finished they gave a great roar of approval. It was borne through into the ancient abbey where the congregation, echoing the sentiments of those outside, burst into rapturous applause.

  The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, who had been complaining all morning about the inconvenience of having to cut short her Tuscan holiday because of ‘that wretched girl’, looked straight ahead. So did Princess Anne, who had viewed the events of the week with all the down-to-earth attitude one would have expected of that pragmatic, no-nonsense woman.

  In truth, there was nowhere else to look. The people had taken matters into their own hands. Instead of being told what to do, they had told the royal family how to behave. The monarchy had responded – but only after it had been battered into submission. But now the week was at its end and the beast of public opinion began to settle, its anger vented, its grief expressed. As Diana’s coffin made its way up the M1 motorway to her lonely grave on an island in the middle of a lake in Northamptonshire, the crowds began to melt away. A few hardy souls continued to keep vigil in the gardens outside Kensington Palace, but for most the roller-coaster had run its course. There was much talk of a new Britain, in touch with its feelings, cut loose from the restraint of its past, but slowly the country returned to normal, exhausted and exhilarated by the experience it had come through, but embarrassed, too, by its own wanton exhibition of emotion.

  There was no retreat to the sanctuary of the pedestal for the royal family, however. The door to the past had been slammed shut. As the Queen had said, there were ‘lessons to be drawn’ from Diana’s life and, first and foremost, from the reaction to her death. The regal system had been put the test – and found to be woefully wanting. Change was vital if the monarchy was going to sail into the next millennium. And the couple who had led their family for so long knew they would have to change with it, but they would also find comfort in maintaining the patterns of the past.

  Chapter 12

  DIFFERENT INTERESTS

  It is 20 June 2013 at Windsor Castle. The Queen is having breakfast alone as Prince Philip is recuperating from an abdominal operation having been discharged from the London Clinic three days earlier. The Queen has forsaken her usual Daily Telegraph crossword in favour of the Racing Post, which she is studying intently. She has a particular interest in the Gold Cup because her filly Estimate is one of the favourites for the race. The Queen’s house guests, among them her grandson Peter Phillips and his wife Autumn, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, are also enjoying breakfast in their rooms, having given their breakfast order to the page in charge the night before.

  At 12.45 the Queen joins her guests for pre-lunch drinks in the Green Drawing Room before lunch in the State Dining Room. They all sit down to a brisk and, by royal standards, relatively simple meal, the men in tailcoats and the ladies with colourful outfits and extravagant hats. After lunch, they make their way to the Sovereign’s Entrance where they all climb into a fleet of cars for the short drive to Ascot before they transfer into open landaus for the final part of the journey. They make their way through Home Park to the Golden Gates at the top of Ascot racecourse.

  Once on the course, they trot briskly for the ten-minute drive along the swathe of green turf, taking a slightly different track each day to avoid churning up the racetrack. The Queen is in the first carriage accompanied by Peter Phillips and his wife. As they pass the grandstands, a tremendous cheer goes up for the Queen and top hats are raised. Already some lucky punters are collecting from the bookmakers, having had a successful wager on the colour of the Queen’s hat. After dismounting from the carriages in the parade ring, the royal party spends most of the afternoon in the royal box.

  It was Queen Anne in 1711 who first saw the potential for a racecourse at Ascot. While out riding near Windsor Castle, she came upon an area of open heath that looked, in her words, ‘ideal for horses to gallop at full stretch’. Queen Anne’s gift to racing, founding the royal racecourse, is marked by the tradition of opening Royal Ascot with the Queen Anne Stakes. The Ascot summer race meeting officially became a royal week in 1911. Ever since then, the royal meeting has been patronised by the reigning monarch. For the Queen, Royal Ascot is the highlight of the racing year, and she has never missed the meeting since her accession in 1952.

  The Gold Cup, a Group 1 race and Britain’s top event for long-distance thoroughbreds, is run over two miles four furlongs and is open to four-year-olds and older. It is always held on the Thursday – Ladies’ Day – of Royal Ascot. The trophy is one of three cups at Royal Ascot traditionally presented by the Queen. It is the fourth race of the day and the Queen comes down to the paddock in time to look at the runners and meet her Barbadian-born Newmarket trainer Sir Michael Stoute and her jockey Ryan Moore.

  The Queen has an expert eye and knows the breeding of every runner in the race. She does not refer to the horses by their names on the race card but by their bloodlines, so a horse may be ‘the Galileo colt’ or ‘the Storm Cat filly’. Her horse Estimate is the only filly in the race and her trainer is not confident, although the capacity crowd has backed her down to be favourite. Sir Michael commented: ‘I really felt it was a tough task, I wasn’t confident at all with her taking on the boys.’ The Queen’s racing manager John Warren was also cautious, saying: ‘It’s a bit like asking whether Martina Navratilova could beat Bjorn Borg.’ Adding to the pressure was the fact that no reigning monarch had ever won the Gold Cup.

  But, more than fifteen years on from Diana’s death, there is little doubt that there would be no more popular winner of the race than the Queen’s horse. The intervening years had seen the public regain its trust and affection for the monarchy, as first her Golden Jubilee and then her Diamond Jubilee had been hugely popular occasions. The Queen, now aged eighty-seven, and Prince Philip, ninety-two, have come to symbolise stability in a world that has been rocked by wars, terrorism and a lingering financial crisis that has diminished the status of politicians everywhere.

  As the race unfolds, Estimate is lying in fifth place with half a mile to go. Then Ryan Moore drives Estimate into the lead and fights tenaciously to hold off the Irish stayer Simeon to win by a neck. The stands just erupt in celebration and the crowd throws their hats in the air, so delighted were they to see the royal colours carried past the winning post. People rush to get a position around the winner’s enclosure so they can get the best view of what is to come. Even the normally staid occupants of the royal box explode with cheering. The Queen is so overwhelmed with delight that her racing manager, John Warren, almost does the unforgivable and kisses her, as they clap their hands with joy as the four-year-old crosses the line.

  The Queen had been due to present the trophy to the winner, but instead the Duke of York had to step in to hand the cup to her. It was one of the very few occasions when the Queen was seen to be overcome with emotion. Peter Phillips said afterwards: ‘It’s been amazing. This is her passion, this is her life; every year she is here, every year she strives to have winners, and to win the big one at Royal Ascot means so much to her and so much to her supporters. It’s the culmination of a lot of investing in sport and to see this result is just brilliant. Sheikh Mohammed came down to congratulate her – racing people understand that these things don’t happen every day and to have a win like this is truly, truly special.’

  Racing and the breeding of thoroughbreds mean so much to the Queen. The previous year, her Christmas cards showed the Duke of Edinburgh presenting her with the trophy after Estimate, then a three-year-old, won The Queen’s Vase at Royal Ascot. The Queen takes a keen interest in the breeding of her horses, and is the patron of the Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association. She decides which mares are to be bred to which stallions and makes regular visits to observe and assess her foals first hand from birth.


  Her horses are foaled at the Royal Stud in the Sandringham Estate. As yearlings, they are raised at Polhampton Lodge Stud in Hampshire, before being passed on to the training facilities of any one of five trainers. Once they finish racing, they remain in her care into retirement and if they are sick or injured are looked after at Polhampton. As well as thoroughbreds, the Queen also breeds Shetland ponies at Balmoral in Scotland and Fell ponies at Hampton Court. The Fell ponies are used by Prince Philip for carriage driving, which he is still able to enjoy, although not at a competitive level. In 2007, she opened a full-time Highland pony stud at Balmoral to help preserve the breed.

  The Queen, who had her first riding lesson at the age of four, still rides out regularly with her groom Terry Pendry at Windsor and Balmoral. She refuses to wear a hard hat and once told trainer Ian Balding: ‘You don’t have to have your hair done like I do.’ She has confessed, however, that in her dotage she enjoys riding only when the weather is decent: ‘I’m rather a fair-weather rider now. I don’t like getting cold and wet.’ Instead of the spirited half thoroughbreds she once rode, she now prefers the safety and width of her homebred Fell ponies, especially one called Carltonlima Emma.

  In 2014, the Queen was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI), the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Hailed as a ‘true horsewoman’ who has an ‘extraordinary bond’ with her horses, the Queen was given a white gold and diamond brooch of nine interlinked horseshoes, which had been especially created for her by FEI President Princess Haya, who is married to Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, the world’s largest racehorse owner, both of whom are frequently guests of the Queen at Ascot.

  Another race meeting that the Queen attends regularly is the Epsom Derby, a race she has never won, although her horse Aureole was placed second in 1953. Prince Philip always goes to the Derby with the Queen, but he has been seen in the back of the royal box reading a book rather than the race card. In the year of her ninetieth birthday in 2016, the Queen agreed to present the trophies to the winning connections for the first time. On the balcony of the royal box, the Queen could be seen surveying the scene with obvious enjoyment as she chatted with John Warren. Prince Philip was leaning over the edge of the box having an animated conversation with Prince Andrew.

  The stands were full and a huge cheer went up from the crowd as the starting stalls opened and the field of sixteen runners started to race the one-and-a-half miles to the finishing post. It was an international field, with runners from Ireland and France taking on the best three-year-old horses in England. The Aga Khan’s home-bred Harzand won, ridden by Irish champion jockey Pat Smullen and trained in Ireland by Dermot Weld. The Aga Khan is well known to the Queen, being a Knight of the British Empire and a successful breeder of thoroughbreds. For the current spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, it was his fifth Derby winner, extending a tradition started by his grandfather who also had five Derby winners starting in 1930.

  After the race, the Queen descended from the royal box to present the trophies in front of the grandstand, where a dais had been erected for the presentation. Each in his turn received his trophy after a few words of congratulations from the Queen. That she took great pleasure in the presentation was plain for all to see.

  Meanwhile, 94-year-old Prince Philip was standing erect as always and off to one side of the Queen and the winning group. He shook hands with each one as they mounted the dais, but took no part in the presentation ceremony. The Derby is not a state occasion like the opening of Parliament, so why did he make the trek down from the royal box to the presentation dais, only a week after his doctors ordered him to cancel an engagement because of fears about his health? It was not an obligation, but his sense of duty and a clear indication of his love and respect for his wife made him do it, especially as he has little interest in the sport.

  Prince Philip’s lack of interest in horse racing stems not from a dislike of ‘The Sport of Kings’ but rather that, unless one is the jockey or trainer, it is a passive sport. During Royal Ascot, Philip will dutifully be at his wife’s side, but he insists on being able to watch the cricket on TV during the racing and has a small office in the back of the royal box where he catches up on his correspondence with the help of a secretary. He doesn’t like to be a spectator; he wants to be an active participant. He is highly competitive and the will to win is paramount for him. He has been deeply involved in other equestrian sports including polo, carriage driving and showjumping. He is the longest-serving president of the International Equestrian Federation, from 1964 to 1986, and as such he has had more influence than anyone on the way international equestrian sport has developed. During his time there, he instigated jumping’s Nations Cup series. In 2007, he was inducted into the British Horse Society’s Equestrian Hall of Fame, following in the footsteps of his daughter, the Princess Royal.

  Although polo eventually became his favourite sport, Philip was slow to warm to it. When he was based in Malta in 1949, he was more interested in the inter-ship sporting competitions such as hockey and rowing. At the command of his own ship Magpie, he drove his crew hard, so much so that at the annual regatta in 1949 his ship won six out of ten events, with Philip stroking the whaler class boats. There was a polo ground in Malta where Dickie Mountbatten often played. Both he and Princess Elizabeth wanted Philip to take up the sport, but initially he showed no interest, saying that it was ‘a snob sport’ and that he preferred playing hockey and diving on the reefs.

  Lady Mountbatten wisely advised the princess not to push Philip too hard, saying he would come around to the idea of playing polo in his own good time, which he did. Sure enough, once he took it up, it became his favourite sport and he developed into one of the best players in the country with a five-goal handicap. It did count against him, however, when the question of the royal finances was raised in Parliament from time to time. In Philip’s own words: ‘Polo is not exactly cheap and anyone wishing to play must be either well-heeled, have a good job or be supported by an indulgent parent or sponsor . . . His wife needs to be very understanding and long-suffering.’ The Treasury took the view that if Philip could afford to keep polo ponies and grooms, a pay rise in the civil list could not be justified.

  As a player, Prince Philip had huge energy – and got stuck into the game not minding what he said or to whom. ‘This is also one of the fields in which wives like to take part,’ he said. ‘Wives have also been known to have very firm views about the way both their husbands and other players conduct themselves on the polo ground.’ He was obviously referring to the straight talking during play – which could all too easily waft over to the spectator area, including the royal pavilion.

  Playing in the semi-final of the Harrison Cup at Cowdray Park during one Goodwood week, former international showjumper Johnny Kidd, a member of the Todham Team along with patron Ronnie Driver and high goal players Julian Hipwood and Jorge Tassara, remembers playing against the Windsor team of Prince Philip, Patrick Beresford, Prince Charles and the Marquis of Waterford. He recalls ‘Prince Philip yelling at Prince Charles nonstop – get a move on, do this, do that – calling him a f***ing idiot and worse. While all the time Prince Charles was quietly polite. He carried on while Prince Philip was steaming with anger.’

  Despite or maybe because of his fiery attitude, Prince Philip did much to popularise polo in the 1950s and 1960s. He founded the Household Brigade Polo Club (later the Guards Polo Club) in 1955, which has ten polo pitches on Smith’s Lawn in Windsor Great Park where the Queen is often a spectator. She breeds polo ponies along with her thoroughbred racehorses. Philip also promoted bicycle polo, which enabled those who couldn’t afford the real thing to get a taste of polo without all the expense. It is now a firmly established sport with international competitions.

  However, polo is not an old man’s game, and in 1971 Prince Philip gave it up in favour of carriage driving, which involves driving a four-
in-hand around an obstacle course against the clock. Philip became so involved with the sport that he revised the rules of competitive carriage driving and wrote on a book on it: 30 Years on and Off the Box Seat. With his penchant for invention, he redesigned various wooden parts of the carriage that were inclined to break and replaced them with metal ones. Philip’s competitive spirit was always seen at the annual Royal Windsor Horse Show. He was still driving at the age of ninety-five, no longer in competitions but going out with his carriage and team of Fell ponies in all weathers.

  Unsurprisingly, the Queen and Prince Philip’s children and grandchildren have competed in equestrian events with great success, most notably Princess Anne and Zara Phillips. In an essay on horses, he wrote: ‘Having a family which seems to be equally willing to be humiliated by the horse, I have to live with the expectation that they too will suffer injury and indignity . . . I am not surprised when it happens to them and I am full of sympathy and useful advice for treatment and recovery.’

  However, there are other sports that have had the royal seal of approval. Sailing is an important part of the curriculum at Gordonstoun and was something at which young Philip excelled. His sailing days may be over, but he is still a regular presence at Cowes Week as admiral of the Royal Yacht Squadron, one of the most prestigious yacht clubs in the world, with the Queen as their patron.

  Despite this, sailing is a sport where Philip tends to operate separately from the Queen. At Cowes, he would spend his time with Uffa Fox, not his wife. Fox was a boat designer and builder by trade, but also a raconteur, bon vivant and all-round eccentric individual. Prince Philip wrote the foreword to Uffa’s biography, including these words: ‘His life was one long campaign for the freedom of the human spirit and against the foolish, the stupid and the self-important, the whole conducted with a cheerful breeziness that disarmed all but the hardest of cases.’