My Husband and I

by Ingrid Seward

  The Queen, too, has given her name to a prize for engineers. In 2011, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering was set up to reward and celebrate the engineers responsible for a groundbreaking innovation in engineering that has been of global benefit to humanity, and the generous £1 million prize is awarded every two years.

  Prince Philip gave one of his most recent interviews to Radio 4 to talk about the prize he had set up and about the merits of British engineering with former BP executive Lord Browne, who was guest editor on the programme. ‘The human population of the world is growing and it’s got to be accommodated somehow or other,’ he said, adding: ‘It’s going to be engineers who are going to decide’ how to do this without resorting to destroying the delicate balance of nature. To emphasise the point, he commented: ‘Everything that wasn’t invented by God was invented by an engineer.’

  Chapter 13

  FROM BANQUETS TO TEA AT THE PALACE

  The Queen and Prince Philip have spent most of their married lives entertaining or being entertained. Even though she has been doing the job for more than sixty-five years, the Queen is still shy and her conversation can be very stilted. If she is with friends or in the company of people who understand breeding thoroughbreds or racing them, she is animated and chatty, but with people she doesn’t know or is never likely to meet again, her conversational skills are minimal.

  Throughout their married life, it has been Prince Philip who has done most of the talking socially. Occasionally, to liven things up, get a reaction, or just because he is bored stiff, he will make one of his famous gaffes. At times he can appear downright rude, but he can also be very funny, and when he needs to put on the charm he can outshine the most obsequious of courtiers.

  Although the Queen is head of state, and many of her duties don’t necessarily involve her husband, in previous years when they were travelling or entertaining at one of the royal residences, it was very much a united effort. The Queen has always relied on the Duke of Edinburgh to make conversation not only with the first lady, whoever she might be, but to all the other visiting dignitaries. When he was seated next to former French President Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni, at the state banquet at Windsor Castle in 2008, things went extremely well. Philip was at his most charming throughout the evening and his bonhomie was infectious.

  Although a state banquet is probably one of the most splendid and awe-inspiring formal events, there can be a few surprises as to how the royal family behave. When King George VI was still alive, as soon as he put down his knife and fork, his page, who always stood behind him, would immediately clear away. This was a signal for every other plate on the table to be taken away, regardless of whether the other diners had finished eating.

  The Queen has not exactly ended this custom, but found a way around it. She looks carefully around the table – no matter whether it’s a state banquet or a smaller, more intimate meal – and checks on her guests’ progress. As she eats frugally, she will often have finished before anyone else, but she has a small salad on a side plate and she toys with it until the rest of the guests have caught up. Once she has finally put down her fork, it’s all systems go.

  Prince Charles is the slowest of royal eaters, while the Duke of Edinburgh is the fastest and gobbles his food up so quickly he has been known to put more fastidious eaters right off their food. One footman recalls a dreadful night when they were sailing onboard HMY Britannia when it was struck by a force nine gale. Everyone retired to their cabins, including most of the ship’s company. Not so Prince Philip. He still wanted to eat dinner, and his poor equerry had to sit with him. He was getting greener and greener as he watched Prince Philip, never the neatest of eaters, shovel food into his mouth. Eventually, when he was asked if he would like some rice pudding, he could take it no longer and had to leave abruptly. Prince Philip was left all on his own in a dining room that can seat sixty, unworried about the discomfort he had caused.

  A more common problem than Prince Philip’s eating habits is guests simply being lost for words in the royal presence. ‘There’s a lot of trembling knees – and people can’t talk sometimes,’ says Prince William. ‘It’s quite difficult talking to people when they can’t talk. You don’t get very far. I don’t get past the hellos!’

  When the head of state from a foreign power is the guest of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, they stay at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. On the day of arrival, which is always a Tuesday, they are given lunch in the Bow Room at the palace or the State Dining Room at Windsor Castle. These state visit luncheons are rather grander than the small and cosy ‘meet the people’ occasions that the Queen and the Duke host a few times a year. Everything, as the Queen explains, is truly formal.

  ‘A lot of the visits nowadays have a very strong political theme to them,’ the Queen says. ‘We are the hosts. Basically, we give the entertainment initially and have people to stay hoping to give them a nice time to remember. Obviously, we keep up as many of the traditions as we can, like going in carriages.

  ‘I think that in a way that it’s quite an old-fashioned idea that you do put out the red carpet for a guest. I think people don’t really realise this. I do tell guests that we put on our best clothes and everybody dresses up and the best china and the glass and the gold plate come out, otherwise it doesn’t see the light of day! It’s very nice to be able to use it and show it. If you do put out the best china and glass it isn’t necessary to make it overwhelming.

  ‘If people are kind to you and make you feel at home I don’t think the outward and visible signs matter. It is what goes on inside that really matters. But sometimes it’s worth explaining that we put it on specially. That we don’t actually live like this all the time!’

  The Queen is a perfectionist and as the perfect hostess wants to make her guests feel at ease. When President Lech Walesa of Poland visited Windsor Castle in April 1991 with his wife Danuta, the Queen noticed he was overwhelmed by the grandeur and ordered the furniture to be moved around in the six-roomed principal suite where they were staying and to make it more cosy.

  If visitors are staying in London, they are led to the Belgium Suite, where they will be housed for the three-day stay at the palace. All their unpacking has already been done for them and they have half an hour’s free time to freshen up before the state lunch. In the meantime, as many royals as the Queen can muster, plus most of her household, will wait in the 1844 Room to greet the guests. Prince Philip would go personally to the Belgium Suite to collect the visiting president and his lady and then lead them to the pre-lunch drinks gathering. He used to bound down the stairs two at a time, but these days his pace is just a little more sedate. Luncheon is served in the Bow Room, which for these occasions is turned into a dining room.

  The Queen leads her guests, walking ahead with the visiting president, King or Queen on her right. There are usually sixty seated for lunch, as all the visitors’ entourage will be invited. In the case of some less stable countries, this can be a lot of people, as some leaders feel it is safer that way – just in case someone tries to carry out a coup back home while their backs are turned.

  Everyone is placed at round tables – six of them, ten people to a table – each of which is hosted by a member of the royal family. Language can be a problem if the guests don’t speak English, but the royals can get by in French, which they all speak well, and there are always interpreters on hand for the Queen and the family if French won’t do. Everyone else, including the household, has to muddle along as best they can. An awful lot of smiling goes on in lieu of conversations.

  Even though it is a very important occasion, the food served will be light. The Queen is aware that there will be a state banquet that night, and that her guests will have a busy schedule that afternoon. No one lingers over the meal. By three o’clock the entire party is back in the 1844 Room for coffee and liqueurs and the ceremony of exchanging presents takes place. The presents that the Queen is given vary from lavish ones, particularly if they are
from an Eastern country, down to something as simple as a small piece of furniture. In return, the guests are invariably given a silver salver and a signed photograph in a leather frame of Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh, which the household nickname ‘the glums’. Honours are also exchanged after this lunch. Some guests are given honorary knighthoods, and the Queen may be given the highest rank available in her visitor’s country. That evening, at the glittering state banquet, the Queen and her visitor will wear the sash of their newly acquired honour.

  But these grand occasions are few and far between. The luncheon hour is not normally a time when anything much happens in the royal life. When the Queen is at work, she almost always lunches alone in her private dining room on the first floor. All she eats is a main course and salad, followed by coffee, brought in by her footman. And she usually serves herself from the hotplate that is left permanently in her dining room.

  On the rare occasions when she and Prince Philip lunch on their own together, the duke likes to choose something new and different from the chef’s suggestions, or something he may have sampled on one of his frequent evening engagements. Even until his ninety-sixth year, he was still attending official dinners, which he enjoyed, despite the huge amount of energy he had to muster to do so. When the royal couple are alone, they often have what they call an ‘experiment lunch’. They would never dream of giving guests something they had not eaten themselves. As the duke still takes a great interest in food, it is usually him not the Queen who will write any alterations or suggestions in the menu book.

  Apart from family lunches, the midday meal is another opportunity for the Queen and Prince Philip to meet people. Ever since 1956, they have given up to four lunches a year when they do just that. The small gatherings of eight to ten specially selected guests are known as the ‘Meet the People’ palace luncheons. The guests come from all walks of life and range from jockeys to journalists, actresses to artists, to managing directors of huge corporations. Even editors of the most widely read newspapers have been known to be invited. There is nearly always one of the Queen’s favourite comedians present – the late Terry Wogan was much loved and certainly sang for his supper, though he was not expected to.

  In 2015, Formula One ace Lewis Hamilton received an invitation and told BBC’s Graham Norton about how he sat next to the Queen, and how she ensured that everyone was equally involved in the occasion. ‘I was excited,’ he explained, ‘and started to talk to her but she said, pointing to my left, “No, you speak that way first and I’ll speak this way and then I’ll come back to you.” ’

  He added: ‘She is a sweet woman and we talked about how she spends her weekends, her houses and music. She is really cool.’

  It is not just celebrities or famous people who are lucky enough to be invited to these occasions, but often simply those who have made a contribution to their particular walk of life. In March 2016, particle physicist and TV presenter Professor Brian Cox joined the royal couple for one of the lunches. The Queen is fascinated by the solar system and is something of an expert on the stars in the night sky.

  Although the lunches are informal by palace standards, they appear very formal to those invited. To stress that this is a business get-together, partners of the guests aren’t invited to the lunch. Instead, when they arrive, a footman takes them to the Bow Room on the ground floor for pre-lunch drinks, where they are greeted by the Queen’s lady-in-waiting and an equerry. The Bow Room is beautiful, painted cream and gold, but with very little furniture. People who arrive early can inspect the four display cases – one in each corner – which house some of the Queen’s priceless collection of dinner services.

  Lunch itself is always held in the 1844 Room next door – the white and gold chamber where the Queen receives visiting ambassadors. On these occasions, an oblong table is wheeled into the room and set with glittering silver and crystal. Also brought in are two sideboards from which the footmen serve the meal. The palace florist does her bit, and by the time the guests, the footmen and the royal family are all assembled, the room looks less austere.

  Once all the guests have arrived, the Queen comes to join them, along with her remaining corgis, which as usual stay with her for the entire drinks time and the meal. The corgis have quite an important function on these occasions; they give people something safe and innocuous to talk about, while creating a diversion. Once an old family favourite, Heather, was misbehaving, and the Queen snapped sharply at the dog: ‘Heather!’ – making the opera singer Heather Harper, who was a guest that day, nearly jump out of her skin.

  Lunch is served promptly at ten past one. The palace steward slips into the room, catches the Queen’s eye and says: ‘Luncheon, Your Majesty.’ The Queen nods and then says casually: ‘Shall we go in, then?’ She leaves a few seconds to give everyone the chance to finish their drinks and then she leads the way into the 1844 Room. There is a seating plan just outside the dining room, and if guests haven’t spotted it, the ever-vigilant equerry or lady-in-waiting points it out so that everyone is seated smoothly. The Queen always chooses who she wants to sit beside, and this most important male guest will be on her right, while Prince Philip has the most interesting female guest on his right. People are always somewhat surprised to see that the Queen does not sit at the head of the table. Her place on these occasions is in the middle, with Prince Philip facing her.

  As Lewis Hamilton discovered, there is a very definite ritual regarding conversation at the table. Throughout the first and second courses, the Queen talks to the person on her right. While the pudding and cheese are being eaten, she turns automatically and chats to the guest on her left. She has now ‘done’ two people, and perhaps spoke to a couple in the Bow Room while the drinks were being served. She still has six to go. The point of these lunches is that both she and Prince Philip have some sort of conversation with all the guests.

  The polished table gleams with Kings pattern silver cutlery and beautiful crystal glass with the EIIR cypher. Hostess or not, the Queen is still the monarch, and when the food starts to come around the table on magnificent salvers, she is served first. There are two pages serving, and both start in the middle and work their way round. The Queen prefers to help herself to food, and so the pages who serve hand her the salver on her left side, with a large spoon and fork, and wait while the Queen takes what she wants. She helps herself to a very small portion – the royals eat little and often – and her distinctive voice can be heard after every dish saying ‘thank you’ to the page. This is one of the very rare times when the Queen actually speaks to the staff when they are on duty, and for a new recruit her clipped but courteous ‘thank you’ can be quite a thrill.

  At these ‘Meet the People’ lunches, the staff remain in the room while the guests are eating and clear away any empty plates immediately. On other occasions – when the Queen and Philip are lunching with friends at Balmoral or Sandringham, for example – the empty plates are all cleared at once, and staff go out of the dining room while they are eating. Then the Queen rings when it looks as if everyone is finished.

  There is plenty on offer to drink, though people are very cautious about how much they take, not wanting to go over the top in the royal presence. The Queen always serves a chilled white Moselle or a German hock from the bottle at lunchtime – never heavy wines. Some red wine is also offered in a claret jug. The Queen likes red wine very much, but she doesn’t drink it at lunchtime. Prince Philip will usually have a light ale.

  Salad is always served with the main course, and the Queen places her plate at an angle if she wants salad, and then the footman brings the crystal salad bowl for her to serve herself. The royals prefer to have plain fruit – such as an apple or a pear – as dessert, which is always offered. The Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins, who enjoyed a palace lunch in 2009, admitted she was baffled when she was presented with a fruit platter, a plate and a neat piece of gauze with a bowl of water. She had no idea what she was supposed to do with it: ‘Her Majesty caught
my eye, helped me out and showed me what I needed to do: wash the fruit in the bowl and clean it with the gauze.’

  Everything else is a pudding, and both are available at these lunches. Apple flan with cream from the Windsor Home Farm is often on the menu, as the Queen enjoys pastry dishes. Prince Philip is not the only cook in the family; the Queen used to do a little barbecue cooking and could turn her hand to a Scottish pancake. When she sent the then American President Eisenhower her recipe, which she had tried out on the grill, she advised him to ‘use golden syrup instead of only sugar, as that can be very good too’.

  After lunch, everyone troops back into the Bow Room for coffee and liqueurs. Some of the Queen’s household come through, having eaten their own lunch in one of the staff dining rooms, just to mingle with the guests. The Queen and Philip then have the chance to talk to those they haven’t managed to talk with before. At precisely quarter to three, the Queen and the duke take their leave and people say their thanks and bow and curtsey. Then there is a dead silence, followed by an audible exhalation of breath as everyone relaxes.

  The Queen and Prince Philip still enjoy a traditional Sunday lunch. At Windsor, the food is not sent up from the ground-floor kitchen until the family and guests have assembled in the Oak Drawing Room. Prince Philip’s good friend the late Sebastian Ferranti use to be a regular weekend guest, but sadly for the duke he has outlived most of his contemporaries, including his private secretary Brian McGrath. The Earl and Countess of Wessex are regular guests, as they come from nearby Bagshott Park with their children James and Louise, who often ride with the Queen on Saturday mornings. Now the Duke of York is travelling less, he too is a frequent lunch guest and only has to drive the three miles from Royal Lodge. He never drinks, but the Queen has a pre-lunch sherry, the duke a beer or a weak gin and tonic. As soon as the page sees they are all together, he sends down for the food. When it arrives, he murmurs either to Prince Philip or to the Queen that luncheon is served. The food is all waiting on a couple of hot plates on the sideboard by the windows.