The Queen Mother Part 22
An important element of this relationship is that of the honorary appointments, particularly in the army, which the monarch has either held in person or has delegated to other members of the Royal Family. These provide powerful personal links. An admired figurehead as colonel-in-chief or honorary colonel gives great encouragement to a regiment, boosting cohesion and morale; if the figurehead is royal, the effect is enhanced. Visits, parades, the presentation of colours, messages of congratulation or encouragement and an active interest in the affairs of the regiment, all help foster the vital sense of the regiment as a family, and its inherent pride in itself.
Female members of the Royal Family are almost always sought for such tasks, and Queen Elizabeth was particularly well qualified. The daughter and sister of army officers, she had seen her brothers go off to war and experienced the anxiety and loss this can bring to families; she had also got to know and like ordinary soldiers in the convalescent hospital at Glamis, and had seen the effects of war on them. She was imbued with the spirit of service in which she had been brought up and saw the military ethos as an absolutely essential part of what it meant to be British.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that she took a close and persistent interest in all the regiments of which she became colonel-in-chief or honorary colonel. She did whatever was expected of her visits, messages, presentation of colours or guidons,* receiving commanding officers on change-over. But her individual style showed itself in such thoughtful gestures as sending Canadian violets to a Canadian regiment which found itself in Britain and facing war for the first time, in 1941,58 or encouraging commanding officers to write to her with news of the regiments. She a.s.siduously read and commented on their letters and even regimental annual reports. There was a pattern: she was invariably in favour of whatever gave regiments and other units their individuality and sense of ident.i.ty, whether uniforms, badges, rank t.i.tles or most especially territorial connections. She deplored the loss of these through the reductions and mergers which happened increasingly in her later years as one government after another cut down on British military spending. She maintained that the old county names were very valuable in recruiting and that uncertainty created by successive strategic reviews was terrible for morale. As for the sacrifice of regimental bands, that was 'a real disaster ... such a stupid way to economise'.59 The first regiment of which she was appointed colonel-in-chief was the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI); this was in 1927, and she visited them at their depot at Pontefract in 1928. That year she approved the affiliation of KOYLI with the Saskatoon Light Infantry (to which she presented colours during the Canadian tour of 1939) and a further link with the 51st Battalion of Australian Infantry. She kept in touch with the regiment by holding periodic at-homes for officers.
With the reorganization of the infantry in 1967, it was decided that KOYLI should be amalgamated with the Somerset and Cornwall Light Infantry, the King's Shropshire Light Infantry and the Durham Light Infantry to form the Light Infantry. The Queen Mother accepted the appointment of colonel-in-chief of the new regiment in 1968, with Princess Alexandra, who had been colonel-in-chief of the Durham Light Infantry, as her deputy. She was as conscientious as always in following the regiment's affairs, visiting them, presenting colours, reading and annotating their annual reports.
She nevertheless kept up a special link with 'her' former regiment, KOYLI. In June 1997 she attended a luncheon at Claridge's given by the Officers' Club to mark the seventieth anniversary of her becoming their colonel-in-chief. This was followed by another such lunch in June 2000, her last KOYLI engagement.
Of all the regiments with which she was involved, one of the most important to her was, as we have already seen, the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), in whose ranks three of her brothers had served and one, Fergus, had been killed in 1915; her nephews Timothy Bowes Lyon (Patrick's second son) and John Elphinstone served in the regiment in the Second World War. The Queen was appointed colonel-in-chief just four days after the Coronation in May 1937, and later that year she became patron of the Black Watch a.s.sociation as well. In December 1937 the senior officers of the regiment presented her with a regimental brooch which she wore on all Black Watch occasions.
She followed the regiment's fortunes closely during the war, and successive colonels of the regiment wrote to keep her informed. She was, as we have seen, distressed by news of the capture of almost the entire 1st Battalion during the Dunkirk evacuation in June 1940, but she recognized the need to remain positive and sent an encouraging message to the Colonel of the regiment, welcoming the proposal to re-form the 1st Battalion.60 In November 1941 the Queen addressed the 6th Battalion, which was about to leave for North Africa, at Danesbury Stables in Stock-bridge. She congratulated the men on their 'splendid bearing'. She trusted that 'it may not be long before you return safely to your dear ones at home, with your task accomplished, and duty n.o.bly done.'61 In his letter of thanks General Wauchope, who had succeeded General Cameron as colonel, wrote: 'It may interest Her Majesty that the two phrases they most appreciated were: that she hoped that they might soon return to their families & homes after they had accomplished their task: that when they were abroad, she would often wear the Black Watch brooch, and whenever she did she would think of the 6th Battalion.'62 In February 1944 she visited three battalions in one day at camps in Buckinghamshire the 1st, 5th and 7th, all of which had been in action in North Africa and had contributed to victory at El Alamein. The three battalions were soon to be among the forces taking part in the Normandy landings.
Her concern for the Black Watch continued throughout the postwar years particularly when cutbacks were imposed. Again and again, she visited units in Berlin, in Northern Ireland, in Scotland taking salutes, lunching with the officers and taking part in cherished ceremonies. On the sixtieth anniversary of her appointment as colonel-in-chief, in September 1997, she made a forty-minute helicopter journey from Birkhall to visit the 1st Battalion at Fort George in Inverness-shire. Her last engagement with the regiment was her attendance at the 3rd (Volunteer) Battalion Drumhead Service and luncheon afterwards at Glamis Castle on 20 September 1998. Now ninety-eight herself, she made the one-and-a-half-hour drive from Birkhall to Glamis; in the afternoon the old colours which she had presented in 1975 were ceremonially escorted off the parade ground, to be laid up in Glamis Castle.63 Her attention often had a remarkable effect on regiments. In July 1937, as recently appointed colonel-in-chief of the Queen's Bays, the Queen visited them at Aldershot, just two months after the Coronation. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel E. D. Fanshawe, wrote, 'Ever since Her Majesty's appointment as Colonel an entire change has taken place. Now, after her visit on Sat.u.r.day, I have no fear for the future. She has done more good than it is possible to imagine.'64 During the war the Queen's Bays served with distinction with the Eighth Army in Egypt against Rommel.
Throughout the war the Queen was sent reports and letters by the Colonel and by commanding officers, who told her of actions in which the regiment had been engaged and its successes and losses. In his reply to one such letter, Arthur Penn wrote in April 1942 that the Queen shared their sorrow at their losses and their anxiety over men missing in action and that 'direct news is always extremely welcome.'65 The news was not always serious. 'The Queen has learnt with interest', Arthur Penn wrote to the commanding officer in 1943, 'of the arrangements you are contemplating for Christmas and hopes that the pigs, which have made a fresh addition to the booty already credited to your Regiment, may provide a satisfactory subst.i.tute for the turkeys who have failed to put in the appearance which is generally considered the princ.i.p.al justification for their existence.'66 Thirteen years later, in 1957, Queen Elizabeth was informed of the decision to amalgamate the Queen's Bays with the King's Dragoon Guards. She was again dismayed and Martin Gilliat wrote to the Colonel saying, 'I have had an opportunity of showing your letter to the Colonel-in-Chief, and I feel that no words of mine are needed to emphasise how sad Queen Elizabeth is that amalgamation should have been ordained for the Regiment.'67 It went ahead, however, and she paid a valedictory visit at Tidworth on 1 November 1958. The new regiment was named 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards and she inspected and addressed it on a number of occasions, both at home and overseas, throughout the decades to come. Her involvement was unfailing through the Gulf War in the early 1990s and up until the year before her death. When the commanding officer sent her his annual report in January 2001 a four-page doc.u.ment covering all aspects of regimental activities she could barely see to read. But she clearly still cared and wrote on it, 'How can a Regiment function with only 300 men?'68 That November she received the new commanding officer of the regiment for the last time.
The Royal Army Medical Corps came under her care after the death in 1942 of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria's third and longest-lived son. Succeeding him as colonel-in-chief, the Queen first visited the corps depot at Boyce Barracks, Crookham, in December 1943. To commemorate the Golden Jubilee of the corps in 1948, these barracks were renamed after her. Thereafter she kept in touch with the affairs of the RAMC through periodic reports, and regularly exchanged messages with them.
In 1947 she became colonel-in-chief of the 7th Queen's Own Hussars. In 1958 they were compelled to merge with the 3rd King's Own Hussars and she became colonel-in-chief of the newly formed regiment, called the Queen's Own Hussars. She kept in constant touch with them too and sympathized with them over the continual cuts imposed upon them. On one of the regiment's annual reports she wrote, 'How well all these Regiments cope with such difficult modern circ.u.mstances.'69 With the Hussars she showed her concern particularly with regard to their horses. In 1974 when told that Crusader, their drum horse, was to be retired, she sought another for them. The Crown Equerry, Sir John Miller, who was in charge of the Royal Mews, found a suitable horse belonging to the St Cuthbert's Co-operative Society in Edinburgh; the price was 300. The regiment accepted him with pleasure and named him Dettingen. When, in 1988, Dettingen had to be destroyed, she found a replacement with the Crown Equerry's help. It was a great occasion when she presented the new drum horse, Peninsula, to the Colonel and commanding officer of the regiment in her own garden at Clarence House on 4 May 1988.
The regiment amalgamated with the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars in 1993 to become the Queen's Royal Hussars (the Queen's Own and Royal Irish), and, despite her sadness, Queen Elizabeth agreed once again to become colonel-in-chief. In June 1997, just a few weeks before her ninety-seventh birthday, she travelled in the royal train with the Duke of Edinburgh, who was deputy colonel-in-chief, to present a new guidon to the regiment at Cambrai Barracks at Catterick in Yorkshire. She slept aboard the train and next day she and the Duke inspected the regiment in a Range Rover. The old guidons were marched off, the new one consecrated, and Queen Elizabeth made a short speech congratulating the regiment.70 After meeting past colonels and others, and lunching in the officers' mess, she and the Duke flew back to London. Many of the officers and men marvelled at the stamina and will of their colonel-in-chief. It was not yet exhausted: in November 1999 she attended the regimental reception in St James's Palace, and her last engagement with the regiment was to receive the commanding officers at Clarence House on 22 February 2001.
Another 1947 appointment was that of colonel-in-chief of the Manchester Regiment, which in 1958 was merged with the King's Regiment (Liverpool). Like all other mergers this one caused unhappiness, but Brigadier R. N. M. Jones, the Colonel of the King's Regiment, wrote to Queen Elizabeth to say how delighted they were that she was to be colonel-in-chief of the new combined King's Regiment (Manchester and Liverpool). 'There is nothing else that could go such a long way towards softening the blow of the loss of our separate ident.i.ty.'71 Over the next four decades, she was always in touch, sending messages of congratulation or of sympathy, as when Kingsmen lost their lives in terrorist attacks in Londonderry in October 1990.72 In July 1993 she presented new colours to the 1st Battalion, congratulating them on their bearing and on the way in which they had upheld the high traditions of the regiment on operations in Northern Ireland.73 In 1998, after receiving the Colonel's report, she commented on the envelope, 'This is a wonderful record. I do hope that the 2 Territorial Companies survive. It is so important.'74 In 1953, in honour of her Coronation, the Queen appointed her mother colonel-in-chief of the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers. During the next few years the regiment was serving in Germany and she was unable to visit them there; but in 1960 she presented a guidon to the regiment at Tidworth and attended a regimental dinner and ball in London. Later that year the regiment was amalgamated with the 12th Royal Lancers to form the 9th/12th Royal Lancers (Prince of Wales's), and Queen Elizabeth was appointed colonel-in-chief of the new regiment. She visited them in Northern Ireland and in Germany, and, in keeping with her practice of finding homes for all her retired racehorses, in 1969 she gave them Bel Ambre and later Barometer.
Queen Elizabeth was always nostalgic about her home county of Hertfordshire, and in 1949 she had become colonel-in-chief of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, retaining the appointment when the regiment amalgamated with the Ess.e.x Regiment to form the 3rd East Anglian Regiment in 1958. In 1964 there was a further series of mergers and the Royal Anglian Regiment was formed; the Queen Mother was appointed colonel-in-chief, with Princess Margaret and Princess Alice, d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester becoming deputy colonels-in-chief; all three royal ladies attended a reception at St James's Palace to celebrate the formation of the new regiment in November that year. Over the ensuing years Queen Elizabeth followed the fortunes of the regiment, always regretting mergers which reduced its strength and its territorial links, and doing all she could to ensure that at least cap badges and regimental b.u.t.tons were maintained where possible.
In February 1988 the Queen Mother received a representative group from the Royal Anglian Regiment at Clarence House to mark the fiftieth anniversary of her becoming honorary colonel of the Hertfordshire Regiment, part of the Territorial Army. In the Territorials the appointment of honorary colonel is the equivalent of that of colonel-in-chief in the regular army. This was one of several honorary colonelcies which she accepted over the years. The Hertfordshire Regiment (TA) had a distinguished war and took part in the Normandy landings in June 1944. Queen Elizabeth had been once more upset when in 1960 she learned that the new order of battle for the Territorial Army did not contain the name of the regiment after its proposed amalgamation with the 5th Battalion The Bedfordshire Regiment. 'The lack of imagination shown by the War Office is too depressing,' she remarked privately.75 There was much correspondence between Clarence House, the War Office, David Bowes Lyon (who was now lord lieutenant of Hertfordshire) and various generals over the th.o.r.n.y question; at one point the Queen Mother commented, 'What a very irritating letter!'76 But she and her brother eventually won this particular battle: in July 1961, the War Office finally agreed that the regiment's new name should be the 1st Battalion the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment (TA). Eventually, when the regiment was incorporated into the 3rd East Anglian Regiment, of which she was colonel-in-chief, she relinquished the honorary colonelcy.
Even earlier than the Hertfordshire Regiment, the 14th London Regiment (London Scottish) had claimed her as honorary colonel in 1935. As has already been mentioned,* she had used all her powers of persuasion with King George V to allow her to take it on: You know that they consist of Scottish business people, clerks, and city workers who give up hard earned leisure to doing a little soldiering, and for years now, they have been pining and panting for you to make me their Colonel ... I would like it very much, as I have taken an interest in the London Scots for some time now, and as it is really rather like being President of something, I could perhaps help them in some ways. Lord Haig was their Colonel for years, and you know how sentimental my countrymen are, so they won't have anybody else, unless it is your loving and dutiful daughter in law, who hates troubling you about the matter, but who thinks it better really to put the facts as clearly as possible.77 No doubt she also remembered the 'London Scotties' who had been among her favourite convalescent soldiers at Glamis in the First World War. In later years the regiment repaid her interest by providing her with a piper in London, who piped at Clarence House on her birthdays.
As a master bencher of the Middle Temple, Queen Elizabeth took a special interest in the Inns of Court Regiment, and in November 1949 the year in which she served as treasurer of the Middle Temple she visited the regiment at Lincoln's Inn. In 1954 she presented colours to it and in 1957 she agreed to become joint honorary colonel with the Marquess of Reading. She became honorary colonel of the City of London Yeomanry (Rough Riders) soon after the death of the King in 1952. The Rough Riders were linked to another of her regiments, the Queen's Bays, and she was saddened when, because of government-imposed changes in 1956, this a.s.sociation had to end.78 Only four years later the Rough Riders were subject to another amalgamation with the Inns of Court and City Regiment. She exclaimed, 'my goodness what traditions & feeling of service they are destroying in the Territorials', but she took some comfort in the fact that since she was honorary colonel of both regiments, the officers and men of each would 'remain under her care'.79 The new regiment was known as the Inns of Court and City Yeomanry.
Queen Elizabeth's a.s.sociation with the women's services began in August 1939 with her appointment as commandant-in-chief of all three branches the Women's Royal Naval Service (later Women in the Royal Navy), the Auxiliary Territorial Service (later the Women's Royal Army Corps), and the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (later the Women's Royal Air Force, then Women in the Royal Air Force). During the war she visited units of all the services (and gave the ATS permission to play tennis in the garden at Buckingham Palace, although she decided against hockey on the lawn).80 In later years she attended many receptions and reunions, received the heads of the three services on their appointment and departure, and took an active interest in changes of design of badges and uniform. 'Very difficult to look nice in this' was one comment, on a new uniform for WRNS personnel in 1991 when they were to serve at sea in Royal Navy ships.81 She was always keen that they retain their individuality as women's services, and thus was unenthusiastic about the idea, adopted in 1968, that the t.i.tles of officers in the WRAF should become identical to those of the RAF.82 Later she stated her disagreement with plans to incorporate the women's services fully into the navy, army and air force respectively, but felt she had to bow to the 'inevitable'.83 In a special category of its own was Queen Elizabeth's informal, but important, link with the Irish Guards. In 1965 the Colonel of the regiment, Lord Alexander of Tunis,* asked whether she would consider taking on the annual task of presenting shamrock to the regiment at its St Patrick's Day parade. It was a tradition inst.i.tuted by Queen Alexandra in 1905, after whose death in 1926 Princess Mary (later Countess of Harewood and Princess Royal) had continued the tradition until she herself died in 1965. Queen Elizabeth agreed to keep up this royal link, of which the Irish Guards were very proud, although because St Patrick's Day, 17 March, fell at a busy time in her annual racing programme she feared she might not always be able to attend the presentation.84 In the event she became so fond of the Irish Guards that she rarely missed it from 1968 until the late 1990s, often flying out to Germany for the ceremony when the regiment was stationed there. Because every serving member of the regiment received a sprig, this sometimes meant deliveries of shamrock, on the Queen Mother's behalf, to out-of-the-way places once to a jungle airfield and a beach in Belize, another time to a camp near Mount Kenya, where the ceremony was watched by 'two giraffe, several baboons and a group of local Samburu warriors'.85 From 1972 a further link with the Irish Guards was formed when Captain Charles Baker was appointed equerry to Queen Elizabeth for two years. This was a break from the tradition by which the regiments of which she was colonel-in-chief supplied her equerries. Captain Baker was followed by a captain from the Black Watch, but from 1976 all her equerries thirteen more, each serving for two years came from the Irish Guards. This was because the appointment, which was not full time, could easily be combined with a post at the regimental headquarters at Wellington Barracks in Birdcage Walk, not far from Clarence House. The officer would spend the morning at Clarence House and the afternoon at Wellington Barracks, unless he was needed for specific engagements with the Queen Mother.
Outside Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth had other military relationships which she treasured, with Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. She became colonel-in-chief of the Toronto Scottish Regiment in 1937, and presented the regiment with new colours during her tour of Canada with the King in 1939. During the war the regiment served with the Canadian forces in Europe, and in April 1940 the Queen visited them at Aldershot; they mounted the guard at Buckingham Palace later that month. When the regiment returned to Canada at the end of the war, she sent a farewell message congratulating them on their 'splendid achievements on the field of battle' and hoping to see them again 'in your own dear land'.86 She did indeed see them again, on almost all of her many visits to Canada over the next forty-five years. She always included a walkabout among the ordinary soldiers, often attending garden parties and receptions for her three Canadian regiments. She also received visiting officers or members of the regimental a.s.sociation at Clarence House on many occasions, and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hilborn, a former commanding officer of the regiment, became her honorary Canadian equerry. In November 2000 'Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother's Own' was added to the t.i.tle of the regiment.
The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada was affiliated with its namesake in Scotland, and it was natural that Queen Elizabeth should be asked to be colonel-in-chief, an appointment she took on in 1947. She often received visiting officers of the Black Watch at Clarence House; one of her most frequent visitors was Colonel John Bourne, who had witnessed the 1939 royal tour as a junior officer and rose to become honorary colonel in 1970. Queen Elizabeth's last contact with the regiment was in January 2002, when she sent a message of congratulation on its 140th anniversary.87 Her third Canadian regiment was the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, which later became the Canadian Forces Medical Services. All three regiments took part in her birthday tributes on Horse Guards Parade in 1990 and 2000.
Military medicine interested Queen Elizabeth. In Australia she was colonel-in-chief of the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, a post to which the Queen appointed her in honour of her own Coronation in 1953. In 1977, in honour of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, she was appointed colonel-in-chief of the Royal New Zealand Army Medical Corps. 'Good old loyal N.Z.', she remarked when she heard that the corps was to serve in the Gulf War in 1991.88 Following her visit to Australia in 1958 Queen Elizabeth had become honorary air chief commandant of the Women's Royal Australian Air Force, and she sent a message to the Director of the WRAAF on its twenty-first anniversary in 1972. The appointment came to an end when the women's services were integrated into the Royal Australian Air Force in 1977.
Her relationships with regiments in South Africa became more problematic as the South African government's commitment to apartheid grew. In 1947, after the Royal Family's visit, the government submitted a list, for the King's approval, of regiments which desired to have a member of the Royal Family as colonel-in-chief. The government recommended that the Queen should become colonel-in-chief of the Cape Town Highlanders and of the Wit.w.a.tersrand Rifles.
In 1948 the Commandant of the Cape Town Highlanders asked if they could be named the Queen's Own Cape Town Highlanders. Permission was granted. The Wit.w.a.tersrand Rifles were affiliated to the Cameronians. In November 1956 Queen Elizabeth was also appointed colonel-in-chief of the Transvaal Scottish Regiment, which was affiliated to the Black Watch. She liked all these connections but they had to end when South Africa left the Commonwealth to pursue its apartheid policies in May 1961. She accepted the inevitable: that all her South African colonelcies-in-chief had to lapse. But she did not consider herself bound to break off all contact with her regiments. Martin Gilliat wrote to Commandant Loveland of the Cape Town Highlanders (which dropped the prefix 'Queen's Own'), 'Queen Elizabeth will always continue to take the closest interest in the achievements and welfare of her Regiment.'89 And so she did. In October 1961 a letter was sent from Clarence House to Commandant Hone who was to succeed Commandant Loveland, a.s.suring him of Queen Elizabeth's continuing interest.90 When Commandant Loveland visited London in March 1970, he was received (unofficially) by the Queen Mother, as were officers of her other South African regiments in later years. All three regiments sent contingents to her ninetieth- and hundredth-birthday parades.
Rhodesia, another country of which she was fond, posed problems too. In 1954 she was appointed honorary commissioner of the British South Africa Police.* She took up the appointment willingly, saying, 'I have vivid memories of the smartness and efficiency of the British South Africa Police on my visit to Southern Rhodesia and it has given me particular pleasure therefore to be able to accept the appointment of your Honorary Commissioner. I would be grateful if you would convey to All Ranks my best wishes and my hope that I may have the opportunity of visiting them again in the not too far distant future.'91 After the white minority government of Rhodesia made its unilateral declaration of independence in 1965, she tried to maintain unofficial contacts with the country, receiving lengthy reports on the welfare of the British South Africa Police until 1970. But in March that year, after Rhodesia had declared herself a republic, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised that Queen Elizabeth's appointment as honorary commissioner of the Police Force should be suspended. She wrote a note saying, 'Suspend but not Sever! It could be cunningly written in.'92 There were then ten more years of increasing bloodshed between the Rhodesian security forces and black nationalist guerrillas before a transfer of authority was brokered in 1980 by the new British government led by Margaret Thatcher. In the country's first-ever elections held on the basis of universal suffrage, the white minority regime finally lost power to a black government led by one of the princ.i.p.al guerrilla leaders, Robert Mugabe, and the independent country was renamed Zimbabwe. Hopes for a great future for Zimbabwe were to be dashed. The Queen Mother and other friends of the country watched in dismay as, over the next twenty years, Mugabe's regime became increasingly corrupt and brutal, eventually destroying one of the most fertile and one of the richest countries in Africa.
In South Africa, apartheid was eventually defeated by the moral force of Nelson Mandela and the political skills of President de Klerk, and to the great pleasure of the Queen and the Queen Mother South Africa returned to the Commonwealth. A special service, which the Queen Mother attended, was held in Westminster Abbey on 20 July 1994 to mark the occasion. In March 1995 the Queen made her first visit to the country since her family trip in 1947; she was moved by the reception she was given, particularly in the black townships where the inhabitants lined the streets in far greater numbers than for any other visitor, cheering and waving placards saying 'THANK YOU FOR COMING BACK'.93 *
MONARCHY OFFERS constancy. No member of the Royal Family had the opportunity to demonstrate that quality better than the Queen Mother. Remarkably, during what turned out to be not the end but the central period of her life, the political pendulum swung decisively in Britain. With the coming of the Labour government in 1964 after thirteen years of Conservative rule, it had seemed that the move of society towards government provision of all services was inevitable. It appeared that the role of the charitable sector, supported as it was by the monarchy, would inevitably decline. This was certainly what many Labour politicians wished should happen. They wanted no return to the 1930s and what one young socialist, Robin Cook, characterized as 'a flag-day NHS'.94 But after Margaret Thatcher won power for the Conservative Party in 1979, collectivist nostrums and activities came under criticism. It was argued that since 1945 collectivism had not proved itself vastly superior to voluntarism; a more balanced view of the potential of philanthropy began to emerge. From within the Royal Family the most trenchant a.n.a.lysis of overwhelming centralized state power came from Prince Philip. In one speech he observed that government was no longer satisfied with such traditional, neutral concerns as peace and security 'but now it is interested in morality and behaviour and legislating for the common good. The fact is that the liberty of the individual is a vital part of the common good also.' He criticized not only the collectivist mentality in Britain but, even more fiercely, the myths of Marxism above all for its dismissal of the voluntary and altruistic elements in human nature.95 A few years later he was bolder still and was quoted as saying that the monarchy had helped Britain 'to get over ... the development of an urban industrial intelligentsia reasonably easily'.96 As the twentieth century drew to a close, it became clear that members of the Royal Family were still in constant demand to represent different sections of civil society. This was a surprise to some commentators but not so much to members of the family who saw the impact that their charitable and philanthropic work continued to have, year after largely unchanging year. In 1966, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, the last-surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria, reflected that royalty was 'an arduous profession' which allowed its members few opt-outs. 'Their daily tasks, for months ahead, are prescribed and set out in a diary of engagements from which only illness can excuse them. None but those trained from youth to such an ordeal can sustain it with amiability and composure. The royal motto "ich dien" is no empty phrase. It means what it says I serve.'97 That was certainly true of Princess Alice herself, who had been tireless in her charitable works. It was equally true of Queen Elizabeth, who continued to add new charities and organizations to her patronages right up until the end of her life. This aspect of her work brought both inst.i.tutional and individual dividends.
The const.i.tutional historian Vernon Bogdanor has argued in his book The Monarchy and the Const.i.tution that the future of the monarchy lies 'in the practical employment of its symbolic influence'.98 Queen Elizabeth's public life and work showed exactly what he meant. The wide and complex web of her organizations kept her in touch with hundreds of different aspects of the changing world around her, and guaranteed that she received a ma.s.sive postbag. Some of these letters were 'fan mail', some were chatty letters from lonely people who wrote regularly and who were referred to as 'old friends' by the ladies in waiting whose duty it was to reply. Other letters were requests for advice or help from people who clearly believed that Queen Elizabeth could be of more a.s.sistance to them than the impersonal organs of the state.
One of her ladies in waiting, Lady Angela Oswald, said later, 'People treated her as a mixture of Agony Aunt, Information Office, Advice Bureau, Solve-the-Problem organisation. They wrote when they had nowhere else to turn.' The ladies in waiting would discuss with Queen Elizabeth how best to help each individual often one of her many patronages could a.s.sist and, in later years, Fiona Fletcher, the Lady Clerk, ran an extensive filing system of Queen Elizabeth's contacts which enabled specific a.s.sistance to be given. The benefit, to thousands of different people over the decades, was real. Her unique, personal value as a charitable fundraiser was noted by her friend Deborah, d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire at a performance of Die Fledermaus at the Royal Opera House in aid of the Putney Hospital for Incurables, with which Queen Elizabeth had a long a.s.sociation. 'Good Cake* came and turned it into a gala. One forgets between seeing her what a star she is & what incredible and wicked charm she has got.'99 The Queen Mother's philanthropic reach by the last decade of her life was remarkable, but most other senior members of the Royal Family played similar roles with their patronages and regiments. Indeed, this fruitful interchange showed the robustness of British philanthropic traditions despite the rise of the state. It has been argued that consistent royal involvement in the realm of voluntary action, with its diversity, its principled rivalry and its love of the ad hoc remedy, had given the nation 'immeasurable moral and democratic benefit'.100 At the same time, the monarchy offered a const.i.tutional landmark and inst.i.tutional continuity which made the costs of social change appear easier to bear.101 Queen Elizabeth spoke to this issue in January 1993, when she gave her annual talk to the Sandringham Women's Inst.i.tute. Looking back fifty years, she recalled the time 'when the skies above us were filled with aircraft of the American 8th Air Force, stationed all around us in East Anglia'. She went on to affirm her faith in the unaltered core of her country: 'Many changes have come about since those days of War, some good, and some not so good, but through all those changing scenes of life we can feel the strong beat of the English heart.'102 It was in this heart that she trusted above all.
* The inscription above the door of the original BBC headquarters in Portland Place read, 'This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty G.o.d by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being Director-General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.'
* See Appendix B for a complete list of Queen Elizabeth's patronages.
* This fund, set up in 1941 on the initiative of a Canadian Battle of Britain pilot, Flight Lieutenant Hartland de M. Molson, raised huge sums in Canada, initially for British victims of air raids, under the chairmanship of John G. McConnell. The organizers wanted it to be a.s.sociated with Queen Elizabeth, and she allowed it to use her name, and also agreed to a later proposal that its work should extend throughout the Empire, and to victims of all kinds of enemy attack. By December 1941 it had raised 145,000; by VE Day $1,655,252 had been collected. It ceased to make appeals after May 1945, and its funds were used to support the WVS and SSAFA. (RA QEQMH/PS/CSP/Queen's Canadian Fund) * Benjamin Britten's health was failing following a stroke, but that year the Queen commissioned him to compose a short piece as a surprise present for Queen Elizabeth's seventy-fifth birthday. The result was A Birthday Hansel, a setting for voice and harp of poems by Robert Burns.
* The term used for regimental colours in the cavalry.
* See this page * Field Marshal Harold Alexander, first Earl Alexander of Tunis KG OM (18911969). During the Second World War he served as a commander in Burma, North Africa and Italy, eventually rising to become Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces Headquarters. In 1946 he succeeded Lord Athlone as Governor General of Canada and in 1952 he returned to Britain to become minister of defence in Winston Churchill's Cabinet before retiring from public life in 1954.
The shamrock was grown specially for the regiment in County Cork, and every serving member received a sprig; hitherto it had been provided by the regiment, but Queen Elizabeth decided to pay for it herself. The initial annual cost of about 25 rose to more than 1,700 over the next thirty years.
* The British South Africa Police (a Rhodesian force) had its origin in the British South Africa Company's Police which was formed under the powers conferred by the Charter granted to the company in 1889 by Queen Victoria. The services of the BSAP to the Empire were recognized as early as 1904 when a banner in recognition of these services was presented to the force at Mafeking by Lord Milner on behalf of the King.
* 'Cake' was the nickname that the d.u.c.h.ess gave to the Queen Mother after being deeply impressed long before by her enthusiasm at a wedding when the cake was cut.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
AT HOME.
'One feels so beautifully far away'
FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH one decade glided into another, with the basic pattern of her days, weeks, months and years being fairly constant. Thus in outward form the action on stage in 1963, for example, would in many ways have been repeated in 1983 or 1993, with the cast of characters much the same, merely older. Her constant pleasures from P. G. Wodehouse to Sandown Park, from the Black Watch to Middle Temple, from her corgis to the royal yacht Britannia did not change.
Each year she spent Christmas with the Royal Family, until 1964 at Sandringham and after that at Windsor until 1988, when the family reverted to spending Christmas at Sandringham. They were always at Sandringham for the New Year and, unless she was unwell, in which case the Queen took her place, Queen Elizabeth never missed her first fixture there in January: the annual general meeting of the Sandringham Women's Inst.i.tute. She visited the studs at Sandringham and Wolferton at least twice a week during her stay. Every year on 6 February, the anniversary of the King's death, she took communion, usually with other members of the family. In later years she would spend this day at Royal Lodge.
For most of the second half of the winter and early spring she would be based at Clarence House with weekends at Royal Lodge. Easter was always with the family at Windsor and in May she would make her first visit of the year to Scotland, in the early years to the Castle of Mey, where she was constantly improving the house and the garden and where, in 1960, she bought the neighbouring Longoe Farm to pursue her growing interest in breeding Aberdeen Angus cattle and North Country Cheviot sheep. Latterly she went to Birkhall in May and invited friends to stay for the fishing. Then she would return south.
Summer's annual events included the Derby, Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade, the Garter Service at Windsor, and Royal Ascot. In July she went back to Norfolk for the King's Lynn Festival and the Sandringham Flower Show. After her birthday on 4 August, she would go to Mey for a longer holiday, then a weekend with the Queen and other members of the family at Balmoral, after which she would move down the road to her home, Birkhall, until the end of October with one final week at Mey. Then it was back to London and Royal Lodge until Christmas. Within this fairly well-fixed timetable there were many events that were ringfenced, on both the private and the public sides of her life.
Regular engagements included, in March, the annual general meeting of Queen Mary's London Needlework Guild at St James's Palace she attended this every year until 2001. A favourite fixture was dinner with the members of the Garden Society, for an evening of horticultural talk. And every year until she ceased to be chancellor in 1980 there were the University of London graduation ceremonies at the Royal Albert Hall. She attended gala performances of ballet or opera in aid of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera Benevolent Funds; the Royal Variety Performance was also a regular engagement until 1988. Then there was the Royal College of Music's annual prize giving and concert which she attended from 1952 till 1992, when she retired as president and was elected president emerita, and the Middle Temple Family Night dinner every December.
The First World War remained always in her consciousness. She made sure that in November she planted her personal Cross of Remembrance in the Field of Remembrance at St Margaret's Church, Westminster, attended the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall and watched the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Cenotaph from the Home Office balcony. Often, though not annually, she would attend the Royal Tournament at Earl's Court, until this ended in 1996. Similarly, in early December she liked to visit the Royal Smithfield Show, of which she was annual president in 1983, 1987 and 1989.
Most years she carried out around a hundred official engagements occasionally more.* Many more requests usually about 200 had to be refused every year. Most years included at least one official overseas visit.
HER GREATEST pleasure throughout was family. She and the Queen talked to each other almost every day on the telephone if not in person. The Buckingham Palace switchboard operator, putting through the call, would say 'Your Majesty, I have Her Majesty on the line.' When they were not talking of their shared obsession with horses and racing, family matters dominated their conversations. Queen Elizabeth took a keen interest in her grandchildren, particularly Prince Charles. The bond between them, forged while his parents were on their long Commonwealth tour in 19534, grew stronger as the years pa.s.sed. In 1961, while his parents were in India, Queen Elizabeth visited the twelve-year-old Prince at his preparatory school, Cheam, in Surrey; he was suffering from a bad attack of measles and came home to Royal Lodge to convalesce. He soon recovered, 'much to his disappointment!' said his grandmother, and she took him with her to Buckingham Palace for Prince Andrew's first birthday party. Afterwards, writing to the Queen, she reported that Andrew was 'looking absolutely angelic ... the noise was terrific, & everyone enjoyed themselves very much. The cake was cut, with great difficulty, by Andrew, & the proceedings ended by me escaping at about 5.30.'1 Later that year, when the Queen was on a visit to Ghana, the Queen Mother took Princess Anne to Cheam to see Prince Charles's school play, and wrote to tell the Queen about it afterwards. She was not allowed to mingle with the other parents, she said, but was firmly segregated in another room, where she was given 'boiling sherry'. She described the play as an adaptation of Richard III:* 'after a few minutes on to the stage shambled a most horrible looking creature, a leering vulgarian, with a dreadful expression on his twisted mouth; & to my horror I began to realise that this was my dear grandson! He was the Duke of Gloucester, & acted his part very well, in fact he made the part quite revolting!' The headmaster told Queen Elizabeth that he was pleased with the young Prince's progress. Pa.s.sing on his comments to the Queen, she added a remark reflecting both her general att.i.tude to the upbringing of children and, perhaps, her anxiety for this particular child. 'So often, in children, they suddenly develop, and gain confidence, & if they are naturally gentle & considerate, they probably become all the stronger in character.'2 The family was at this moment discussing where Prince Charles should be educated next. Prince Philip argued for his own school, Gordonstoun, in north-eastern Scotland. He thought it would suit the Prince best and that its remoteness would protect him somewhat from the intrusions of the media. Moreover, though far from London, Gordonstoun was within relatively easy reach of Balmoral and Birkhall. The Queen Mother, however, made a strong case for Eton, where her brothers and many of her friends had been educated. Recognizing that her grandson was sensitive, even vulnerable, she thought Eton would be by far the best place for him.3 Moreover, the school was just across the River Thames from Windsor Castle and many of the sons of his parents' friends would be there. At Gordonstoun, by contrast, 'he might as well be at school abroad.'4 It would be 'an alien world' in which he would be 'terribly alone & cut off'.5 Prince Philip's view prevailed. On family matters the Queen almost always deferred to her husband's judgement, conscious that although she was queen he was head of the family.
Queen Elizabeth was tactful, but she was dismayed by Prince Philip's choice. She was right Prince Charles was unhappy and felt isolated at Gordonstoun. She did all she could to aid and comfort him at what she called in one letter 'that glorious salubrious bed of roses known as Gordon's Town',6 and he visited her often at Birkhall; after one weekend there, he wrote, 'All the way back in the car I kept wanting to go back and stay longer at Birkhall.' He listed all the times in the week at which he was allowed to receive telephone calls.7 She urged members of the family to telephone him to cheer him up he was 'a brave little boy', she said.8 The Prince's dislike of Gordonstoun did not ease as he grew older.
She thoroughly approved of his ultimate educational destination, Trinity College, Cambridge, where the former Conservative politician Rab Butler was master.* 'I am delighted that you are going to Trinity I am sure that you will enjoy it to the full, & be able to make the most of the opportunity of getting to know that splendid character Lord Butler I feel sure too, that he is one of the few wise men just now, & full of humour as well as being a statesman.'9 She gave him a painting by Edward Seago for his room in the College.
Her complement of grandchildren was completed by the birth of the Queen and Prince Philip's fourth and last child, Prince Edward (1964), and by the two children of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, Lord (David) Linley (1961) and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (1964). The Queen Mother played an important role in the lives of these last two grandchildren they spent a great deal of time at her homes, particularly in the 1970s and they too came to love her deeply as they did their aunt, the Queen.
THERE WERE SADNESSES too. Her 1960s, like each of her decades, were regularly punctuated by the deaths of many people close to her. The first was Arthur Penn, her oldest, most devoted friend and courtier.
His last months of service to her (she still had not released him completely) were marred when in May 1960 the British press picked up a report in an American newspaper that Queen Elizabeth was about to marry him. She was in Northern Rhodesia when the story broke and her office dismissed it as 'complete and absolute nonsense'.10 Her Private Secretary, Martin Gilliat, said she took it 'in very good part',11 but Penn was mortified by what he called 'this most embarra.s.sing absurdity'. He felt that having successfully avoided any publicity through twenty-five years of royal service, 'this reversal has been most odious.'12 He became ever more frail and at the end of November 1960 he wrote to Queen Elizabeth in a shaky hand that 'the medicine men' could not succeed in stabilizing him. He felt he had to be patient and count his 'very numerous' blessings. 'But I wish I could be with Your Majesty & be of some service to you.'13 He died on 31 December that year. Queen Elizabeth was greatly saddened and wrote to his sister, saying that 'to be able to turn to Arthur for wise counsel in so many different situations, to be able to share the pleasure of beautiful things and to laugh, was something that has meant more to me that I can ever say, both in happy days and sad days. How wonderful to have lived a life such as Arthur lived. Spreading gaiety and kindness around him, and goodness and courage as well.'14 Penn's death was followed in February 1961 by that of Queen Elizabeth's elder sister May Elphinstone, at the age of seventy-seven. Remembered affectionately by her daughter Margaret as 'permanently in an old tweed coat tied round the waist with a piece of string and gumboots, bent double over something in the garden',15 she had a strong social conscience and had worked in the slums of Edinburgh, and in the Women's Voluntary Service during the war.
Later in 1961 Queen Elizabeth suffered the sudden death of her younger brother David, who still lived at St Paul's Walden with his wife Rachel and son Simon. Not everyone found David Bowes Lyon easy, but brother and sister were devoted to each other. Suddenly, at Birkhall on 12 September, he had a heart attack and he died the next day. His funeral took place at the Episcopal church at Ballater on 15 September and that evening the Queen Mother, the Queen, Prince Philip and members of the Bowes Lyon family accompanied the coffin on the night train south. David was buried at the familiar little church at St Paul's Walden.
The Queen knew what a gap this would leave in her mother's life and did her best to cherish her in these days for which Queen Elizabeth wrote to thank her, and to say how devoted David had been to his niece too 'he really loved you, & would have done anything for you.' He was one of the few people upon whom she could rely to tell her the truth and his death was 'like a light going out in one's life, we have always been so close, I knew what he was thinking even.'16 Soon after the funeral, Queen Elizabeth went up to the Castle of Mey. Relaxing there, she said, made her feel calmer. But she continued to find life bleak without the other 'Benjamin'. Almost a year after his death she went to stay with his widow Rachel at St Paul's Walden, and afterwards wrote to say how grateful she was for Rachel's understanding of her own love of David. She added, 'He has left something so strong, hasn't he perhaps that is really the point of human life and living, to give, & to create new goodness all the time.'17 This probably represents as good a statement of her view of the purpose of life as any other to give and to create new goodness all the time. But she knew also how hard that was on a later occasion she told Rachel how much she admired 'the way you face life & its obligations & oh what a battle it is sometimes.'18 Her last surviving sibling, Rose, Lady Granville, died in November 1967; Queen Elizabeth had visited her twice earlier that year at her home in Scotland. Rose was not only thought to be the great beauty in the family 'a lovely person with a slow, gravelly voice', one of her nieces remembered19 she was much loved for her kindness.
Queen Elizabeth's old friend D'Arcy Osborne was also beginning to falter; he had continued to live in Rome and worked on behalf of street children in the city. In early 1962 Osborne told her that he had had a hard winter. She sent him her sympathy and expounded her rather sanguine view of international affairs: 'The world staggers on, from one crisis to another, but I have a feeling that human beings are beginning to become accustomed to these rather bogus upheavals, & take them more philosophically than the slightly hysterical reporters & newscasters!'20 Osborne was well enough to come and stay with her at Birkhall that autumn.21 She was worried about his finances, which had always been precarious, and she did something about it a few months later she told him, 'D'Arcy, one or two of your old & loving friends have sent a small sum to your banking account in Rome, in case it might come in handy some time. They hope you won't mind, it is just to show their true affection.'22 He replied at once, 'Madam, Dear Ma'am, How KIND!' Her generosity would, he wrote, enable him to take taxis when tired and would give him 'the invaluable benefit of peace of mind and freedom from fussing over small and ign.o.ble matters'.23 In 1963 D'Arcy Osborne became the duke of Leeds,* on the death of his distant cousin the eleventh Duke, brother of Queen Elizabeth's sister-in-law Dorothy. It was too late for him to enjoy this transition; he died in Rome in April 1964. One of his friends wrote to the Queen Mother that they had held a 'goodbye' ceremony around his bed, and his ashes were buried, with emotion, 'on a golden Roman spring day' in the English cemetery.24 Next it was her girlhood governess and friend Beryl Poignand who died. In early 1963, Queen Elizabeth, knowing that she was unwell, had helped arrange for her admission first into the London Homeopathic Hospital and then into the Parkfield Nursing Home in Kingston, run by the Friends of the Poor and Gentlefolk's Help, of which she was patron.25 In December 1964 Queen Elizabeth visited her it was the last time she saw the woman to whom she had been so close when they were both young. A month later Beryl fell and broke her hip; she died after a few days, aged seventy-seven. The Queen Mother wrote to Mrs Leone Poignand Hall, Beryl's cousin, 'She shared our joys & sorrows to the full, & I have nothing but happy and loving thoughts in my mind when I think of her.'26 In 1964 Edith Sitwell died, and Queen Elizabeth wrote sympathetically to Osbert, to whom his sister's loss was a real blow; he himself was ill, and spending much time at his house at Montegufoni, in Italy. Their mutual friend Hannah Gubbay, hostess at many luncheons which both had enjoyed, died in 1968; 'there will never be anyone like her again,' Queen Elizabeth wrote to Sitwell. 'The last time I lunched with her, she seemed desperately frail & crippled, but just as funny & crisp as ever. We all spoke of you, & wished that you could have been there.'27 Sitwell invited her to visit him in Italy; but he died in May 1969. She grieved, and sent a telegram expressing her 'truly heartfelt sympathy in this moment of great sorrow' to his brother Sacheverell.28 All such deaths reminded her how 'curiously alone' she had become even in the 1960s. 'Nearly all my family have gone, & so many old friends, and sometimes one feels very solitary. But I suppose that happens to everyone who lives past 60, and one must not allow the fact to depress one.'29 In a later, more upbeat moment, she acknowledged that with ageing 'there are compensations, such as loathing the idea of going to a Night Club and things like that!'30 A poignant commemoration of her greatest loss came on 31 March 1969, when Queen Elizabeth, with most of the Royal Family, attended the dedication of the King George VI Memorial Chapel in St George's Chapel, Windsor, as the last resting place of her husband. His coffin had remained in the Royal Vault beneath St George's since his death. It had originally been intended that a tomb should be made for him in St George's Chapel itself, like those of his parents and grandparents. Various sculptors were suggested to make an effigy of the King to be placed on the tomb.* Jacob Epstein was approached, although Queen Elizabeth was concerned that his bold style might be inappropriate for the setting. She herself saw 'the possibility of something exceptional', in the words of Sir Arthur Penn, from the hand of Henry Moore. She wanted to discuss it with Moore personally if he were willing to undertake it. But she was reluctant to press him, and the idea was evidently dropped.31 In the end it was decided that rather than a tomb with effigies, a chantry chapel should be built for the King, opening off the north aisle of St George's. There were delays because the Fine Arts Commission had understandable reservations about the effect of a modern addition to an architectural masterpiece of the Perpendicular Gothic style. But the architects succeeded in creating a simple and harmonious building lit by narrow lancet windows with stained gla.s.s designed by John Piper. Queen Elizabeth was pleased with the result, which she described as 'a truly peaceful & holy place.'32 *
QUEEN ELIZABETH'S princ.i.p.al home for the second half of her life was Clarence House. Despite her initial dismay at having to move there after the death of the King, she gradually grew to accept it as an effective London base. With the help of friends and advisers she decorated it well and imbued it with a sense of continuity.
Standing off Stable Yard next to St James's Palace, Clarence House was built by John Nash in 18258 for the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV. Through the nineteenth century the house was lived in by a succession of junior members of the Royal Family. After the last of these, the Duke of Connaught, died in 1942, the house served for the rest of the war as the headquarters of the British Red Cross Society and the St John Ambulance Brigade. It was damaged by bombing and had to be extensively restored before becoming the married home of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1949.
The front door of the house is approached through black-painted wooden gates on Stable Yard Road, a private street off the Mall. Inside the gates, a gravel drive of barely more than a car's length leads to the pillared portico. From there it is just one step into the small outer hall where stood a musical clock given to her and the Duke of York by the citizens of Glasgow for their wedding it was surmounted with a Scottish lion on a crown and was made by 'John Smith of Pittenweem, North Britain'. The broad inner hall is the backbone of the house and the Queen Mother used it as a gallery for paintings, tapestries and mirrors.
Past an early seventeenth-century tapestry, acquired in 1950, was Simon Elwes's sketch of Queen Elizabeth in Garter robes, made for his large painting, which hung on the wall opposite, of the King investing Princess Elizabeth with the insignia of the Order of the Garter in the Throne Room at Windsor Castle in April 1948. It is a delicate portrait of a poignant moment as the King made his beloved daughter a member of the oldest and most distinguished Order of British chivalry, 600 years after the founding of the Order.
Elwes's painting, which was completed only in 1953 after the death of the King, is an important part of the collection built up over decades by Queen Elizabeth. The art historian John Cornforth, in his admirable study of Clarence House, points out that the Garter picture 'is part of a chronological story that reflects the intensity of the period in which Queen Elizabeth was most active in acquiring pictures by living artists'.33 After the grim menace of the 1930s and the war, and the grey immediate post-war years, there was something 'doubly celebratory' about the Garter picture. Victories had been won, evil had been defeated, and the King was handing the promise of the future to his daughter.34 That sense of what had been avoided is also illuminated by a painting further down the hall by James Gunn it is a conversation piece of several soldiers ent.i.tled simply Field Marshal Montgomery in his Mess Tent in Belgium in 1944. This shows the Field Marshal himself in a flying jacket and corduroy trousers, sitting around a table with his aides. Gunn had been with them in Belgium in August and September 1944 as the Allies advanced towards Berlin. Eindhoven was relieved while the artist was there. There is on many of the faces, and certainly on that of Montgomery, a quiet smile of satisfaction. The Queen saw the painting at the Royal Academy in 1945 and bought it; Montgomery was chagrined and tried to acquire it for himself. She declined to release it and Gunn eventually painted another version for the Field Marshal.35 Off the main corridor is the Lancaster Room, which Queen Elizabeth used as a waiting room for those whom she was to receive in audience. It was dominated by the watercolours of Windsor Castle under lowering skies by John Piper, which the Queen had commissioned in 1941.
Leading off the hall is a corridor filled with paintings and mementoes of horses and racing and therefore known as the Horse Corridor. In 1963 Queen Elizabeth added to this collection with a painting by J. F. Herring which represented Cotherstone, a Derby and 2000 Guineas winner owned by John Bowes. Even more striking is another Herring a sketch of the twelfth Earl of Strathmore on horseback. And at the east end of the corridor hung pictures of some of the Queen Mother's own horses The Rip, Double Star and Makaldar.
In the Garden Room the Queen Mother hung over the fireplace the celebrated unfinished portrait of her which Augustus John began at the end of 1939. It was a difficult commission to complete in the brutal circ.u.mstances of war, but the result is rather magical almost a portrait of a fairy queen. In the upright figure dressed in a Hartnell gold and white crinoline, bedecked in glittering jewels and holding red roses in her lap, John captured much of this Queen's sparkling gaiety.
It was presented to her as a gift in 1961 and she wrote to John, 'What a tremendous pleasure it gives me to see it once again. It looks so lovely in my drawing room and has cheered it up no end! The sequins glitter and the rose and the red chair give a fine glow and I am so happy to have it.'36 John was overjoyed by her letter and replied that now that the picture was on her wall, 'I am convinced that with all its faults, there is something there which is both true and lovable. I have really thought so all along but have not dared to say so.'37 Close by was another, very different portrait she is not in light crinolines but in black, she is uncrowned and looks, as she was, half a decade older and seasoned by the worries of war. There is realism rather than magic in this sketch which James Gunn painted, a few months after the war ended, for a large portrait of her as Royal Bencher of the Middle Temple.38 Other portraits of her in the house included the profile done for her mother by John Singer Sargent at the time of her marriage, and a sketch for a portrait by Graham Sutherland which was to have hung at Senate House in the University of London.* The idea of a Sutherland portrait had been long in gestation. In 1951 she had had some doubts about the artist when he was suggested for a regimental portrait. She had seen his painting of Somerset Maugham, which, in the words of Arthur Penn, showed 'a cynical and desiccated old turtle'.39 By 1959, when the University gave Sutherland the commission, she evidently had fewer qualms. She agreed to his suggestion that she should wear a feathered hat and gave him seven sittings in March 1961. According to his biographer Roger Berthoud, Sutherland 'found that her flow of conversation made concentration difficult, and he was not used to coping with a face so relatively cherubic and unlined.'40 He produced a sketch which was a good start, but he came to the conclusion that he would not be able to paint a portrait that the University would like and so the project was abandoned. There were many who thought this was a pity the