The Queen Mother Part 25
UNDER SCRUTINY.
19681981 'Let's go down to the old Bull and Bush'
AS ONE DECADE succeeded another, Britain continued to alter with almost bewildering speed. In retrospect and perhaps in cliche, the 1960s were deemed the decade of change, but the social revolution that began there had no neat ten-year ending. Rather, its reverberations continued to work through society in all the years that followed. The 1970s, Queen Elizabeth's eighth decade, were notable for economic failure, for weak government and for the abandonment of old social nostrums. Many time-honoured British inst.i.tutions the Church of England, the armed services, the law and the monarchy itself faced unprecedented challenges and demands for reform. Patterns of authority were discarded. Relativism, the belief that no point of view is superior to another, became the new creed. People of conservative bent became concerned that society was disintegrating, even that Britain was facing its twilight.
The traditional family was in decline as the nucleus of society. More marriages ended in divorce, and the numbers of children born out of wedlock rose inexorably. More women went to work, more people lived alone. Minorities demanded more rights more vocally. University students became more rebellious. Football hooliganism and mugging on the streets became more common. Decimal coinage replaced pounds, shillings and pence in 1971, unsolicited credit cards were sent by banks to their customers, spending became more fashionable than saving, inflation soared, the first of many housing booms gathered pace, the price of oil shot up after the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War of 1973, supermarkets grew and so did the numbers of immigrants from disparate parts of the former empire.1 The nature of secondary education changed as a result of decisions by the Labour government after 1964. For decades selective grammar schools had been a great help to clever working-cla.s.s children, but Tony Crosland, Harold Wilson's Education Secretary, declared that he was going to 'destroy' every grammar school in the country.2 Comprehensive schools, less exclusive and less academic, were promoted instead. The result was startling in 1970 some 34 per cent of British secondary-school children were in comprehensive schools; by 1980 the numbers had swollen to 80 per cent. It would be fair to say that this change did not always seem to lead to a widespread improvement in standards.
Numbers in higher education doubled in the 1960s with the opening of new universities first, Suss.e.x (at Brighton) in 1961, followed by York, Kent (at Canterbury) and Ess.e.x (at Colchester). Numbers of students continued to increase in the 1970s but cuts in government expenditure took some of the gloss off the new inst.i.tutions. The hope that large numbers of children would take to science and engineering was not realized sociology was preferred.
In addition to social change, the United Kingdom was under brutal a.s.sault from the Irish Republican Army with its frequent murderous attacks in Ulster and in British cities, in pursuit of its demand for a united Ireland. Terrorist atrocities and the consequent deaths of both civilians and members of the armed forces (including some from regiments of which Queen Elizabeth was colonel-in-chief) became a dismal refrain throughout the next thirty years. Queen Elizabeth followed closely the fortunes of her own regiments which were involved in the defence of the United Kingdom. She said that she prayed for Northern Ireland every night.3 Queen Elizabeth was aware of the magnitude of the changes that were taking place. 'It is almost incredible to think of what has happened in the last 30 years, compared with, say 30 years in one's grandfather's time,' she wrote to a friend at the time of her seventieth birthday.4 Much of it she may have disliked. But she was always careful not to give public voice to her anxieties. Moreover, she was usually both optimistic and philosophical she did not see it as part of her duties to tilt at windmills.
Such a battery of changes was bound to affect the monarchy and the Royal Family. As the Duke of Edinburgh had said, 'The monarchy is part of the fabric of the country. And, as the fabric alters, so the monarchy and its people's relations to it alters.'5 With society becoming so much more open, some Palace officials felt by the end of the 1960s that the Royal Family itself needed to be more accessible. Until now relations with the press had been deliberately kept formal and as distant as possible.
When Lord Brabourne, Lord Mountbatten's son-in-law, suggested making a film of the family at work and play, the Duke of Edinburgh took up the idea and the Queen agreed to it. Royal Family was broadcast by the BBC and then by ITV in June 1969, and the BBC estimated that 68 per cent of the British public had watched it. The film was sold to 140 countries. It was a remarkable doc.u.mentary which gave people all over the world the opportunity to see for the first time the annual pattern of the monarch's life, to hear her voice at home and to see her and her children interact (if somewhat stiltedly). Viewers saw the Queen on formal occasions and at ease; she was seen discussing her clothes with her dresser and Foreign Office telegrams with her Private Secretary, at Balmoral and on board Britannia. Prince Philip was shown boating with his young son, Prince Edward; at a picnic Prince Charles made salad dressing while Princess Anne tried to get the barbecue going. On the Berkshire downs the Queen and Princess Anne watched racehorses exercise in the morning mist. This first authorized glimpse into the Royal Family's daily life was far more revealing than anything Crawfie or other royal servants had ever disclosed.
The film was made in good faith as an attempt to portray the family in a more modern, open manner, and it was received in this spirit by many members of the public. It was a huge success at the time and showed the most attractive side of the family itself and of its individual members. Such openness was almost revolutionary. But it carried risks; those who hoped that this one act of collaboration would sate the appet.i.tes of the media had made a sad misjudgement. Perhaps inevitably many journalists saw it as a challenge: the Royal Family had breached the walls of privacy from the inside, so their private lives were now fair game.
The theatre critic Milton Shulman maintained that with the film the Royal Family was replacing an old image with a new one. The old image, that of George V and George VI and, till now, of Queen Elizabeth II, had been of authority and remoteness this had now given way to one of 'homeliness, industry and relaxation'. He noted that 'Every inst.i.tution that has so far attempted to use TV to popularise or aggrandise itself has been trivialised by it.'6 The Queen's biographer Ben Pimlott later asked, 'Was it right for a fourth estate worth its salt, to accept such a calculated piece of media manipulation as a given? If royal "privacy" was no longer sacrosanct, why should its exposure be strictly on royalty's own terms?'7 In fact, real though the dangers were, the Royal Family had no alternative to becoming more open to the world. Had they refused to do so at the end of the 1960s, they would have been dismissed and denounced as utterly irrelevant to the modern age. They were d.a.m.ned if they did and d.a.m.ned if they did not.
The film was immediately followed by another big media event which put the Royal Family at the centre of the national stage. This was the Invest.i.ture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales by the Queen at Caernarvon Castle, on 1 July 1969, in his twenty-first year. It was an effort to show the monarchy as both self-renewing and involved in all parts of the United Kingdom. It was a deliberately theatrical event; the Queen appointed the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal, to co-ordinate the ceremony together with Lord Snowdon, who designed the setting and the costumes with the demands of powerful television cameras very much in mind.
In retrospect it was easy to mock both Snowdon's efforts and, indeed, the entire ceremony, as 'mock-Arthurian'.8 The Queen and the Prince themselves saw the funny side of it all and the dress rehearsal threatened to reduce them both to giggles; but the actual ceremony was conducted faultlessly.9 The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince were enthroned in the courtyard of Caernarvon Castle under a perspex canopy. Four thousand guests seated on scarlet chairs watched as the Prince, clad in the Snowdon vision of medieval garb, kneeled before his mother who was dressed for 1969, and swore an oath of loyalty to the Queen. She in turn placed a gold coronet on his head. The Prince wrote in his diary that he was very moved by it all.10 So was Queen Elizabeth; she congratulated Snowdon on his efforts, saying that the Invest.i.ture was all 'so perfect and arranged with such marvellous taste that I feel I must send you one line of heartfelt congratulation on a really super result ... It is so lovely to know that this day, so important to you, is also a sort of turning point for the people of our country. You've done so much to achieve this, well done. Your loving MOTHER IN LAW, ER'.11 *
ROYAL FAMILY and the Invest.i.ture came at a time of increased pressure upon the royal finances. Indeed the costs of the monarchy now became an issue for the first time since the Queen came to the throne. Six years of Labour government made this almost inevitable. The needs of the state seemed to grow inexorably. Government expenditure on health and social services, which consumed 16 per cent of Gross National Product in 1951, had risen to 29 per cent in 1975, or almost half of all public expenditure that year.12 As a result, Labour politicians and others on the left began again to examine royal expenditure. Money for the monarch and the Royal Family has always been a contentious matter in the House of Commons. Parliament first took responsibility for the expenses of the Royal Household after the Revolution of 1688. Since 1760 every monarch has agreed to surrender the income from the Crown Estates to Parliament, and in return Parliament gives the monarch an annual provision known as the Civil List. The amount used to be fixed at the start of every reign and was supposed to remain fixed at that level thereafter.
By 1969 inflation had eaten away at the Civil List, which had been fixed at 475,000 in 1952. Salaries at Buckingham Palace were famously low. That year Prince Philip surprised everyone when he gave a television interview in North America and warned that the Royal Family was about to go into the red and 'we may have to move into smaller premises, who knows?'13 Harold Wilson, a Labour Prime Minister who was devoted to both the Queen and the monarchy, did not want the issue of royal finances to become party political. He sought and obtained the agreement of Edward Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party, that there should be a new select committee on the Civil List, to be set up after the forthcoming election.
In May 1970, when the polls looked favourable to Labour, Wilson called an election. To widespread surprise, the Conservatives won and the Queen called upon Edward Heath to form her new government. He went ahead and set up the Select Committee. It was chaired by the new Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Barber, but included also such dedicated republican critics of the monarchy as William Hamilton, Labour MP for Fife. In May 1971 the Committee began its examination of royal finances. The hearings were tough. Indeed, Pimlott suggested that the Select Committee put the monarchy more seriously on the defensive than at any time since 1936.14 The Queen's Private Secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, came before the Committee and explained in detail the work that the Queen undertook and why there was a need for an increase in the Queen's public income, the Civil List, to 980,000. The Queen's work, he said, was endless and unending no retirement for her.15 The costs of the royal yacht Britannia, the royal train and other perquisites were examined closely. There was much speculation on the size of the Queen's personal fortune. Huge and inflated sums were put around and newspaper editorials criticized the fact that she paid no tax. As for the Queen Mother, the Committee complained that no explanation had been given for the increase in her Civil List allowance 95,000 was now requested, instead of the 77,000 set in 1952. The Lord Chamberlain, Lord Cobbold, said that it was his personal view' that it should be considered 'as something of the nature of payment for services rendered over years of peace and war'. The Committee, arguing that her duties were likely to contract as the years went by, recommended that her annuity be reduced and that she be paid no more than a retired Prime Minister.
When the Committee's recommendations came up for debate in the House of Commons in December 1971 there was fierce criticism, particularly of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, from the Labour benches. William Hamilton denounced the monarchy's supporters on the Committee as diligent sycophants'. Why did the Queen Mother need 95,000 a year? He listed by name all her Household with their t.i.tles. 'That is a total household of 33,' he said. 'I ask the House: what the blazes do they do? What do the Ladies of the Bedchamber do that the Women of the Bedchamber do not do? Why all the extras? ... What size of bed chamber is this?' He did not mention that the ladies in waiting received only a dress allowance but no pay, or that the extras were all retired and unpaid. Instead he declared that it was 'obscene' that the Queen Mother was getting such monies while old folk in his const.i.tuency were dying from cold and starvation. He was even more insulting about Princess Margaret, 'an expensive kept woman' who did 'even less than her old Mum'.16 In fact Queen Elizabeth had in that year undertaken eighty-six official engagements and seven for the University of London; 187 further invitations had had to be turned down.
The criticisms were disagreeable and Lord Snowdon telephoned and wrote to his mother-in-law to sympathize. She thanked him, saying she was 'deeply, deeply touched' by his words, 'for of course one can't help minding such venomous observations, especially coming from our revered House of Commons!'17 In the end, the Conservative-dominated House ignored the recommendations of the Committee, pa.s.sed a generous settlement and fixed the Civil List for the next ten years so as to avoid such a debilitating debate every year. Anthony Barber managed to secure victory on one of Buckingham Palace's greatest concerns that the Queen should not be forced to divulge the details of her personal wealth and that she be allowed to retain the monarch's traditional immunity from paying tax. Nonetheless, a precedent had been created from now on the Civil List would be scrutinized by newly appointed Royal Trustees who included the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and who would recommend whether or not any increases should be entertained in future. In other words, the monarchy would have to justify the expenses it incurred.
They changed the guard at Buckingham Palace in spring 1972. Having achieved the new settlement, Michael Adeane retired after nineteen years as the Queen's Private Secretary. He was replaced by Martin Charteris, formerly Private Secretary to Princess Elizabeth and then a.s.sistant Private Secretary to the Queen. Charteris's succession heralded a change of mood, even of atmosphere. He was probably the liveliest and most amusing Private Secretary the Queen had had. A clubbable and kind man, he was less cautious than his predecessors. He was an incurable romantic and used to say that he had fallen in love with Princess Elizabeth when he came for his first interview in 1950 and had loved her ever since. He had a feel for the monarchy and its place in British society. Its purpose, he said, was to spread a carpet of happiness. It should never be ahead of the times but would be in trouble if it fell far behind.18 Queen Elizabeth might not always agree on the need for change. But when such arguments were expressed with Charteris's charm and bonhomie, they were hard to resist. He added joy to both Buckingham Palace and Clarence House.
IN FEBRUARY 1972, the Queen made an official tour of countries in South-east Asia and in her absence Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret acted as Counsellors of State. Political events were taxing.
The National Union of Mineworkers had called the first national coal strike since 1926 and employed flying pickets to close a major coal depot. It was a cold winter and the strike caused significant disruption and power cuts across the country. On 9 February Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were required to approve the declaration of a state of emergency. Queen Elizabeth's private sympathy for the miners who counted among the 'real people' she enjoyed and admired19 was widely shared and the government was unable to muster support for a hard line. It capitulated. Miners' wages rose in 1972 by 16 per cent, twice the rate of inflation. There was growing strife in Ireland too. On 24 March Queen Elizabeth had to sign papers in connection with the announcement of direct rule in Ulster.
On a more cheerful note, she undertook four invest.i.tures, a duty she always found a pleasure. After she had knighted the playwright Terence Rattigan in November 1971, he wrote to congratulate her on the way she conducted such ceremonies, remarking that, for almost everyone receiving honours, 'those few proud but nerve-wracking seconds of confrontation represent the high pinnacle of their lives.' It was apparent to him how conscious she was of this.20 She was indeed. At a later invest.i.ture she met a young sailor who had displayed great bravery after an accident in his nuclear submarine. He had she wrote to the Queen 'crept through scalding steam in darkness to see what was wrong'. She said to him, 'That must have been a terrible experience,' to which he replied, 'Not half as terrible as this.' She liked that answer and noted that he was indeed 'white with apprehension & fear!'21 At Royal Lodge in the spring of 1972 she entertained members of the Eton Beagles to a lawn meet for the first time. This became a cherished annual event and took place every year except two until her death. She loved the gathering of the hounds and the boys, whose school she continued to think was the best in the world. The meet, a win at Sandown Park by one of her favourite horses, Game Spirit, and her const.i.tutional duties helped take her mind off a death she minded very much that of the Marquess of Salisbury. Since the 1930s she and the King had counted Bobbety and Betty Salisbury among their closest friends.
Another death in 1972 broke a less happy link with the past. The health of the Duke of Windsor, still living in Paris, had been deteriorating for some time. Prince Charles, under the influence of his 'honorary grandfather', Lord Mountbatten, had taken a sympathetic interest in the plight of his great-uncle. He believed that reconciliation was to be desired. There had been a few contacts since the mid-1960s. In 1965 the Duke had been admitted to the London Clinic for an eye operation and the Queen visited him there. She then invited the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess to the unveiling of a plaque in memory of Queen Mary at Marlborough House in 1967. Queen Elizabeth was there too; this was her first meeting with the d.u.c.h.ess since before the abdication. There is no record of any conversation they may have had. Queen Elizabeth and the Duke met again for the last time at the funeral of Princess Marina, d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, in 1968.
Prince Charles thought that such brief encounters were not enough and in 1970, according to his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, he suggested that the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor should be invited for a weekend. He was curious about the d.u.c.h.ess, and thought 'it would be fun to see what she was like ... It is worthwhile getting to know the better side of her.'22 The Prince raised the idea with his grandmother but, in Dimbleby's words, 'it was immediately apparent to him how difficult she would find it to be reconciled with the man whom she held responsible for consigning her husband to an early grave.'23 On the other hand, Robert Fellowes, later the Queen's Private Secretary, subsequently commented, 'Queen Elizabeth would not have minded the Prince of Wales being kind to the Duke of Windsor. She was herself very kind to the d.u.c.h.ess. On the rare occasions when I talked to her about the d.u.c.h.ess she showed no animosity at all, but rather sympathy for the d.u.c.h.ess's plight.'24 But there would be no visit. In May 1972, the Queen called on her uncle while she was on a state visit to France. Ten days later, he died. The Queen sent a sympathetic telegram to the d.u.c.h.ess and expressed pleasure that she had been able to see him before his death.25 The Duke had stated his wish to be buried at Frogmore and the d.u.c.h.ess came to stay at Buckingham Palace for the funeral. The Queen and Prince Charles dined with her; the Queen Mother, who was suffering a mild attack of shingles, did not. Queen Elizabeth's feelings at this time can only be guessed at; she herself left little trace of them in writing. Her well-informed and sympathetic biographer Elizabeth Longford wrote that the funeral was a 'considerable ordeal' for her. 'The Queen Mother was gentle with [the d.u.c.h.ess], as became a Queen, taking the sadly bemused woman by the arm.'26 Longford also speculated that Queen Elizabeth would have been less than human if she had not reflected that her own married life had been somewhat shorter than the thirty-five years that the d.u.c.h.ess had shared with the Duke. But as one of her ladies in waiting remarked, 'she was perfectly all right about meeting the d.u.c.h.ess.'27 Once, she had found this impossible. Without the d.u.c.h.ess, however, she would never have been queen, a role of which she had made a great success and which she had enjoyed. Moreover, although the burdens of kingship took a heavy toll upon George VI, it was lung cancer that killed him, and a frequent cause of lung cancer is smoking.
Queen Elizabeth felt subdued at this time; in one of the few letters which give a hint of her feelings, she told Betty Salisbury that she had been cheered by her example of 'great spirit and courage' for she had been feeling 'rather depressed, what with one thing and another'. The death of the Duke, and all the memories it aroused, may have been more difficult for her than she had antic.i.p.ated.28 In 1976, when Queen Elizabeth was on an official visit to Paris, the possibility of her calling on the d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor was discussed, but the d.u.c.h.ess was too ill to receive her. Instead Queen Elizabeth sent a large bouquet of roses with a signed card of good wishes.29 The d.u.c.h.ess lingered, her health deteriorating; she died on 24 April 1986, aged eighty-nine. Her body was flown to England and after a service in St George's Chapel attended by members of the Royal Family including Queen Elizabeth, she was buried next to her husband at Frogmore.
Public opinion was divided about Queen Elizabeth's responsibility for the estrangement with the Windsors. After the d.u.c.h.ess's death, letters between the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess were published in the Daily Mail.* Some of them contained vituperative comments about Queen Elizabeth and other members of the family. She received letters of support and sympathy which she appreciated, while others were less kind and continued to blame her.30 Her own words, reflecting on the abdication in her nineties, bear repet.i.tion here. Of the Duke she said, 'He must have been bemused with love, I suppose ... You couldn't reason with him. n.o.body could.' She added, 'The only good thing is I think he was quite happy with her.'31 *
IN 1973 PRINCESS ANNE had become the first of Queen Elizabeth's grandchildren to marry. She chose Captain Mark Phillips, a good-looking army officer who shared her love of horses and showjumping. They had a son, Peter, born in 1977, and a daughter, Zara, in 1981, both of whom inherited their parents sporting prowess.
But the wedding was followed by less joyful news. Princess Margaret the target of intolerant att.i.tudes towards divorce in the 1950s, and probably the member of the Royal Family subjected to the most criticism by the Select Committee on the Civil List became the first in the Queen Mother's immediate family to divorce. Her marriage to Lord Snowdon had begun with great happiness, enhanced by their two children, David and Sarah. The Princess, who had artistic instincts that went beyond her pa.s.sionate support of ballet, had enjoyed the art-loving, sophisticated world and the easy-going life to which Snowdon had introduced her. He had resumed his career as a photographer, princ.i.p.ally with the Sunday Times, with great success, but he had been attacked in the press for attempting to combine his professional activities with his position in the Royal Family. He did find these increasingly hard to reconcile. Nor was he by nature monogamous. By the 1970s the strains between the couple had become considerable. Their unhappiness was well known within the family and among their friends.
As the rift between them grew, Princess Margaret seems to have rejected the manners of the society in which her husband was at home and retreated into the certainty and order of the world in which she had grown up. The biographer Kenneth Rose recorded that Chips Channon had observed when she was only eighteen that she had 'a Marie Antoinette aroma about her'.32 Even her closest friends could not predict when her mood might change from gaiety to hauteur. Although she loved her mother, she was not always kind to her indeed she could be rude. On one occasion Lady Penn (who was married to Arthur Penn's nephew Eric) said to Queen Elizabeth, 'I can't bear to see the way Princess Margaret treats you.' To which Queen Elizabeth replied, 'Oh you mustn't worry about that. I'm quite used to it.'33 On the other hand, Princess Margaret's son David Linley later recalled that 'she was a fantastic mother to me and Sarah. She was unusual, with strong senses of religion, fun and family.'34 She still wrote the same sort of poems and doggerel that had so entertained guests at Balmoral in the early post-war years. She wrote prayers too. Queen Elizabeth and Snowdon had always had an excellent relationship she loved his sense of humour as well as admiring his talent as a photographer. Linley recalled that she was adept in trying to defuse arguments between his parents.35 The Snowdons came to live increasingly separate lives in their apartment at Kensington Palace. In 1973 friends introduced the Princess to a young man named Roddy Llewellyn with whom she embarked on a relationship. Snowdon moved out and in March 1976 an official announcement of their separation was issued. Divorce followed.
Queen Elizabeth and the Queen were particularly upset by what had happened. Each of them remained close to Lord Snowdon as well as to Princess Margaret in the years that followed. The couple's children spent a great deal of time with Queen Elizabeth, at Royal Lodge and Birkhall in the school holidays and on many other family occasions, such as Christmas in Norfolk. She loved them both and she worried that they felt the break-up of their parents' marriage very deeply.36 Over the years ahead she enthusiastically supported David in his later career as a furniture maker, and Sarah as an artist.
Linley recalled, 'She was always there for us. She was always such fun. Lunches at Royal Lodge were hilarious. The laughter of my grandmother, my mother and my sister was utterly contagious. She came to every school I went to. She and my mother bought me my first plane and a saw when I was at school. She commissioned me to make a cigar box and then an easel. She had great ideas including "wasp scissors" these had paddles instead of blades to catch wasps. Later she became the first shareholder in my furniture company.'37 Family and family occasions became ever more important to Queen Elizabeth with the years. After her stays at Sandringham, Windsor or Balmoral, she always sent grateful letters to the Queen. 'I have always been a "family" person,' she wrote on one occasion, 'and the chance of being together & occasionally discussing family matters in an unhurried atmosphere, is very helpful.'38 At Sandringham, there were all the familiar outings that she loved: lunch parties with neighbours like Anthony Gurney, going out with the guns, watching their horses jump at Eldred Wilson's farm, 'delightful horse chat over the cup of coffee afterwards, visiting the stud grooms, sympathising over Bradley's knees, Sunday lunch with George Dawnay, oh! it's endless pleasure! ... it is the highlight of one's year.'39*
BRITAIN'S PROBLEMS worsened in the late 1970s. Inflation and unemployment rose; the unions seemed to be beyond political control. In February 1974 Edward Heath narrowly lost power after an election fought largely on the question of 'Who runs Britain?' Harold Wilson returned to office and, after another election in October that year, strengthened Labour's position in the Commons. But his government was unable to deal with the country's structural problems and in March 1976 he suddenly resigned and was succeeded by James Callaghan. Later that year the government had to apply to the International Monetary Fund for a loan it was granted only on the condition that large cuts in government expenditure be imposed. There was an abiding sense of failure in both Parliament and the country.
Queen Elizabeth did what she could to 'keep the old flag flying'. In October 1976 she went to Paris to open the new British Cultural Centre. After a crowded three days which both she and the French enjoyed, the British Amba.s.sador, Sir Nicholas Henderson, wrote, 'She came to Paris at a time when Britain's fortunes seemed in French eyes to be at a particularly low ebb: the pound was falling heavily and there was widespread pessimism about the country's capacity to pull through. Her Majesty, by the way she went about her work, managed to embody those qualities of resilience and good humour in adversity that the French a.s.sociate with us.'40 In 1977, a quarter-century since the death of the King, the Queen celebrated her Silver Jubilee. Given Britain's economic malaise, there was concern both within government and at the Palace at how extensively this anniversary should be marked. Martin Charteris argued that twenty-five years on the throne was a significant achievement which people would wish to celebrate. Events proved him right. The Queen had a happy tour of Commonwealth countries and then millions of people across Britain came out to celebrate. In London alone 4,000 street parties were held. Altogether the popular enthusiasm provided an endors.e.m.e.nt of all that the Queen, with support from other members of her family, particularly her husband and her mother, had achieved in the previous twenty-five years. 'She had a love affair with the country,' said Martin Charteris.41 She was genuinely touched by it all. 'I am simply amazed, I had no idea,' one courtier recalls her as saying over and over again.42 Queen Elizabeth attended many of the celebrations with the Queen, including a dinner given by the Secretary of State for Scotland at Edinburgh Castle in May, the lighting of the bonfire on Snow Hill in Windsor Great Park, which was the signal for beacons to be lit around the country, on 6 June, and the thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral the next day. Her lady in waiting noted that 'there were tremendous crowds out for the full length of the route & deafening cheers.'43 During her visit to the Castle of Mey that summer she attended a Jubilee Ball in the somewhat utilitarian a.s.sembly Rooms in Wick. The evening, arranged by Lord and Lady Thurso, was a great success. The Queen Mother was expected to stay for an hour or so but, resplendent in tiara and long evening dress, she arrived at 9 p.m. and danced till 1.30 a.m. Most of the dances were Scottish reels, which she had loved since childhood. She treasured the evening, reeling into the small hours, and thereafter she always referred to it as 'the Great Ball'.44 In a way, perhaps, the celebration and the enthusiasm for the Queen represented a nostalgic longing for what Britain had once been. At the beginning of the Queen's reign Britain was still the strongest economic and military power in Europe, even though exhausted and depleted by the effort of war. By the end of the 1970s Britain seemed to be a country in free fall.
This impression was supported by the realities. Inflation was still soaring, causing fear and distress, and the winter of 19789 brought a series of strikes by road transport workers, ambulance drivers, grave-diggers, dustmen and others. Not for nothing did the period become known as 'the winter of discontent'. At the height of it, while the Queen undertook an official tour of the Middle East in February 1979, Queen Elizabeth acted as Counsellor of State, a task which as always she much enjoyed. She kept the Queen up to date. 'Here, everything rumbles along in the same old way, strikes everywhere, and yesterday the Civil Service joined in, and ... people arriving by air had a marvellous time smuggling at the airports, because the customs men were on strike!'45 That spring the Labour government lost a vote of confidence and called a general election for 3 May. The Conservative Party, led now by Margaret Thatcher, campaigned against the 'extremism' of Labour and against the power of the unions. On election day there was a swing away from Labour of 5.2 per cent, the largest since 1945, and the Conservatives won power. This turned out to be one of the most significant elections since the end of the war. Mrs Thatcher was convinced that by the end of the 1970s Britain was not working. She was determined to confront the unions and change for ever the bipartisan tradition of government by consensus, which she thought weak, irresponsible and a major reason for British economic and industrial decline. Her prescriptions for change were to be painful and controversial, and they aroused fury at the time, but eventually they came to be more widely accepted.
Queen Elizabeth was too discreet to make known her view on the election and the different parties. She hated the spectre of British decline. But James Callaghan, who had succeeded Harold Wilson as Labour prime minister in 1976, was one of the Labour politicians whom she had always liked. The respect was mutual; among other things, Callaghan appreciated that in conversation with him she often asked after the wellbeing of the miners in his Cardiff const.i.tuency.46 Her att.i.tude towards the unions was mixed. She did not like the harsh militancy of left-wing leaders who used industrial disputes for political purposes. But she liked traditional unionists (as had King George VI) and she often sympathized with their grievances. Some years later, after a visit to Smithfield Market, she was pleased when she was invited by Ron Todd, the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, to become an honorary member of the union, 'in line with the precedent set by your late husband, HM King George VI, who became an honorary member of the Union in the time of the late Ernest Bevin'.47 'Would you tell Ron Todd (splendid name!)', she instructed Martin Gilliat, 'that as an Hon. b.u.mmaree* I would be delighted to become an honorary member of the Union, and especially to follow the King as an Hon. Member (I remember the occasion) & I greatly admired & respected Ernie Bevin a proper Englishman.'48 *
AT THE END of June 1979 Queen Elizabeth made another official visit to Canada, the country which had come to symbolize best for her the old Commonwealth. The original invitation had been from the Province of Ontario to attend the 120th running of the Queen's Plate at the Woodbine races and undertake engagements with her Canadian regiments.
At first, Toronto was to be the only destination and Queen Elizabeth looked forward to a simple trip built around the regiments and the race. But then the province of Nova Scotia asked that she come there too. As often happened, her office's requests that she be given no more than two engagements a day were ignored. Instead, Canadian officials inserted more and more engagements, grander parties and more speeches into the programme. On the afternoon she arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia (when it was already evening London time), she found she had to wave to a.s.sembled crowds from an uncomfortable closed car (the brakes on the open car had failed at the last moment), attend two receptions and then wait two hours for an official dinner. The party was able to retire to bed only at 4 a.m. London time.
The main event of the Nova Scotian visit, the opening ceremony of the International Gathering of the Clans, took place the following day at the Halifax Metro Centre, a stadium filled with 9,000 people clad in kilts and tartan sashes. Queen Elizabeth, wearing her sash, made a speech, which was followed by a three-hour tattoo, sometimes very noisy indeed, with some 500 military and civilian performers. It was a long evening.
After flying to Toronto the next morning she talked with a hundred recipients of Gold Medals of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, and then attended a reception for officers of her three regiments, the Canadian Forces Medical Services, the Black Watch of Canada and the Toronto Scottish Regiment. That evening the Lieutenant Governor, the Hon. Pauline McGibbon, gave a dinner for 1,500 people. Queen Elizabeth endeared herself to the Black Watch pipers by talking to them at length before the dinner.49 Sat.u.r.day 30 June was the day of the big race. In the morning she drove to the Sunnybrook Medical Centre to meet veterans and spoke to more than a hundred of them, as her lady in waiting recorded. Lunch at Windfields, the private house in which she was again staying, was 'nearly a rather fraught meal' because her host, E. P. Taylor, had 'locked up all the drink & gone to the races with the key'. Happily he returned 'in the nick of time' just before lunch.50 There had been much rain and the Woodbine racetrack was a sea of mud; horses and riders emerged looking filthy. Against his trainer's advice one owner, Major Donald Willmot, insisted on running his horse, Steady Growth, a 'flat-footer' unsuited to muddy conditions, because the Queen Mother was there.51 To everyone's surprise he won. Queen Elizabeth presented the trophy, and that evening enjoyed a dinner given by the Ontario Jockey Club, where she remained until after midnight.
After one more day of engagements including a regimental garden party Queen Elizabeth flew home, arriving at Clarence House after 1 a.m. on Tuesday 3 July. Over a scrambled-egg supper, she and her companions held a 'post mortem' with 'a great deal of laughter ... It was generally accepted that it had all been a great success,' noted her lady in waiting; 'she is undoubtedly greatly loved in Canada.'52 *
THAT SUMMER Queen Elizabeth took on another pleasant responsibility. She was installed as the 160th lord warden of the Cinque Ports at Dover, the first woman ever to hold the post. Her appointment had been proposed in 1978 by the Prime Minister, James Callaghan.
The group of strategic ports, facing continental Europe at the Channel's narrowest point, has existed since before the Norman Conquest; they were the Anglo-Saxon successors to the Roman system of coastal defence. The original five ports were Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich Rye and Winchelsea were added later. After the Norman invasion King William I gave them special jurisdiction. They provided the core of the King's fleet until the fourteenth century but then they lost their monopoly and declined. Nonetheless, they retained a symbolic importance. In recent years the most distinguished holder of the t.i.tle had been Winston Churchill, who took it on at the height of the war in 1941 and kept it until his death in 1965. He had been followed by Queen Elizabeth's friend and admirer Robert Menzies, the former Prime Minister of Australia, monarchist and anglophile.
On the evening of Monday 30 July, together with Princess Margaret and Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth embarked in the royal yacht at Greenwich to sail to Dover for her installation. Princess Margaret's children, David and Sarah, joined her next day. Over the years to come she much enjoyed her summer visits to the Kent coast. She based herself at the lord warden's apartments in Walmer Castle near Deal and every year her staff, led by the indomitable William Tallon and the housekeeper, would load a van with furniture, silver, cutlery, gla.s.s, kitchen equipment, wine and food so that Walmer Castle, which lay empty for most of the year, was transformed into a miniature royal palace for the two days that she was there. The kitchen was tiny but her chef Michael Sealey did the best he could and she enjoyed entertaining local dignitaries and friends from London in style. On several occasions she invited the biographer Kenneth Rose. In one letter of thanks he wrote that his heart glowed with pride to see the lord warden's flag flying from the battlements of Walmer. 'I shall never forget standing on the terrace with Your Majesty, gazing across to France: a magic moment, as if time had run back to fetch the age of King Henry V.'53 *
ON MONDAY 27 August 1979 Queen Elizabeth was lunching with friends and members of her Household at her favourite salmon pool, Polveir, on the River Dee, when a policeman came to speak to Alastair Aird, her Deputy Private Secretary. He brought terrible news. Lord Mountbatten had been killed in an explosion in his small boat just outside the harbour of Sligo in Ireland.
Mountbatten and his family had been staying, as they did every August, at Cla.s.siebawn Castle, a large Gothic house which his wife Edwina had inherited and which Mountbatten adored. He had come here without problems for many years despite the increasing menace of the IRA throughout the 1970s. Security was lax. He and members of his family went out most days on a twenty-nine-foot fishing boat, Shadow V, which was left unprotected in the harbour for long periods. The IRA hid a bomb on board and it was detonated as Mountbatten steered the boat out to sea. He was killed instantly. So were his fourteen-year-old grandson, Nicholas Knatchbull, and the young Irish boatman, Paul Maxwell. Mountbatten's daughter Patricia, her husband John Brabourne (who had made the film Royal Family), his mother and Nicholas's twin brother Timothy were seriously injured. John Brabourne's mother died next day.
Queen Elizabeth was appalled by the news. Shortly afterwards the Queen, with Princess Margaret and her children, came to join her at Polveir. 'Everyone horrified deeply distressed,' her lady in waiting recorded in the diary.54 Prince Charles was told the news in Iceland; he was overcome by the loss of the man he described that night in his journal as 'a combination of grandfather, great-uncle, father, brother and friend'.55 He flew back to Scotland to grieve with his family.
On 4 September the Queen Mother, together with the Queen, Princess Margaret and the Prince of Wales, took the train to London together for Lord Mountbatten's funeral in Westminster Abbey next day. It was a grand and stirring event; Mountbatten had meticulously planned every moment himself.
A few days later she gave tea at Birkhall to the new Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher had recently returned from the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Lusaka, which had threatened to end with a disastrous breakdown between Britain and black African states over the Rhodesian issue. In fact it ended in success the Lusaka Accord set up a new const.i.tutional conference in London to resolve the future of Rhodesia.
The views of the two women on this occasion are not recorded, but both were believed to have sympathy for the white minority settlers. In a prompt thank-you letter, Mrs Thatcher wrote that it had been a great pleasure to talk to the Queen Mother about Rhodesia; she reported that the first day of the const.i.tutional conference 'went all right thanks to our British calm and refusal to be put out by the posturing of the "Patriotic" Front'.56 But the views of the Front were largely accepted; in fairly short order, the conference agreed the end of white-settler rule, a new const.i.tution, free elections and the creation of a new independent state, to be named Zimbabwe, under an elected black majority government.
At their Birkhall tea Queen Elizabeth had given the Prime Minister a silver brooch, which Mrs Thatcher told her she would always treasure.57 The two women also shared a belief in the greatness of Britain and the important role that the monarchy played in the cohesion of British society. Margaret Thatcher was resolved to reduce the role of government in both the public and private sectors, and her government was the first since 1945 seriously to question state provision of services. This meant that the importance of voluntarism, which the monarchy had always championed, was now being recognized once more in government.58 Queen Elizabeth had a habit, much enjoyed by her friends, of raising or lowering her gla.s.s in dinner-table toasts. For those of whom she disapproved, such as some socialist politicians, 'The Dear Old Liberal Democrat Mixup Party' (as she referred to the merged Liberal and Social Democrat Parties) and the Forestry Commission (which she blamed for planting too many ugly conifers on pristine Scottish moors), she would propose a toast of 'Down with ...', while lowering her gla.s.s out of sight below the table. For those she favoured the toast was more traditional, with the gla.s.s held up. 'Up with de Gaulle' was one. For Mrs Thatcher, the gla.s.s was always high.
IN THE YEAR of Queen Elizabeth's eightieth birthday an important new building and an important new relation came into her life.
The year began badly, at least as far as her horses were concerned; in fact they had been a 'disaster' recently. The problem with jumpers, she used to say, was that one always had to wait a long time to discover how good they would really be '& one's hopes are always high'.59 So disappointment would be all the greater. As she told the Queen in a thank-you letter after her usual New Year's stay at Sandringham, Upton Grey had swollen hind legs, Rhyme Royal had a cough and was very stiff, Special Cargo (one of her best horses) was better but not ready to run, Cranbourne had run well, but got stuck in the mud, Queen's College kept falling about all in all she was despondent.60 Later she wrote to the retired trainer, Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, that she had had a bad season 'Nothing but legs and backs etc, so must hope that next season they will be more healthy! It is very difficult to find a decent horse at a decent price nowadays.'61 Throughout this period her own legs were continuing to give her pain. Ischaemic damage, sometimes caused by the paws of affectionate corgis, was one of the princ.i.p.al and most painful ailments from which she suffered. In London she saw the royal physician, Sir Richard Bayliss, before going to Royal Lodge with Princess Margaret and Elizabeth Elphinstone. She remained there until after the annual service in memory of the King, in the Royal Chapel on 6 February.
One great sadness in the early part of 1980 was the death of Lady Doris Vyner. They had been intimate friends for more than sixty years and Lady Doris was the last real link to Queen Elizabeth's youth. Queen Elizabeth arranged a memorial service for her in the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace, after which she gave a lunch at Clarence House for the family.62 In May she travelled north as usual for her fishing fortnight, although this year she stayed at Craigowan, in the grounds of Balmoral Castle, as the Queen was having a new kitchen built at Birkhall as her birthday present to her mother. The Queen and Princess Margaret were well aware that their mother's homes all became a little tired as the decades pa.s.sed, because she hated to spend money on furnishings, redecoration or even maintenance. From her sixties onwards she would say, 'I won't be around much longer. It's not worth it. Guests enjoyed shabby lino in the bathrooms, frayed curtains and damaged lampshades in the bedrooms. Sometimes when she was away her daughters would have chairs re-covered in identical material so that she would not notice anything had changed. When the Queen gave her mother a new carpet for the drawing room at the Castle of Mey it had to be indistinguishable from the one it replaced.
Queen Elizabeth's house parties in Scotland were more prolonged and more spontaneous than the musical weekends at Royal Lodge. As time went by, Birkhall seemed increasingly like another world, totally separated from modern Britain. Some visitors found it quite magical, almost like walking through the wardrobe door into Narnia. The same guests returned year after year; as a rule only death ended their annual invitations. Among the early regulars were John and Magdalen Eldon, good friends over many decades, he a remarkable naturalist, she a great beauty and one of the few female members of Queen Elizabeth's Windsor Wets club; the Sutherlands, the Linlithgows and Billy Fellowes, the retired agent from Sandringham, and his wife Jane; they were the parents of the Queen's Private Secretary in the 1990s, Robert Fellowes. d.i.c.k Wilkins, her ebullient and witty stockjobber friend, was often invited though he was not a great sportsman. He would go fishing with a ghillie and tended to sit on the bank until the ghillie caught something, whereupon he would seize the rod and, if lucky, reel the creature in. His account of his triumph at dinner would be splendid.
For her eightieth birthday her friends and members of her Household had decided to combine the pleasures of moor and stream and eating alfresco; they clubbed together to build her a log cabin at Polveir. On the morning of Sat.u.r.day 17 May the presentation ceremony took place.
The beauty and excitement of the spring day was sadly dashed by a telephone call. Queen Elizabeth's beloved niece, Elizabeth Elphinstone, had died of a heart attack during the night. The news was broken to Queen Elizabeth by her nephew, Fergie Strathmore, who with his wife Mary was to have driven Elizabeth to Birkhall. According to Mary Strathmore, There was a long pause on the line after Fergie told her. Then Queen Elizabeth said, We have to go ahead. We can't let everyone else down.'63 It was a terrible shock Elizabeth Elphinstone had been a bridesmaid at her aunt's wedding to the Duke of York and the two women had always been close; the difference in their ages was only eleven years and they were more like sisters than aunt and niece. Her sudden death cast a dark shadow over an otherwise lovely day, particularly for the Queen Mother. But Queen Elizabeth refused to allow her own sadness to diminish the pleasure of others. She was driven the short distance from Birkhall through the dappled Caledonian pines along the river to Polveir and was happily surprised to find there such a large gathering of friends from far and wide.* She was presented with the key to the cabin in a box wrapped in birthday paper and tied with a large bow. Entering for the first time, she found it fully furnished with a long table and chairs all ready for lunch. She admired the chimneypiece, which had been built with local stone by two craftsmen as their last job before retirement. A long and lively lunch ensued, though Elizabeth Elphinstone was missed throughout that day, and beyond.
The new cabin quickly became a much loved spot. Queen Elizabeth sent dozens of thank-you letters to all those friends who had contributed to its cost. It had 'settled in most happily between the river and the pine trees, and I have spent many blissful hours there, in fact I cannot think what we did before it arrived,' she wrote.64 From now on she used it on holiday after holiday, year after year for the rest of her life. If only because it was warmer than the huts and old Victorian cottages often used for picnics, her guests appreciated it too, particularly if, with the pa.s.sing of the years, they felt the cold on the moors or in the river more acutely. (Picnics at Mey, by contrast, remained draughty.) Her equerry Ashe Windham recalled that after breakfast at Birkhall he would telephone Queen Elizabeth in her room and she would ask, 'What is the fishing like today?' Often he would reply, 'Not so good, Ma'am, but it's a lovely day for a picnic.' 'What a good idea,' she would reply. 'Let's go down to the old Bull and Bush'65 her name for the cabin. The staff from Birkhall would light the wood-burning stove and bring down lunch. For the Queen Mother this would often start with a gin and Dubonnet; she and the guests would sometimes cook little sausages from Ballater on the stove. A fish mousse and cold meats would follow and the picnic would often end with the jam-puff exercise. Guests were expected to slice off the top and fill the brittle pastry with cream before manoeuvring it into their mouths. Old hands would put a drop of cream in the bottom; newcomers tended to be more enthusiastic with their helpings and covered themselves with cream.
Until she was no longer able to do so, Queen Elizabeth, invariably dressed in her beloved blue kilt skirt, blue coat and blue hat, would walk part of the way back to Birkhall, supported latterly by two sticks. She insisted she needed them only for balance, which was sensible enough since she was so small and frail that it seemed the slightest gust could blow her over. Once home she would sit on one of the two seats built into the wall on either side of the porch talking to her guests as they arrived after ambling back from Polveir.
THE FORMAL celebrations for her eightieth birthday in August gathered pace throughout the year. She was touched by the suggestion of the Dean of St Albans that a carving of her head be placed in the porch of the Abbey to commemorate her birthday.66 She was happy for the British Gladiolus Society to name a new seedling after her but asked that it be called Queen Mother rather than Queen Mum.67 The Zoological Society gave her 4,000 tickets for London Zoo and Whipsnade, which were distributed among thirty of her charities connected with children. The Queen gave a party at Windsor Castle, a joint celebration for Princess Alice, d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester, the Duke of Beaufort and her mother. Among the guests were some of Queen Elizabeth's hosts and hostesses from France she was pleased because the news 'will whizz round France (or rather Paris!)'.68 Lady Fermoy and Sir Martin Gilliat took her to see Noel Coward's Private Lives at the d.u.c.h.ess Theatre on 11 June. Two weeks later d.i.c.k Wilkins gave her a birthday dinner at the Savoy to which the Queen, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret also came. In July she attended two days of celebrations in Edinburgh, after which she returned to the south for a tour of the Cinque Ports based in Britannia.
The Poet Laureate, John Betjeman, now elderly and unwell, wrote a poem which he described as 'late and tired Tennyson'; but as he told Martin Gilliat, 'I wanted to make a personal tribute to a wonderful friend and a thanksgiving for the spreading oaks and hospitality of Royal Lodge and that ground floor bedroom and those church services with the family and the young thereof. In the fourteen-line poem, the Laureate began: We are your people
Millions of us greet you
On this your birthday
Mother of our Queen.
Waves of goodwill go
Racing out to meet you
You who in peace and war
Our faithful friend have been.
He was not sure whether the lines should be published, and indeed they did not do him justice, but he was pleased when Gilliat told him that Queen Elizabeth would like them released for her birthday.69 On 15 July her birthday was marked by a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral. She drove with Prince Charles in an open carriage to the service and ma.s.sive crowds cheered her along the route. It was a moment to reflect on the remarkable role she had played since the death of the King in personifying the continuity of monarchy. For almost thirty years she had devoted her personality and her energy to the support of her daughter, her country and the inst.i.tutions she loved. In his tribute, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, spoke appositely: The Queen Mother has shown a human face. Royalty puts a human face on the operations of government.' The Prince of Wales put it another way, writing to her afterwards, 'You give so many people such extraordinary happiness, pleasure & sheer joy.'70 Two days later she met many friends and admirers at a celebratory afternoon garden party at the Palace she seemed untiring and did not leave until 6 p.m. There was a birthday carnival at her childhood home, St Paul's Walden Bury, dinner with the Lord Mayor of London at the Mansion House, and then on 24 July she attended the Royal Tournament. This was a special birthday edition of the then annual military tattoo and embraced all of the many units of the armed forces with which she was a.s.sociated. That evening she gave a party at Clarence House for the colonels of all those regiments and other organizations which had taken part.
She loved and was touched by it all. Almost all. The only birthday celebration she did not much enjoy was one which was repeated rather too often across the country planting the first of a group of eighty rose trees in her honour. It seemed to her that she had to do it 'all over the place, & if I ever get to 81, there won't be room anywhere in England & Scotland for any more Roses, thank goodness.'71 At the end of July she went, as usual, to Sandringham for the Flower Show and the King's Lynn Festival. It was the centenary year of the show and she was presented with a cheque for plants from the Committee; she then returned to London where she received a deluge of letters, cards, telegrams, birthday cakes and bouquets of flowers. At Clarence House her staff had reckoned on some 20,000 messages, on the basis that Winston Churchill had received 23,000 for his eightieth birthday. In the event there were more than 30,000 for Queen Elizabeth, and extra staff had to be brought in, some of whom worked twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week for a month, to reply to all well-wishers.72 On the morning of her birthday she went out of the gate of Clarence House to wave to the large crowd; there was a fly-past of ten Jet Provosts in E formation at noon, her daughters and four of her grandchildren came to lunch and that evening she went with Prince Charles to a gala at the Royal Opera House. Her grandson was again much moved by the enthusiasm expressed for her.73 Parliament was well represented in tributes. On 5 August the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, George Thomas (two of the parliamentarians closest to her), came to present messages of congratulation along with eight members of each House. She entertained them to drinks in the garden.
Finally, on 6 August she was able to get away from it all and fly to Mey where, she told Prince Charles, she would 'sink back into obscurity'. 'Some obscurity ...!' he commented.74 Before leaving, she wrote to thank her daughter the Queen for all the celebrations 'such happy affairs, & enjoyed by everyone who was there'.75 The Queen replied with an emotional thank-you letter to her mother: she said that the family had loved it all and 'rejoiced in the huge and loving feeling of thanksgiving for all that your life represents which has come from all walks of the people who make up this country and Commonwealth, and especially your own family. I only hope you have been buoyed up by knowing what people feel. From your very loving Lilibet'.76 A few days later the Queen, Prince Charles and other members of the family sailed in Britannia through bad weather up the west coast of Scotland for their annual Western Isles cruise culminating in lunch at Mey. In preparation, the day before, Queen Elizabeth and Ruth Fermoy spent an hour sh.e.l.ling peas. On 14 August a happy day was had with the usual picnic lunch and much cheer.
At the end of her Mey holiday that year Queen Elizabeth flew south for the traditional family weekend at Balmoral, before moving on to Birkhall. She was always slightly saddened to forsake the family at Balmoral to drive down the road to Birkhall alone. Now she found that the cabin eased that annual move. Leaving Balmoral at lunch time and breaking the journey at the Bull and Bush, in a spot that she loved, made the transition much less painful.77 *
THAT SUMMER Queen Elizabeth enjoyed the arrival not only of her new picnic place, but also of her future granddaughter-in-law. This was something to which she had long been looking forward. She had sat near her three grandsons in church at Crathie on a previous summer Sunday, admiring them in their kilts, and thinking how proud their mother the Queen must be of them 'so good looking & gay and clever. And such good company! How I hope that they will all find dear, charming, pretty, intelligent, kind, & GOOD girls to marry!'78 In the media, if not within the family, most speculation at this stage inevitably centred on the Prince of Wales and his possible choice of bride and thus of the future Queen. The Prince often took his girl friends to meet his grandmother. After she had invited him and one young woman to the opera in early 1980, he wrote to Queen Elizabeth, 'She so enjoyed it and I do hope you approved of her in that short time.'79 The Prince knew that, to win Queen Elizabeth's approval, a young woman would have to have a clear sense of duty alongside her other qualities.
In the second half of 1980 he became close to Lady Diana Spencer, the pretty nineteen-year-old daughter of Viscount Althorp, later Lord Spencer, by his wife Frances, the daughter of Lord Fermoy. The Spencers had a long history of service at Court and both Lady Diana's grandmothers, Cynthia Spencer and Ruth Fermoy, had served Queen Elizabeth as ladies in waiting; indeed, Ruth Fermoy was one of her oldest friends. It has been alleged that Queen Elizabeth and Lady Fermoy had somehow contrived to bring about the marriage of their grandchildren. There is no evidence of this but, like others in the Royal Family, Queen Elizabeth seems to have been pleased with the Prince's choice.
From the start, the relationship between the two young people was crowded by the media. As soon as her name was linked to that of the Prince, Lady Diana became a star of the world's press, the face that would sell millions of magazines and newspapers for years to come. Journalists now observed fewer and fewer boundaries; members of the Royal Family now known as 'the royals' became more and more the subjects of front-page speculation, innuendo, pursuit and attack. The obsession of the press with Lady Diana was sometimes welcome to her, but it was often invasive if not brutal. It made any pretence at normal life impossible.
The couple's engagement was announced on Tuesday 24 February 1981. 'Great excitement at the happy news,' the Queen Mother's lady in waiting wrote in the diary. That day Lady Diana arrived to stay for a few days at Clarence House and the Queen Mother gave a dinner party for her and Prince Charles. As an engagement present for Lady Diana she had chosen a sapphire and diamond brooch. Lady Diana thought it was a 'staggering' gift, and told her, 'I have never owned a piece of jewellery like that & will be proud to wear it when I'm with Charles I only hope that I'll be able to do it justice!' She added, 'I could not have been happier at Clarence House, & to me it was the ideal place to escape to after all the excitement. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity of living there. One of the nicest things of being married to Charles is that I will be able to see more of you!'80 Prince Charles was evidently delighted with his fiancee. In one letter to friends quoted by his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, he wrote, 'I do believe I am very lucky that someone so special as Diana seems to love me so much ... Other people's happiness and enthusiasm at the whole thing is also a most "encouraging" element and it makes me so proud that so many people have such admiration and affection for Diana.'81 In early March 1981 Prince Charles brought his fiancee to spend the weekend at Royal Lodge with his grandmother; they all attended one of the Queen Mother's favourite race meetings, the Grand Militar