The Queen, page 12
On a bitterly cold winter’s day the once and former king did, however, accompany the funeral cortege to Westminster Abbey. In a radio address Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher described how the king had made two perfect marriages: one to his queen, the other “to his people.”14 One mourner remarked that the funeral was “a great tribute to him and it’s a great tribute to us. Because George VI is us. He is us and we are him. He is the British people, all that is best in us, and we all know it.”15
With silent dockyard crane jibs dipped, flags at half-mast, transport at a standstill, and sporting fixtures suspended, there was no doubt as to the extent of national mourning. At the head of his coffin, Elizabeth left a white wreath of flowers. It was inscribed, simply, intimately and lovingly, TO PAPA, FROM LILIBET. Her sister’s was equally modest: DARLING PAPA FROM HIS EVER LOVING MARGARET.16
From then on, whenever she was in doubt the new queen would refer to how her father did things. If it was good enough for him then it was good enough for her. He was her test, silently looking over her shoulder as she pondered the many difficult decisions she now faced. In any case change was not part of her emotional lexicon. Her motto then and for some time to come was “Safety first.” One of her first acts was to appoint her dour, traditional, but loyal maid, Bobo MacDonald, as her official dresser. As the iconography of royal fashion and styling essentially defines a reign, it was arguably a more important appointment than that of a private secretary. It certainly described her in the public imagination: a tight helmet hairdo, intimidating handbag, twinset, pearls, and white gloves. It was only after the retirement of Bobo and the arrival of Angela Kelly during the 1990s that the queen’s clothes became more sophisticated and imaginative.
Even though everyone still carried identity cards and, more than six years after the war’s end, sweets and eggs remained rationed, change was in the air with excited chatter about a “new Elizabethan age.” The nation was in vigorous dialogue with itself about its past and the future. It was more than just a nostalgic harking back to the glory days of Elizabeth I and the Tudor dynasty, but an embrace of the new, the playful, and the vibrant as symbolized by the Festival of Britain—which, though opened in 1951, caught the appetite for change and challenge. Provocative operas such as Berg’s Wozzeck, controversial literature like Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory, which criticized the Catholic church, and Graham Sutherland’s avant-garde portrait of media magnate Lord Beaverbrook showed that Britain was not afraid to address difficult and perplexing issues.
The left-leaning New Statesman magazine hoped that the new monarch, described as “capable, energetic, and sensibly progressive,” would “seize the opportunity to sweep away the old order at court and substitute a way of life that matches the times they live in.”17 As the palace was still a place where footmen and other servants powdered their wigs with flour and water and it took fifteen minutes for a pot of tea to arrive from the kitchens to the royal apartments, it was asking a lot.
While Britain was a nation on the cusp of profound social change, it was also a country at war yet again, this time in the Korean conflict. At the same time the world seemed to be teetering on the brink of nuclear annihilation with the arms race between Communist Russia and the capitalist United States. In one of her first acts as queen, Elizabeth invested fusilier Private Bill Speakman with the Victoria Cross, the highest military award for gallantry. It was a reminder that Britain had over eighty thousand men fighting on the Korean Peninsula. After his investiture at Buckingham Palace, Speakman remarked: “I think she was nervous and I was very nervous!”18
She was learning on the job, and learning quickly. Her courtiers were impressed by her dedication, attention to detail, and brisk no-nonsense approach. Practical rather than poetic, she read documents more quickly and thoroughly than her father had, and she retained information more accurately. She was balanced, detached, and cool under pressure, her attitude reminiscent of the far-flung British colonial administrators who had held together the greatest empire the world had or has ever seen. Self-controlled, cautious, and conscientious, she was keen to ensure that she got everything right.
In the early months the problem she faced was that there weren’t enough hours in the day, and her schedule was so jam-packed that her role of mother was neglected. “Why isn’t Mummy going to play with us tonight?” Charles and Anne would protest.19 One solution was to delay her Tuesday audiences with the prime minister by an hour so that she could play and bathe the toddlers before leaving them in the care of their strict Scottish nanny, Helen Lightbody, known as No Nonsense Lightbody because of her stern ways.
The queen soon learned that hers was a very lonely position, continuously in demand but always alone. Her corgis were her constant companions and a useful diversionary tactic if conversations became too difficult. She needed Dookie and company for her first meeting with Churchill, three times her age, an esteemed war leader and Nobel Prize winner. Would he take her seriously? Little did either realize during that first tentative official meeting that they would become good friends and confidants.
With hindsight Churchill was the perfect first prime minister for Elizabeth. Given her lack of training for the position, Churchill’s shrewdness, experience, and understanding of the role of the sovereign in relation to government proved invaluable. As a dedicated monarchist, he became her willing and enthusiastic mentor. His wife, Clementine, once described her husband as “the last believer in the divine rights of kings.”20
When a former courtier, Richard Molyneux, asked Elizabeth whether her relationship with the prime minister could be compared to that of the “over-indulgent” Lord Melbourne and Queen Victoria, she replied: “On the contrary, I sometimes find him very obstinate.”21 Churchill was the authoritative yet devoted father figure that the young queen needed. The watery gleam in his eye suggested that he might even have been somewhat infatuated with her. His joint private secretary Jock Colville described him as being “madly in love” with the queen, the prime minister stretching out his weekly audiences from the regulation thirty minutes to an hour and a half.22 He found her cautious, astute, and in the best sense of the word, conservative. While courtiers could not hear what was said, Tommy Lascelles noted in his diary that the conversation was “punctuated by peals of laughter, and Winston generally came out wiping his eyes. ‘She’s en grande beauty ce soir,’ he said one evening in his schoolboy French.”23 The much younger woman, unschooled in government, accepted his advice while he came to respect her judgment.
Elizabeth’s first crisis was not long in coming. As was to be the case throughout her reign, it concerned her family, on this occasion the family name. Two days after the funeral, the editor of Debrett’s, the bible of the aristocracy, had written that, as Philip had taken the name Mountbatten as his surname, the royal house was now the House of Mountbatten rather than the House of Windsor. Churchill and his ministers made it clear that this “appalling fact” be amended.24 It was not so simple. The issue went to the heart of the relationship between Elizabeth and Philip. As the wife of Philip Mountbatten, it was tradition that she indeed took his name. What was more, he expected it.
However, as with so many aspects of daily life, the royal family is literally a law unto itself. Members of the royal family can be known both by the name of the royal house and by a surname that is not always the same. Until 1917 members of the British royal family had no surname, only the name of the house or dynasty to which they belonged. Hence Henry VIII or Henry Tudor, he of the six wives fame.
This all changed during World War One. With anti-German feeling at its height, King George V changed the name of the dynasty from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which was Germanic in origin, to Windsor so as to appear more British. At a meeting of the Privy Council on July 17, 1917, George V declared that all male descendants of Queen Victoria would bear the name of Windsor.
As the queen came from the female line of the family, it was argued by Lord Mountbatten and Prince Philip that the family name should reflect his surname as well.
The matter came to a head at a dinner party held at Broadlands where Mountbatten boasted that since the funeral of King George VI a Mountbatten was sitting on the throne and the “House of Mountbatten now reigned.”
When this piece of gossip was passed on to Queen Mary she was horrified. The steely-eyed matriarch contacted Churchill and convinced him, not that he needed much convincing, of the necessity of continuing the House of Windsor. She insisted that Churchill formally ask the queen to confirm the continuation of the House of Windsor now and in the future. This also applied to the royal offspring.
Despite her husband’s furious protests, the queen, as she was obliged to do, took the government’s formal advice and, on April 9, 1952, signed an Order in Council confirming the ascendancy of the House of Windsor.
At a time when she needed Prince Philip’s support, she found herself living with a morose, resentful husband who exclaimed that he was “nothing more than an amoeba—a bloody amoeba” as he was the only husband in the land not able to confer his surname upon his children.25 For such an alpha male, it was a bitter pill to swallow. Even after the announcement he continued a rearguard action. He sent a memo to Churchill arguing that the royal house be called Edinburgh-Mountbatten. Queen Mary’s view was typically robust. “What the devil does that damn fool Edinburgh think that the family name has got to do with him?”26 That “damn fool Edinburgh,” though, would not let the matter drop.
Precedent was on his side as Queen Victoria had taken Prince Albert’s surname when they married. His opponent, the prime minister, also relied on British history. He and Queen Mary argued that the name Windsor had been created by King George V in 1917 not only, at a time of conflict, to disassociate the monarchy from its German origins but also to convey native grit and stoicism in the face of a redoubtable enemy.
The queen as sovereign and wife was left in a difficult position, with her implacable grandmother, mother, and Churchill on one side ranged against her husband and her uncle on the other. This rancorous family debate was, as politician Rab Butler recalled, the only time he had seen the queen close to tears. In the end, much as Philip and Mountbatten might seethe, Churchill and the queens would prevail.
Churchill had bested Philip on one contentious issue. It was not long before he was to usurp his domestic authority again. This time the argument concerned where the royal family should live. Clarence House was currently their home, a place where they had invested time and energy making it their family nest. They had chosen the soft furnishings, mixed the paint colors, and the picked the curtains. Philip’s interest in technology ensured that their home boasted the latest labor-saving devices including a wardrobe that could eject the required shirt or jacket at the touch of a button. For a young man who had led a rootless existence, the chance to build a home for his wife and family was naturally appealing.
During lunch one day it was suggested that the queen and her family stay at Clarence House and use Buckingham Palace as an office. Philip was enthusiastic, the idea making practical sense especially as Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret were still in residence at Buckingham Palace and the queen mother, at least, showed no desire or inclination to move out. She had been mistress of the grand residence since 1936 and clearly wished to stay on for as long as possible. Discussions about a move from Buckingham Palace were awkward and emotional. On at least one occasion the queen mother uncharacteristically burst into tears. Elizabeth was sensitive to her mother’s profound personal loss as well as her sudden demotion in the court hierarchy. For the first few months she had selflessly taken the junior role, even though their regal positions were now reversed. At Sunday church services, for instance, the queen encouraged her mother to sit in the monarch’s seat. There was an “awkwardness about precedence,” one courtier remembered. “The Queen not wanting to go in front of her mother and the Queen Mother used to going first.”27 Elizabeth knew that her mother wished to stay on at Buckingham Palace for as long as possible and, for the sake of family happiness and unity, the young woman went along with the proposal, especially as her husband was keen to remain at Clarence House.
Churchill and the queen’s crusty but knowledgeable private secretary Alan Lascelles would have none of it: “The flagpole [at Buckingham Palace] flies the Queen’s Standard and that’s where she must be,” Churchill decreed.28 Philip reacted badly. He stayed in his room, depressed and gloomy, the prince dreading the move from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace.29 It was easier for Elizabeth to accept Churchill’s edict as she was simply moving back to her former home albeit in the grander surroundings of the Belgian Suite. Philip, on the other hand, would be moving from the only home he had ever known and giving up the last remaining realm in his life where he still had control. “It was bloody difficult for him. In the navy, he was in command of his own ship—literally,” Mike Parker explained. “At Clarence House, it was very much his show. When we got to Buckingham Palace, all that changed.”30
The move, in May 1952, while the surname battle was at its height, was as bad as Philip predicted. Now under the constant scrutiny of courtiers there were, as he recalled, “Plenty of people telling me what not to do. ‘You mustn’t interfere with this.’ ‘Keep out.’”31 In a reference to his previous role as a ship’s captain, he confessed: “People used to come to me and ask me what to do.”32 Now he was ignored. Churchill, who had fallen out with Mountbatten over his unnecessarily hasty handling of Indian independence. He seemed to take out his antagonism out on his royal nephew by blocking his every suggestion.
The elderly statesman told an aide that while he wished Philip no ill he neither liked nor trusted him and hoped he would not do harm to the country. As Philip’s cousin Pamela Mountbatten recalled: “Prince Philip was completely excluded and unwelcome at Buckingham Palace. Everybody closed ranks. Churchill made him feel totally apart from the whole thing. Although the Duke of Ediburgh had never expected to be king, nor had he expected to be so brutally and cruelly sidelined.”33 In a matter of months, Philip had lost his career, his name, his paternal rights, his home, and his authority as a husband. As a pitiful consolation he bought himself an electric frying pan so that he could fry his eggs and bacon in the morning without waiting for his breakfast to be brought from the kitchens.
The queen who, as Lascelles noted, was unusually sensitive to others, could see that her husband was struggling. She had married a dynamic, ambitious naval officer, not a man who felt sorry for himself. It was clear that he needed to stop brooding and be put to work on a project.
Initially the queen asked him to oversee the construction and design of the new royal yacht currently being built at the John Brown shipyard at Clydebank in Scotland. It was the perfect job for the former commander with an interest in design and an eye for detail. He liaised with Sir Hugh Casson who was commissioned to lay out the interiors of the 412-foot yacht, which the queen named Britannia at the launch in April 1953.
While his work on the royal yacht channeled his love of architecture and technology, the queen’s request that he chair the committee organizing the coronation, which was due to take place on June 2, 1953, a few days before the famed Derby horse race at Epsom, plunged him once more into conflict with the Establishment. This time it included his wife. The queen was dead-set against the televising of the coronation. Her husband thought otherwise. The queen’s attitude was supported by the queen mother, Churchill, Lascelles, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who worried that the queen’s habit of licking her lips would look indecorous on such an august occasion. Philip, as a man of science and innovation—he was the first royal to fly in a helicopter—supported the opening up of this solemn ceremony to the common man via the new technology of television.
The queen’s objections were both practical and personal. She recognized that the coronation was a profound and sacred moment, an ordinary mortal transformed into a potent symbol, half man, half priest, in a solemn ritual going back over a thousand years. At the same time she was concerned that television coverage would mean that millions would see her blushing embarrassment if anything went wrong.
She vividly remembered her father’s memories of his own coronation which had been beset by numerous mishaps: a priest fainted and in so doing held up the procession; the oversized Bible proved too heavy to carry and had to be replaced; a bishop accidentally covered the words of the oath when the nervous King was about to read it; another bishop stood on George VI’s robe as he tried to stand; and lastly the crown seemed to have been handed to the Archbishop of Canterbury the wrong way round, which created more tension. His experience made for an amusing story—after the event. It was funny until she had to accept her own dread destiny. She had no intention of turning the sacred into slapstick.
Philip, a man of progressive temperament, was convinced that opening the coronation to the people via television was the simplest and surest way of maintaining the monarchy. He turned the argument of Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot on its head as he argued that “daylight should be let in on magic.” Despite his reasoning, the old guard won out. On October 20, 1952, the palace announced that the coronation would be broadcast live on the radio alone. The mass media and politicians immediately attacked the decision, blaming the men in gray rather than the queen. “Truly astonishing,” the Daily Express complained. “The people will be denied the climax of a wonderful and magnificent occasion in British history.”34 In the face of overwhelming criticism, the government gave the nation an early Christmas present, on December 8 performing a U-turn and declaring that the ceremony would now be televised. The new queen was praised for her, falsely perceived, role as the “people’s queen,” as the public believed that she had stood firm against the ancien régime who sought to exclude her subjects from her big day. It was an early example of collective projection. The queen was cautious rather than progressive, cleaving to the past and precedent, just like her father. It was her husband who was the agent for change in their partnership. It was not a complete victory for people power as the queen insisted that there were no close-ups of her face and that the sacred act of communion and anointing would not be filmed by the TV cameras.
