A Brief History of the House of Windsor (21 page)

To modern ears this may sound like a mere exercise in bland officialese, but many in the Republic were deeply touched by this personal message of farewell. Seven hundred years of resistance to what nationalists portrayed as draconian, repressive foreign occupation had ended with a friendly greeting from a pleasant, quiet and well-meaning man who was known to love their country, and who genuinely wished them well for the future. This was not how they had expected the struggle for independence to reach fulfilment. Sean T. O’Kelly, one of the most committed supporters of the Republic, was so impressed by the message that he wrote that: ‘It was a most generous and imaginative act on the part of the king and its sensitive and moving terms had been deeply
valued. When the English did a thing,’ he concluded, ‘they did it sensitively and well.’

The real dismantling would not come, however, until the reign of the king’s daughter. For the moment India, Ceylon and Burma departed, while the African nations remained for a further generation. While the king lost the title of emperor of India (in a touching gesture, he awarded both his daughters the Order of the Indian Empire just before it was abolished), he became the first Head of the Commonwealth. Though Burma refused to join this organization, George remained nominal head of state for many millions of those whom he had formerly ruled as subjects. It was a smooth transition from outright colonial rule to something the modern world found – and still finds – more palatable. No other colonial power had so high a success rate in turning vassals into partners and then colleagues. The Dutch were to fight a bloody and unsuccessful war in the forties to retain their East Indies territories. The French would suffer a similar fate in Indochina and Algeria in the fifties, the Belgians would lose the Congo in the sixties, and the Portuguese Empire would descend into chaos in the seventies. Though Britain’s decolonization, in Palestine, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden and Ireland, would by no means be without bloodshed and horror, it was at least without the virtual civil war at home that plagued other powers.

One thing that member countries were supposed to have in common was an expressed loyalty to the British Crown. India became a Republic, yet wanted to remain within the organization. After considerable discussion it was agreed that the rules could be bent to allow it to do so, and this opened the way for other countries to belong while retaining their preferred form of government. This flexibility meant that more nations were happy – indeed eager – to join, and made the Commonwealth stronger.

The king presided over the beginnings of this decolonization with apparent equanimity, but then it was not obvious at first what a landslide it was to become. In his
reign Kenya was still recruiting white settlers with the promise of lifelong access to fertile farmland, and young men were joining the Colonial Service expecting to make a career in overseas administration. King George, his wife and daughters made an official visit to South Africa – the first of what were expected to be several such tours of British territories – to thank the country for its help during the war. Here too they were immensely popular. The king’s modesty, as well as the queen’s gift for engaging with those she met (she famously charmed a Boer whose hatred of Britain was undiminished almost fifty years after the South African War by saying: ‘I know just how you feel. In Scotland that is how we regard the English!’), made the tour a triumph. The two princesses were now young adults – Elizabeth was to celebrate her twenty-first birthday while in the country – and they too won many hearts. Perhaps the most appreciated gesture by the family during this visit was the return – by the king to General Smuts – of the Bible owned by President Kruger, which British troops had captured during the Boer War.

The king, however, was unwell, and this was to be the last overseas tour he would make. The war had been a serious strain on his health, and complications caused by his heavy smoking began to tax what vitality remained to him. He continued to fulfil royal duties – the notion of soldiering on regardless of ill health is something bred into the royal family through generations – but he found it increasingly tiring. At that time the family was so much smaller than it later became that there was not the same opportunity to delegate. Apart from Queen Mary, who was more or less in retirement, there were only the king and queen and the two princesses, who had to cover all official business between them. Princess Elizabeth added another member by marrying Philip Mountbatten, but he was a career naval officer who had neither the time nor, so far, the experience to take on much of the workload. When he was posted to Malta in 1949 the king encouraged Elizabeth to go with him, despite the fact that the couple
by now had one child and were soon to have another. Their departure meant that Prince Charles, between the ages of one and four, lived with his grandparents. He would always be grateful for the opportunity this gave to acquire at least some memories of King George.

George’s health declined so fast in the years after the war that even by 1949 – two years after the South African visit – he was visibly ailing. He appeared at Trooping the Colour that year in a carriage because he was unable to ride, but then he had had a major operation only three months earlier and the amputation of his right leg had only just been avoided. He was found to have Buerger’s Disease, which attacks the arteries, as well as having bronchial carcinoma. His health had been undermined by the strain of the war, and his lifelong habit of heavy smoking had of course not helped. He had to have an operation in September 1951 that removed one of his lungs, and his recovery was slow.

Princess Elizabeth was obliged to return several times to Britain to deputize for her father, and in 1951 she and Philip had to undertake an entire official visit for him, spending a month in Canada. The following year they were asked to undergo another tour. On this occasion it was to be a lengthier and more exhausting itinerary that would take in East Africa, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. The princess and her husband were to depart by air, and her family went to see them off. Newspaper images showed King George standing on the runway, hunched against the wintry chill, bare-headed and haggard. He looked a decade or more older than his fifty-six years. Nevertheless his family believed his health was improving, and there seemed no reason to think he would not be on the same tarmac to meet his daughter on her return in six months’ time. ‘Look out for yourselves,’ he said on parting.

That was on 31 January 1952. Just days later the princess and her husband were in Kenya, staying in a tree-house on a game reserve. The royal family was at Sandringham, where this was the last day of shooting. The king went out with
the gamekeepers to clear up what birds were left, and much enjoyed himself. He dined with the queen and Princess Margaret, and once again his spirits were high. He retired to bed and, sometime in the night of 5–6 February, he died.

His health and appearance had been so bad that his death was not the shock to the public that it might have been, but his family were naturally grief-stricken. The most immediate problem was to find and inform the new sovereign, who was somewhere in the African bush. The code for George’s death – ‘Hyde Park Corner’ – was sent but not received, perhaps because the telegraph operator mistook it for the address. It was hours before Elizabeth discovered that she was now queen. A journalist contacted her Private Secretary, who told her husband, who broke the news. The king had died of thrombosis.

George VI lay in state in the church at Sandringham, guarded by tweed-suited gamekeepers – the very men who had spent with him his last day alive. His body was then conveyed by train to London. Crowds stood by the trackside to watch it pass, the men doffing their hats. After lying in state once again, in Westminster Hall, he was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in an attractive little side-chapel. His wife, who was to have a longer and more remarkable career as a dowager than she had had as a consort, would join him there just over half a century later.

‘Voluntary change is the life-blood of the Crown.’

Prince Philip

Queen Elizabeth II is within a few years of becoming the longest-reigning monarch in British history. The daughter of a long-lived mother (who was almost 102 when she died), she may well continue to rule for some time yet. Her presence has dominated almost the entire post-war era in Britain, so that to many of her subjects the notion of the country without Queen Elizabeth at its head is difficult to grasp.

She came to the throne, suddenly and largely unexpectedly, in the late winter of 1952. She was twenty-five, the wife of a serving naval officer and the mother of two very young children. In the decades since then, British society has undergone massive changes, yet she has remained astonishingly consistent in outlook, tastes and habits throughout that time. She may seem like a gentle old lady, and she is, but the firmness of her views is legendary and there are within her qualities
of self-discipline, determination and devotion to duty that match any of her predecessors’. Because she has been by far the longest-serving sovereign of the House of Windsor, it may well be her reign, and her personality, that will come to dominate its history.

Christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, she was named after three generations of her female ancestors, not quite in reverse chronological order. Elizabeth was her mother, Alexandra her great-grandmother and Mary her grandmother. Like so many successful monarchs, she came to the throne by accident of circumstances. When she was born, on 21 April 1926, her father was the Duke of York and second in line to the throne. His elder brother was young, athletic, vigorous and widely popular, especially with women. It was unthinkable that he would not marry, and highly likely that he would have children – indeed the pressure to do so would be overwhelming. It looked then as if Elizabeth’s future would go in one of two directions. The first possibility was that she would spend her life as a second-rank royal, a cousin of the immediate royal family. She would perhaps marry a member of the British aristocracy as her aunt had done (Princess Mary, her father’s sister, had become Viscountess Lascelles). Thereafter, if there were enough members of her uncle’s family to cover the necessary range of public duties, she would fade from sight to live a quiet life on her husband’s estates as a duchess or countess. Catching a glimpse of her now and again among the royals at some state event, people might ask: ‘Now, which one’s that?’

Alternatively, she might go abroad. Though as we have seen the age of dynastic marriages had ended, the princess would still have been considered a considerable catch by members of other royal houses. The First World War did not entirely bring an end to the Age of Kings. Parvenu sovereigns would have welcomed an alliance with a dynasty as ancient and prestigious as Britain’s, as would families who had lost their thrones. The idea of Princess Elizabeth as consort in a Balkan
country is not as fanciful as it first seems, for in the event she was to marry a member of the Greek royal family.

Whether she was destined for a life of public duty or comparative obscurity, Elizabeth was brought up in an atmosphere of formality. Her grandfather was king. He was surrounded by splendour and protocol, and had to be treated with deference even though he was openly affectionate and indulgent with her. Her father and mother were often involved in official duties. She saw from her earliest years the respectful manner in which visitors to their home would speak to them. She herself was saluted by sentries whenever she passed them, and was bowed to by people to whom she was introduced. She was treated throughout her childhood as if she were an honorary adult – not a person to be ignored, patronized or scolded, but one who was respected, taken seriously, and her sayings or foibles filed away in memory. In addition, there could be no ignoring the attention she received from all over the world. When her parents went on a tour of Australasia, they brought back more than three tons of toys that had been given her (most were donated to hospitals). Her image – she had appealing golden curls – appeared on a Canadian stamp and on the cover of the American magazine
Time
, and a section of Antarctica was named after her. Not the kind of things that happen to ordinary children.

As a result, she grew up with a precocious seriousness. She had few playmates of her own age, and was never to go to school. She would have become accustomed, as she walked in Hyde Park with her nanny or rode her bicycle in the little garden behind her parents’ London home, to being stared at and photographed. She was acutely aware of a gulf between herself and other children of her age, for she was not allowed to meet or talk to those she saw when out in public. It was made clear to her that, because of her parents’ – and more significantly her grandfather’s – position, she must always act with dignity. She was continually being noticed, watched and judged. Her behaviour was more important than that
of other children. When a sister, Margaret Rose, was added to the family in 1930, Elizabeth began to develop a sense of responsibility for her younger sibling that further increased her natural earnestness. The girls became extremely close, and would remain so all their lives. The fact that they had few experiences of the outside world meant that they would always have more in common with each other than with anyone else. Added to this was the fact that their parents preferred their company to that of any outsiders. The family was thus extremely – unusually – close.

The girls’ lives were not, of course, an imprisonment, either physically or emotionally. They were constantly meeting people of importance – prime ministers, archbishops, senior figures in Church and State – either at their parents’ homes or at the residences of their grandfather. They had the run of Buckingham Palace gardens, which were just across the road. They also had the gardens of Royal Lodge, Sandringham and Balmoral to explore while staying there, and their home provided a secure, extremely loving environment. Both parents adored them and, though they lived in a top-floor nursery, as was customary for the children of upper-class families, there was no question of their being banished from sight or left in the impersonal care of servants. The family always had meals together. The duke and duchess, who did not like Society and spent as much time at home as possible, saw the girls for hours every day and took the closest interest in their activities. They deliberately set out to give their daughters the happiest possible childhood. Their mother ensured that they read the same books she had loved as a girl, and that there were picnics and games and frequent outings.