Elizabeth the Queen (28 page)

“She has an ability to get horses
psychologically attuned to what
she wants and then to persuade
them to enjoy it.”

The Queen, as always without a hard hat, tearing up the course at Ascot in a race with family members, June 1961.
Popperfoto/Getty Images

EIGHT

Refuge in Routines

I
F
H
AROLD
W
ILSON’S PREMIERSHIP MARKED THE TURNING OF A
page, an epochal event three months later closed an important chapter in the life of the Queen. On January 24, 1965, Winston Churchill died at age ninety. Instantly the wheels began turning for a full state funeral, the first with such panoply for a nonroyal since the death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852.

The preparations, code-named “Operation Hope Not,” had begun in 1958 when the former prime minister nearly died from a sudden attack of pneumonia and the Queen decided that he should be given the supreme honor, overseen by her ceremonial expert, the 16th Duke of Norfolk. “It was entirely owing to the Queen that it was a state funeral,” recalled Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames. “She indicated that to him several years before he died, and he was gratified.”

President Lyndon Johnson was supposed to represent the United States, but he was bedridden at Bethesda Naval Hospital with acute bronchitis, and his doctors resisted. The president was eager to attend, not least because Churchill was confidently Anglo-American and regarded the bond between the countries as a “living entity to be fostered and prized.” Johnson desperately pressed for three days to obtain special accommodations including bringing his own chair to the funeral, arranging shelter from inclement weather, and gaining permission to sit while others were standing. He also secured an agreement from the Queen to receive him privately in Buckingham Palace after the funeral.

In the end, his physicians prevailed. Johnson not only lost his chance to participate in a grand occasion, but he would never again have a chance to meet the Queen. The president’s designated replacement, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, fell ill with influenza and had to bow out as well, reducing the official American delegation to only Chief Justice Earl Warren and David Bruce. Dwight Eisenhower attended as a private citizen and issued his own tribute hailing Churchill as “a great maker of history” who was the “embodiment of British defiance to threat, her courage in adversity, her calmness in danger, her moderation in success … the leader to whom the entire body of free men owes so much.”

By Elizabeth II’s decree, Churchill lay in state in Westminster Hall for three days, followed by a funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Saturday, January 30, to “acknowledge our debt of gratitude … for the life and example of a national hero.” It was one of the most magnificent spectacles of the twentieth century, with 120 slow-marching naval ratings (noncommissioned officers) pulling the coffin on the gun carriage used at the funerals of Queen Victoria and Kings George V and VI, detachments from all branches of the armed services, nine military bands, and guns fired ninety times, once a minute for each year of his life. The male members of the Churchill family walked behind the coffin, followed by Churchill’s widow and daughters in a carriage provided by the Queen, who equipped it with rugs and hot-water bottles to help them ward off the cold. Hundreds of thousands of mourners lined the roads to watch the procession from Westminster to St. Paul’s, which took a full hour.

At the cathedral, the Queen arrived before the procession to join the congregation of three thousand (including leaders of 110 nations) and sit with her husband and mother in three red upholstered gilt chairs in front of the catafalque under the 365-foot dome. “Waiving all custom and precedence,” noted Mary Soames, the Queen “waited the arrival of her greatest subject.” Elizabeth II also told the Churchill family “we were not to curtsy or bow as we passed her, because it would have held everything up.”

The service lasted a half hour, with neither sermon nor eulogies, only prayers, scriptures, and three of Churchill’s favorite hymns. The second, Julia Ward Howe’s stirring “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” paid homage to his American roots (his mother was a New Yorker, Jennie Jerome), previously sung at St. Paul’s just over a year earlier at the memorial service for John F. Kennedy. At Churchill’s service, it was the hymn “most enthusiastically rendered,” wrote David Bruce.

Once a trumpeter had sounded the “Last Post” and a bugler had played “Reveille,” the Queen again broke precedent and left after the Churchill family had followed the coffin, borne by eight Grenadier guardsmen. The royal family stood silently on the cathedral steps with the other world leaders, “the clouds of cold coming from the Queen’s mouth” as the funeral cortege departed amid muffled drums for Tower pier. From there, the coffin, escorted by the family, was transported by launch up the Thames, and by train for burial in a churchyard near Churchill’s birthplace at Blenheim Palace.

In another unprecedented gesture, the Queen hosted a buffet luncheon at Buckingham Palace for all the chief mourners and foreign dignitaries. “It hit between wind and water,” David Bruce recorded, “restrained but informal.” Rather than greet her guests in a receiving line, the Queen circulated among them, her introductions managed by members of the household. Prince Charles, Princess Anne, and Prince Andrew “wandered casually about,” ten-month-old Prince Edward “was brought in for a speedy tour,” and the Queen left just before two o’clock.

* * *

O
F ALL THE
striking scenes of the day, one of the most memorable was of Churchill’s coffin draped in the Union Jack, its only adornment a black pillow holding the insignia of the Most Noble Order of the Garter: the elaborate chain known as the Collar of the Order, with the enameled emblem of St. George and the dragon attached, and the badge with the cross of St. George and the Garter motto, “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (Shame on him who thinks evil of this). The Nobel laureate and recipient of countless other awards considered the Garter in a class by itself because, Churchill said, “only the Queen decides.” With a maximum twenty-four recipients—“Companions” they are called—at any given time, plus members of the royal family and foreign sovereigns, the Garter knights are probably the most exclusive club in the world. The Order was founded in 1348 by King Edward III, and the members serve until their death.

In June 1965, the Queen assembled her knights for their annual gathering, which included the installation of two new Companions, Basil Brooke, the former prime minister of Northern Ireland, and Edward Bridges, the former head of the Civil Service. Elizabeth II gives no specific reason for conferring her unique “mark of Royal favour,” but she has included eight of her prime ministers and other distinguished figures from politics, the law, business, the military, diplomacy, and the judiciary as well as hereditary peers, a number of whom she has chosen for serving her personally. With the exception of the royal members, women weren’t allowed in the Order until 1987, when the Queen decided to create full-fledged “Lady Companions,” the first of whom was Lavinia Fitzalan-Howard, the Duchess of Norfolk, who had been the Queen’s stand-in during rehearsals for the coronation, and who had regularly hosted Elizabeth II and Philip at her ancestral home, Arundel Castle, during the summertime Goodwood races. Intriguingly, Elizabeth II never honored her sister, Princess Margaret, although she appointed Princess Anne in 1994 and her cousin Princess Alexandra in 2003, both widely admired for their dedicated royal service.

Forty years after her father’s death, Mary Soames was appointed to the Order. When she came to Buckingham Palace, the Queen had laid out the insignia on a grand piano. “Well, here it is,” said Elizabeth II. As she pointed toward the collar, she said, “That is your father’s chain!” “Oh, Ma’am,” replied Mary, “that can’t be.” Feeling slightly abashed at contradicting the monarch, she explained that the collar was in a display case at Chartwell, the Churchill home in Kent. “I caused it to be retrieved,” said the Queen with a twinkle, explaining that she had arranged for a replica to go on display.

Garter Day, which is held on the Monday after Trooping the Colour in June, is a particularly enjoyable fixed point on the Queen’s yearly calendar. The Garter knights meet at Windsor Castle to witness the installation of new members in the Garter Throne Room. Conjuring a medieval tableau, they wear their gleaming chains and badges over heavy dark blue velvet robes embellished with white satin bows on the shoulders. “Whoever invented these robes wasn’t very practical,” the Queen once remarked, “even in the days when somebody wore clothes like these.” As she administers the oath and exhorts the knights in their faith, “she is highly practical, quick & neat,” noted Deborah Devonshire when her husband, Andrew, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, was invested. “The language is thrilling, ancient & rather frightening, nothing but battling with things & people.”

The Queen treats the knights to luncheon in the Waterloo Chamber, a long gallery with an intricately carved ceiling and clerestory windows resembling a man-o’-war ship from the nineteenth century. The table is splendidly set with silver gilt and flowers. Like other royal banquets, there is “no hanging about for a slow eater,” Deborah Devonshire recalled.

Following the luncheon, the knights ready themselves for a colorful procession, fastening their robes and adjusting their badges, collars, and flat black velvet hats with waving ostrich plumes. They walk from the main part of the castle down a cobbled street to St. George’s Chapel, preceded by regimental bands in gold tunics, the Military Knights of Windsor in scarlet uniforms, and Officers of Arms in scarlet and gold tabards and black knee breeches, passing by dismounted members of the Household Cavalry lining the route. Many of the Garter knights are elderly, and some shuffle unsteadily under the weight and volume of their robes. “The Queen is always very concerned for their well-being,” said Lieutenant Colonel Sir Malcolm Ross, former Comptroller for the Queen. “She will say, ‘Pay attention to this one. Make sure he is not puffed,’ so I would take him by a shortcut.”

Garter Day is one of the monarchy’s popular tourist attractions, with eight thousand spectators each year, and a thousand more filling St. George’s Chapel for the service of thanksgiving, where the Garter knights are tucked away in the choir stalls. Afterward, the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and knights ride in carriages and cars back to the castle. “It’s always very lucky to plod downhill and not uphill,” the Queen observed. Once the royal family members take their leave, the Companions meet in the Waterloo Chamber for tea, a happy atmosphere of “hats off, hair down, and general relaxation,” recalled Deborah Devonshire.

I
T WOULD BE
more than a decade before Harold Wilson, the Queen’s first socialist prime minister, would participate in the rarefied rituals of the Garter—pageantry he embraced with enthusiasm. In the meantime, he pursued an agenda of wide-ranging social reforms and increased government spending on housing, pensions, health, and welfare subsidies. Once a government captures a working majority in Parliament, however slender, the ruling party has virtually untrammeled power, with no prospect of compromise with the opposition. The postwar Conservative governments had done little to reduce the welfare state constructed by the Attlee government, and Wilson significantly broadened the reach of those programs.

Starting in 1965, his Labour majority pushed through laws abolishing capital punishment, ending government censorship, liberalizing abortion, lowering the voting age to eighteen, reforming divorce, and decriminalizing homosexuality. Wilson’s government nearly doubled the number of universities, significantly expanding free higher education (a practice that would end thirty-three years later with the introduction of means-tested tuition fees). At the same time, he eroded the quality of secondary education by eliminating the publicly funded selective grammar schools that had educated not only Wilson but other prominent British leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath. Those academically rigorous schools were replaced by egalitarian comprehensive schools with lower scholastic standards. To pay for the expanded government programs, the Labour Party binged on borrowing and raised taxes.