Elizabeth the Queen (65 page)

When the soaring medieval hall was opened to members of the public, they stood in lines that stretched across the Thames and along the river’s south bank. After three days, more than 200,000 people—far more than expected—had filed past the catafalque to pay their respects. Officials had to extend the hours to accommodate as many mourners as possible. It was yet another dramatic demonstration of the monarchy’s entrenched popularity.

On Monday night before the funeral, the Queen gave a televised tribute to her “beloved mother” while seated in front of a window at Windsor Castle. Her message lasted just two minutes and fifteen seconds, but her voice was full of feeling as she spoke of her loss and her gratitude for “the outpouring of affection which has accompanied her death.” The extent of the tribute paid by “huge numbers of you” had been “overwhelming.” She hoped that at the funeral “sadness will blend with a wider sense of thanksgiving, not just for her life but for the times in which she lived.” And she expressed her thanks “for the support you are giving me and my family as we come to terms with her death and the void she has left in our midst. I thank you also from my heart for the love you gave her during her life and the honor you now give her in death.”

The Queen’s address was the culmination of a series of public gestures by the royal family to show their emotions in various ways. The previous Monday Prince Charles had given his own brief televised tribute from Highgrove, framed by photographs of the Queen Mother. He had struck an even more intimate tone than his mother’s as he catalogued the traits he adored in “the most magical grandmother you could possibly have.” He said he had “learnt so much from her of immense value to my life” and that together “we laughed until we cried—oh how I shall miss her laugh and wonderful wisdom born of so much experience and an innate sensitivity to life.”

Other members of the royal family also made an effort to connect with the public. Sophie Wessex, Princess Anne, her son, Peter Phillips, and husband, Tim Laurence, mingled with mourners waiting in line to visit the Queen Mother’s coffin. Just before the Queen’s broadcast, Princes Charles, Andrew, and Edward, along with Margaret’s son, David Linley, had stood at the four corners of the catafalque for a twenty-minute vigil.

The most unexpected response came from Princes William and Harry, aged nineteen and seventeen, who talked about the Queen Mother’s whimsical side in an interview. They described how they had taught their hundred-year-old great-grandmother to imitate Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G after she had watched the comedian on television. At the end of the family’s Christmas luncheon that year, she had stood up and declared, “Darling, lunch was marvelous—respec!” and clicked her fingers, Ali G style.

On Tuesday, April 9, Crown Jeweler David Thomas was up at 6
A.M.
to clean and dust the crown on top of the coffin. A million people gathered along the funeral route, and more than eleven million watched on television. The congregation of 2,200 in Westminster Abbey included twenty-five members of European royal families, the Blairs, Thatchers, Majors, James Callaghan, First Lady Laura Bush, and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan among numerous dignitaries. There were ordinary people as well who had known the Queen Mother through the more than three hundred charities of which she was patron or president. In the spirit of the Queen’s address, the midday funeral service combined solemn pageantry with reminders of how, “like the sun,” the Queen Mother “bathed us in her warm glow,” in the words of George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury. She embodied, he said, “one of the most fundamental of all roles and relationships—that of simply being a mother, a mum, the Queen Mum.”

A significant shift had taken place that week. For fifty years, Elizabeth II had deferred to her mother, and the object of that deference was gone. The Queen now took on the mantle of her mother’s role as well as her own. She moved up a generation and became the nation’s grandmother, or as Margaret Rhodes put it, “the senior royal lady.” Much as the Queen adored her mother, she had been slightly overshadowed by the Queen Mother’s merry and approachable presence, so beloved by the people. Elizabeth II had always been admired, but now the depth of affection for the Queen Mother began to merge with the equally deep respect for the Queen.

Still, the deaths of her sister and her mother within the space of six weeks gave seventy-five-year-old Elizabeth II “a terrible wallop of grief,” said Margaret Rhodes. “It was a huge thing,” said Elizabeth Anson. “The two people she talked to every day on the phone—neither of them was there.” The full impact of those losses—and of her altered relationship with the public—would become more evident later. In the meantime, Elizabeth II found solace in her duty.

“Suddenly they got the point of
the Queen, who had been doing
her job for fifty years.”

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip riding in the Gold State Coach from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul’s Cathedral for the Golden Jubilee service of thanksgiving, June 2002.
Rebecca Nadin/Press Association Images

NINETEEN

Moving Pictures

“T
HE
B
RITISH HAVE LOST THE HABIT OF PROPER PARTYING,” SAID
historian David Starkey at the end of January 2002, explaining that changes in the nature of British society meant the celebratory atmosphere of the Silver Jubilee could not possibly be duplicated twenty-five years later. Starkey was part of a chorus of skeptics predicting the Golden Jubilee would be a flop. As it had in 1977,
The Guardian
led the charge, joined by
The Independent
—the same newspapers that had predicted a tepid response to the death of the Queen Mother.

Even after the outpouring of enthusiasm for the monarchy shown by the crowds for her funeral, much of the press had remained dubious. In keeping with its “softly, softly” strategy of holding down expectations, Buckingham Palace advisers concentrated on refining their ambitious plans. The celebration was privately financed, and had taken eighteen months to map out. Shipping magnate Jeffrey Sterling, Lord Sterling of Plaistow, who had successfully run the Silver Jubilee, was appointed chairman of the Golden Jubilee committee. Within a matter of months, he raised nearly £6 million from corporations and individuals who wanted to honor their Queen.

A crucial part of the Palace strategy involved an advisory group of outsiders that met fifteen times in 2001 over lunches hosted by Robin Janvrin in the Chinese Dining Room. Its members were drawn from the senior ranks of public relations, broadcasting, magazines, and newspapers, including Libby Purves, a columnist for
The Times
who articulated the views of “middle Britain.” In the spirit of their more open approach, Janvrin and Simon Walker also invited such critics of the monarchy as Waheed Alli, a Labour peer who was a highly successful television producer and gay rights activist. The committee members made their own suggestions and commented on plans presented by Palace officials. Neither the committee’s membership nor details of its deliberations ever leaked.

Private polling and focus groups measured the Queen’s popularity by region. This research helped the Queen’s advisers plan her three-month-long progress starting on May 1 with sixteen regional tours throughout the United Kingdom. The Palace intentionally launched the tours in Cornwall and Devon, counties that showed some of the highest support for the monarchy. To ensure maximum coverage, the press office briefed three thousand community organizations even before conducting off-the-record briefings for national and regional media, followed by meetings with the international press.

On April 25, 2002, the Queen had a reception at Windsor Castle for more than 750 journalists representing the smallest regional newspapers as well as the major dailies in London. Alastair Campbell acidly observed that “there was something truly pathetic about these so-called hardened hacks, many of them self-proclaimed republicans, bowing and scraping.” The Queen “moved effortlessly between them and left grown men in little puddles of excitement.” Afterward, Simon Walker suggested to the Queen that they should have a similar party in five years’ time. She said she preferred ten.

Four nights later, Tony and Cherie Blair hosted a dinner at 10 Downing Street for Elizabeth II and Philip and her surviving prime ministers—Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, and Major—and the families of the others. “What a relief!” the Queen said as she greeted the Blairs. “No need for any introductions!” Campbell detected a marked difference in the Queen’s manner from her evening at Windsor “when she had been doing her professional small-talk thing,” and at No. 10, “where she seemed genuinely happy.”

The following day, Elizabeth II addressed the Joint Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall, where her mother’s body had lain in state only three weeks earlier. As was the case in the same setting in 1977, her words were personal, and they reflected the essential message of her jubilee year. “Change has become a constant,” she said. “Managing it has become an expanding discipline. The way we embrace it defines our future.” She emphasized the importance of Britain’s enduring values of moderation and pragmatism, inventiveness and creativity, and fairness and tolerance, as well as its tradition of service.

In keeping with her theme of inclusiveness, she cited “the consolidation of our richly multicultural and multi-faith society” as a “major development” since 1952, achieved “remarkably peacefully and with much goodwill.” (Only days earlier, the Palace had announced that during her travels over the summer, she would visit a Hindu temple, a Jewish museum, a Sikh temple, and an Islamic center—her first time inside a mosque.) At seventy-six years of age, she made clear—yet again—“my resolve to continue, with the support of my family, to serve the people of this great nation of ours to the best of my ability through the changing times ahead.” One thousand peers and members of Parliament rose to their feet and gave her a loud and prolonged round of applause—the magnitude of which seemed to both move and embarrass her.

After her first three regional swings through England, she traveled to Northern Ireland on May 13 for a three-day tour in an atmosphere far different from her tense visit during the Silver Jubilee. On April 10, 1998, the Good Friday Agreement had brought peace to Ulster with a compromise to share power between the Protestant majority and Catholic minority in a newly created legislative assembly (ending direct London rule). The accord also put aside the idea of a united Ireland unless approved by the voters in both Ulster and the Republic of Ireland.

Four years later, Elizabeth II addressed legislators from the new Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time as their Queen at a reception in the parliament buildings at Stormont. She told them they had “an historic opportunity to bring the administration of Northern Ireland closer to the people whom you serve” and to “meet the aspirations both of those who are proud to be British and of those who feel a strong sense of Irish identity.”

T
HE CENTERPIECE OF
the Golden Jubilee festivities was a four-day “people’s party” at the beginning of June, with two unprecedented concerts in the gardens at Buckingham Palace. Each concert was attended by twelve thousand fans randomly selected from nearly two million applicants, and both were televised live by the BBC. The music was classical on Saturday the 1st and pop on Monday the 3rd.

Initiating the pop concert required some delicate maneuvering. “It was important to have young support for the jubilee,” said Simon Walker. Robin Janvrin ultimately won over the Queen, who made it clear she had no interest in spending three hours listening to pop singers. As a compromise, the courtiers arranged for her to arrive about thirty-five minutes before the end.

The concert began dramatically with Brian May, the guitarist from Queen, standing on the roof of Buckingham Palace playing his idiosyncratic version of the national anthem. When Elizabeth II appeared, Eric Clapton was singing “Layla,” and the comedian Dame Edna Everage introduced her as the “Golden Jubilee girl.” The Queen, who wore yellow earplugs, sat with Philip, the Blairs, and twenty-four members of the royal family in the VIP box for the remaining acts, which ended with Paul McCartney singing “Hey Jude.” Accompanied by her husband, Charles, William, and Harry, she joined the performers on the stage as Charles greeted his “mummy” and saluted her “50 extraordinary years,” adding, “You have embodied something vital in our lives—continuity. You have been a beacon of tradition and stability in the midst of profound, sometimes perilous, change.” The audience cheered, and the heir to the throne gave his mother a kiss.