Elizabeth the Queen (70 page)

Brown said he relied on the Queen’s knowing “what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes you go back and change a bit of your speech.” But he especially valued her sense of humor and how “she’ll be talking about things that make both her and me laugh.” When the Queen was with friends, he sometimes was the target of that humor; her talent for mimicry and years of listening to Scottish brogue enabled her to render a spot-on imitation of her new prime minister. Brown’s visits to Balmoral, said Margaret Rhodes, “brought a certain amount of heavy weather.”

E
LIZABETH AND
P
HILIP
hit another milestone on November 20, 2007, as the first Queen and consort to celebrate sixty years of marriage. “With the absence of her mother and sister, the Duke of Edinburgh has been her emotional touchstone,” said one of the Queen’s senior advisers. When he was away, staying at Wood Farm on a shooting weekend at Sandringham, for example, he would ring her up every day. “They are not physically demonstrative, but they have a strong connection,” said another courtier. “She still lights up when he walks into the room. She becomes softer, lighter, and happier.”

Their religious bond deepened as well. Her unwavering faith was ingrained from childhood, while Philip’s meandered from the Greek Orthodox beliefs of his parents through his confirmation as an Anglican to his probing of theological and interfaith issues. “His approach is much more restless than the Queen, more focused on the intellectual side,” said George Carey. “He is searching, and he has been a bridge builder, putting faiths together. He has more time to do that, and the Queen stands back and lets him.”

Yet Elizabeth II and Philip, according to their cousin Pamela Hicks, are “not a sweet old Darby and Joan by any means. They’re both
very
strong characters.” One point of disagreement concerned the press. “I don’t read the tabloids,” Philip sputtered to Jeremy Paxman, the BBC’s grand inquisitor, in 2006. “I glance at one [broadsheet]. I reckon one’s enough. I can’t cope with them. But the Queen reads every bloody paper she can lay her hands on!”

After Philip took one too many spills in his competitive carriage driving, Elizabeth II put her foot down and insisted that he stop, although he continued to drive for pleasure. On other matters, she simply avoided confrontation. When her husband’s dressing room at Sandringham needed to be repainted, “on Her Majesty’s instruction we had to match the dirty paintwork so he wouldn’t know,” said Tony Parnell, for more than three decades the foreman responsible for looking after the house. “I don’t think he ever knew.”

Elizabeth II gave Philip the latitude to experiment in his supervision of her estates. At Sandringham he created a truffière, an orchard designed to produce organic truffles, in addition to breeding French partridges (“incredibly stupid birds,” he said) and growing fruits for the production of apple juice and black currant cordial. He was responsible for their private art collection, buying at shows in Edinburgh, where he had an eye for up-and-coming artists, and hanging the paintings himself in their private apartments. The Queen, however, continued to supervise the decor in their private homes. “Her taste was very modest in terms of decoration and fabrics,” recalled Tony Parnell. “It was almost replacing like for like.”

Philip frequently rode through London inconspicuously in his own Metrocab, sometimes taking the wheel himself. Once he drove his taxi to a dinner with friends at a modest flat on the edge of Belgravia belonging to Jane Westmorland, widow of the 15th Earl. “He wore a cap like a taxi driver and the detective sat in the back seat,” recalled Frolic Weymouth. “He drove around and around in the circle out front to show us how easily the cab could turn.”

When they were together in public, Philip could still cause his wife anxiety with his unpredictable comments within earshot of the press. Labour MP Chris Mullin recalled a time in 2003 when the Queen was attending the Commonwealth conference in Nigeria. After an official read a statement at the opening of the new British Council offices in Abuja, Philip huffed, “That speech contained more jargon per square inch than any I’ve heard for a long time.” He then turned to a group of women and asked if they were teachers. They replied that their job was to “empower” people. “
Empower
?” he boomed. “Doesn’t sound like English to me!” As Mullin recorded in his diary, “By now the Queen, noticing that trouble is brewing, has turned and is pointing vaguely over the balcony. ‘Look …’ The Duke, stopping mid-sentence, retreats instantly to her side, somewhat bemused. ‘… at the pottery.’ When they have gone, I go and look. I see no pottery.”

At the Queen’s request, the celebrations of their diamond wedding anniversary were muted and family-oriented. The couple visited Broadlands on Sunday, November 18, and spent time searching for a tree where they were photographed during their honeymoon. The Queen appeared in the same double strand of pearls and sapphire brooch ringed with diamonds that she had worn six decades earlier. For their official anniversary photograph on the grounds of the Mountbatten estate, Elizabeth II and Philip re-created a nearly identical pose—her right hand tucked into his left elbow as they smiled at each other. He looked less jaunty, but the warmth of her gaze was remarkably similar. That evening, Charles and Camilla hosted a black-tie family dinner party at Clarence House.

The next day the Queen and Philip attended a commemoration at Westminster Abbey, where Prince William’s reading from the Book of John included the line “Let us love one another because love is from God.” Judi Dench recited verse composed by poet laureate Andrew Motion that commended “a life where duty spoke in languages their tenderness could share, a life remote from ours because it asked each day, each action to be kept in view.”

The royal couple flew to Malta on the 20th for a sentimental journey to the island where they had enjoyed unencumbered happiness and a brief spell of normality as a young married couple. A month later they received a belated anniversary gift with the birth of their eighth grandchild, James Alexander Philip Theo Wessex. As they had with his older sister, Edward and Sophie decided their son would not be known as a Royal Highness, enabling both of the children to pursue a life outside the royal orbit.

T
HROUGHOUT THE CELEBRATIONS
, Elizabeth II and Philip were keeping a secret: their twenty-three-year-old grandson, Prince Harry, a second lieutenant in the Household Cavalry regiment of the Blues and Royals, was about to be sent to Helmand Province in Afghanistan for a seven-month deployment. Since the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, Elizabeth II had received regular updates from top officials in the military and Foreign Office, so she was well aware of the treacherous combat conditions facing the British military in both places.

Her role as the head of armed forces is one of her most sacrosanct duties. With her hierarchies, rituals, traditions, and clothing created with a military-style sense of occasion, she is a soldier at heart. Members of the military are acutely aware that they are fighting for Queen and Country. “The royal family has pride and joy in the military,” said General Charles Guthrie, Baron Guthrie of Craigiebank, who was the chief of the Defence staff from 1997 to 2001. “Come hell or high water, the military is loyal to the Queen, who is their commander in chief.”

Since her days with the garrison at Windsor Castle during World War II and her brief service in uniform with the Auxiliary Territorial Service, she has taken a keen personal interest in military matters, meeting informally with the top brass over lunch and dinner as well as in audiences. She visibly relaxes in the company of soldiers, not thinking twice about walking into a battalion of a thousand men. Once she helpfully sent a commander a photograph from a magazine showing a piebald shire stallion she considered suitable for service as a drum horse for the Household Cavalry.

Her knowledge of military traditions and practices is encyclopedic, as officers serving her quickly learn. When Johnny Martin-Smith, a lieutenant on guard duty at Windsor Castle, was invited to dinner with the Queen, she turned to him and said, “Do the Welsh Guards have new uniform requirements? Are red socks allowed?” She had been looking out the window that day at a Welsh Guards soldier setting up a bandstand who had worn red instead of regulation green socks.

“The Queen has an eagle eye, possibly better than 15 eagles,” said a Palace courtier. After her annual birthday parade, she gives her critique to senior officers, sometimes asking why a soldier was standing several feet out of position or moving his fingers on his rifle. “I hope that man who cut his hand is going to be all right,” she said one year to the officer in charge. A soldier in the front row had cut himself on his bayonet and nobody else had noticed except the Queen, who had been standing at some distance. “Cut himself, ma’am?” replied the officer. “Yes,” said the Queen, “the one in the middle, the 3rd or 4th man.”

The Queen “wouldn’t read a three-volume history of Afghanistan,” said Charles Guthrie, who met with her frequently. But through her briefings by officers and meetings with soldiers returning from the front lines, along with reading her boxes and newspapers and watching reports on television, her knowledge is impressively up to date. “You could tell her what you thought,” said Guthrie. “You could be critical of government, and she would listen. She would not comment. She would not get into gossip. She would question on certain things that were topical, but it wasn’t an interrogation. It was a conversation. She absolutely understands her constitutional prerogatives and does not stray into areas that could be unconstitutional. She doesn’t try to run the army.”

When the Labour government consolidated many of the army’s historic regiments in 2006 to cut costs, she made inquiries but stayed out of the debate. “She knew we had too many regiments,” said senior Blair adviser Jonathan Powell. “She was concerned, but she was not a lobbyist pushing an agenda.” Speaking to one of the army chiefs, however, she couldn’t conceal her sadness when the venerable Black Watch was merged with five other regiments to become a battalion within the new Royal Regiment of Scotland. The Queen Mother had been colonel-in-chief of the Black Watch for sixty-five years, and three of her brothers, including one who died in battle during World War I, had served in the regiment.

The Queen fully supported the decisions by William and Harry to enter the military. “It is a traditional thing to do, a good thing to do,” explained Charles Guthrie, who discussed it with her. “It teaches a lot about leadership. It mixes up royals with different examples of society, people from poor backgrounds, which is helpful and certainly very good.” Choosing the army rather than the navy, where the princes’ father, uncle, and grandfather had served, reflected the practical reality of modern warfare and the decline of Britain’s importance as a naval power. The military gave William and Harry jobs that kept them away from the limelight—and the press.

The imposition of discipline in the context of regimental camaraderie was particularly good for Harry, whose high spirits threatened to turn him into a scapegrace. He got caught using marijuana when he was seventeen, prompting his father to march him off to visit a drug rehabilitation center and listen to recovering addicts. There were other unfortunate incidents involving the third in line to the throne—sightings of drunkenness at London clubs and at a costume party where Harry wore a swastika armband. Because of his red hair and freckles, it had long been rumored that his father was James Hewitt—despite the well-documented fact that Diana didn’t meet the cavalry officer until after Harry was born. While Diana strongly resembled her maternal grandmother, Ruth Fermoy, she scarcely looked like her father’s side of the family. Harry, however, inherited the ginger looks of the Spencers.

It was first proposed early in 2007 that Harry be posted to Iraq. He was determined to serve with his regiment, but when publicity about the prospect led to terrorist threats against him, Army Chief of Staff Sir Richard Dannatt vetoed his participation. The Queen had favored his deployment, and she helped talk Harry through his frustration. She supported his resolution to “turn to the right and carry on,” he recalled.

When the Blues and Royals regiment was called to Afghanistan later in the year, Dannatt consulted with Gordon Brown, the Prince of Wales, and the Queen. They decided to deploy Harry under an embargo reached with selected news organizations that agreed to publicize the details of his experience once he had returned safely to Britain. As with her decision to back Andrew twenty-five years earlier, the Queen didn’t hesitate. She broke the news to her grandson in December on a weekend at Windsor Castle. “I think she’s relieved that I get the chance to do what I want to do,” he said at the time. “She’s a very good person to talk to about it.”

From his arrival only days before Christmas, Harry served on the front lines at a forward operating base under regular fire from machine guns, snipers, rockets, and mortars. He called in air strikes and routinely went out on foot patrol through dangerous Taliban-held terrain. As a troop leader responsible for eleven soldiers doing reconnaissance work, he was undeniably in danger. At the same time, he was “‘mucking in’ with every other soldier, cooking his own rations, taking his turn making brews for himself and his mates, cleaning his rifle and equipment,” wrote Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan.

The secret of his deployment held for ten weeks, until an Australian magazine and a German newspaper broke the blackout, and an American website, the Drudge Report, picked up the news. The Ministry of Defence withdrew Harry from Helmand, at least in part to ensure the safety of his battle group. Before leaving, the prince said, “All my wishes have come true. I managed to get the job done.” He was also grateful, he said, because “it’s very nice to be sort of a normal person for once. I think it’s about as normal as I’m going to get.”

T
HE FINAL MONTHS
of 2007 marked the appearance of another work of fiction that captured the public imagination about the Queen. In
The Uncommon Reader
, Alan Bennett’s fictionalized Elizabeth II discovers a passion for reading—an opsimath, she calls herself, delighted to find a word describing a tate-blooming learner. She neglects her official chores as she breezes through an eclectic canon including Mitford, Austen, Balzac, Pepys, Byatt, McEwan, Roth, and even the memoirs of Lauren Bacall, whose life she envies for having “had a much better bite at the carrot.” The Queen confuses those she meets by asking about their reading habits, throws her courtiers and her family into a state of high alarm, and eventually decides to take up writing and redeem her life “by analysis and reflection.”