Her Majesty (12 page)

Her own mother endured the same horror – ‘my heart stood still’ when a deranged deserter emerged from behind her curtains at Windsor Castle in the darkest days of the Second World War.

A secretive team within Scotland Yard now maintains a ‘Fixated Persons Index’ but history would suggest that it can only be of so much use. And quite apart from all the oddballs and random thugs at large, there is the list of
known
threats, such as particular terrorist organisations. Police sources admit that, just months after the fire at Windsor Castle, there were credible intelligence reports of an IRA plan to attack Buckingham Palace using mortar bombs. The Queen was informed but refused to countenance a change of strategy, let alone a temporary move.

‘The Americans or the Israelis have a completely different approach,’ says a senior royal security source. ‘They don’t do risk. Their response is to put down a lot of heavy fire. But we try to manage out the risk. And, in any case, the Royal Family want invisible protection. It’s partly because they are in what they call “the happiness business” and partly because they don’t want people moaning about how many people they have around them.’ In the late nineties, the Queen’s Private Secretary, Robert Fellowes, actually appealed to chief constables to instruct their officers to be less heavy-handed when policing royal events.

It is another variation on the royal paradox. How dare they demand all this expensive protection? But we must protect them at all costs. It certainly earns them sympathy from any politicians who have been in a similar situation. ‘I had protection for thirteen years,’ says a former Labour Cabinet Minister. ‘And while the police are great people, they’re in your space – literally. My wife was praying for the time when it was all over. But it’s a life sentence for the royals.’

The royal biographer Elizabeth Longford wrote that the Queen’s life is ‘rooted in physical and moral courage’. For royal sang-froid it is hard to match the Queen’s remark when a concrete block was dropped on her car from a Belfast tower block in less peaceful times. Shrugging her shoulders, she observed: ‘It’s a strong car.’

Much of this robust stoicism is inherited, no doubt. And much of it must have its roots in a wartime childhood during which the family lived in constant fear of German assassination and kidnap plots. The wartime correspondence of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, recently revealed in the Shawcross biography, shows a family as worried, fearful and uncertain as any other, except that they also had Winston Churchill dropping round to give them the full, bleak picture. The letters are endearingly honest, modest, sometimes funny – ‘Tinkety Tonk, old fruit. Down with the Nazis!’ – and often very moving. In a particularly touching one, as the doodlebugs start raining down on London in 1944, the Queen gives instructions to Princess Elizabeth on what to do in the event that she (her mother) is ‘done in’ – ‘Keep your temper and your word …’ Even
in her darkest moments, though, the wartime Queen never contemplates retreating to safer territory. It is an example which has been faithfully followed by her daughter.

The Queen does not like confrontation, least of all with her prime ministers. But she is prepared to quarrel over issues which involve her own safety. So when the British Government urged her not to visit Canada in 1964 because of separatist unrest, she ignored the concerns and went. In 1979, her New Zealand Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, urged her not to attend the Lusaka Commonwealth summit as the city had recently been bombed by Rhodesian planes. She ignored him, too. Most controversial was her proposed visit to Ghana in 1961. An outbreak of bombs and civil unrest during the days beforehand led to widespread concern in Britain. Many MPs and most of the media were demanding cancellation. The Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was half minded to call it off – Parliament was all for postponement – and later called it ‘the most trying week of my life’. It came close to a constitutional crisis since the Monarch is supposed to follow the Prime Minister’s advice but, in this instance, the Monarch was having none of it. The Queen was adamant. Reflecting on the episode afterwards, Macmillan wrote: ‘If she were pressed too hard and if Government and people here are determined to restrict her activities, I think she might be tempted to throw in her hand … She loves her duty and means to be a Queen and not a puppet.’ Aside from the fact that the Queen felt a certain obligation, having called off the visit two years earlier (not unreasonably, given that she was pregnant with Prince Andrew), she was also well aware of the geopolitical situation. Ghana, until recently a British colony, was being wooed by Khrushchev’s Soviet Union. Macmillan and US President John F. Kennedy were determined that its prickly dictator, Kwame Nkrumah, should remain friendly to the West. So was the Queen. As she told Macmillan: ‘How silly I should look if I was scared to visit Ghana and then Khrushchev went and had a good reception.’

In the event, the tour was a huge success. Macmillan picked up the telephone to President Kennedy and gleefully announced: ‘I have risked my Queen. You must risk your money.’ A month later, the US agreed to back the mighty Upper Volta dam scheme. The Soviet seduction of West Africa was off.

Whenever the prospect of saturation security raises itself, the Queen has been heard to reply: ‘I have to be seen to be believed.’ At a recent private lunch, her view was, as ever, rooted in practicality. ‘I’m not afraid of being killed,’ she said. ‘I just don’t want to be maimed.’

Looking through the Queen’s life, the only things which seem to have
unnerved her have been mechanical. She never liked Concorde much, using it just four times. And for many years she refused to travel by helicopter, not least because the former Captain of the Queen’s Flight, Air Commodore John Blount, was killed in one in 1963. It was not until her Silver Jubilee year of 1977 that the Queen was finally persuaded to get into one and that was only to cross part of Northern Ireland following terrorist threats on the ground. Now that the only aircraft at the permanent disposal of the Royal Family is a rented Sikorsky helicopter, she uses it regularly. In any case, she is surrounded by chopper pilots. Prince Philip learned to fly a helicopter in 1956, Prince Andrew was a helicopter pilot with the Royal Navy and both Prince William and Prince Harry have followed suit – with the RAF and the British Army respectively. The Prince of Wales has even been involved in a helicopter emergency landing (although it managed to avoid the press). ‘We were flying out of Exeter Airport at the end of an awayday,’ recalls Elizabeth Buchanan. ‘We said goodbye to the Lord-Lieutenant and we took off. I was pouring a glass of water and I noticed it was going sideways and then the pilot very calmly said that an engine had gone down and we would have to go back and make an emergency landing. I thought: “Well, maybe I’ll get a footnote as someone who died in a royal crash.” But the Prince’s main concern was that he had people coming for dinner and he knew that he would be going home by road. He just said: “Oh hell, I wanted to go round the garden before dinner.”’

At high points or low, the routine of royal life can sometimes be stifling, not that the Queen will complain. ‘In more than twenty years of working for her, I’ve never heard her say, “That was the most boring day ever” or “Gosh, that Lord Mayor was a bore,”’ says a former Private Secretary. ‘If one was unwise enough to say, “It looked as if it was heavy going at lunch, Ma’am” or something like that, she would say: “Didn’t you realise that chap’s father was the son of my father’s valet?” or something. She would have found out something that interested her. I don’t think that I ever saw her go to sleep in the middle of an engagement. I think she’s been recorded as having done it once.
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It is staggering if you think of it. I was caught sound asleep in the middle of a native dance in Canada, I remember. I’d gone the whole way. It’s self-discipline if you want to sum it up.’

The Queen would be inhuman if she did not find that some of her encounters bordered on the narcoleptic. But, as Prince Philip has observed: ‘The Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.’ She
also has the ability to absorb the tiniest details from the most mundane situation. As Sir Malcolm Ross observes: ‘It’s one of the amazing skills she has. She’d come out of an investiture and say: “Did you see the man in the red socks?” And I’d think: “How did she see him?” She came out once and said to me: “Why was there an extra director of music in the gallery?” The man was hardly showing because he was sitting down. He was a new bandmaster and wanted to see the ropes. But she’d missed nothing despite having 120 people to concentrate on.’

The eye for detail keeps everyone on their toes. Ron Allison says that the Queen would sometimes help him do his own job. During one church service she spotted a rogue photographer creeping into a spot where he should not have been. With little more than a raised eyebrow and a slight jerk of the head, she caught Allison’s eye and directed him to the miscreant.

Just as she will find something unusual in the most formulaic situations, so the Queen loves the unexpected. ‘As a diplomat, you’re always worrying that something will go wrong,’ says Lord Hurd. ‘But you don’t realise that the Royal Family lead such curious lives that they’re longing for something to go wrong. That’s the late-night conversation: “Did you see that chap with his shirt undone? Did you see the man on the left fall over?” …’

But while the Queen enjoys the occasional unscripted glitch, she is also sensitive to the embarrassment of others. If someone makes an innocent mistake, however glaring, she would rather press on than dwell on it. There was an excruciating moment in May 2011 when President Barack Obama raised a toast to the Queen at the end of his state banquet speech but then carried on speaking. By now the orchestra of the Scots Guards had already started playing the National Anthem and it was too late for either of them to stop. When both had finished, the Queen simply turned to her guest and said: ‘That was very kind.’

On arriving at an engagement in Lanarkshire, she noticed that her then Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Clydesmuir, was having considerable trouble extracting both himself and his sword from the official car to do the introductions. The Queen cut through this intractable ceremonial impasse by marching up to the greeting line, hand outstretched, with the words: ‘My Lord-Lieutenant appears to be having difficulty in getting out of the car, so I’d better introduce myself. I’m the Queen.’

During their Downing Street years, John and Norma Major held a dinner to mark the eightieth birthday of Sir Edward Heath. ‘The Queen came and Ted fell asleep between Norma and the Queen,’ says Major fondly. ‘I remember saying to Her Majesty: “Ted’s fallen asleep.” And
she said: “I know, but don’t worry. He’ll wake up soon.” And he did. And the Queen just merrily went on chatting to him.’

Throughout her reign, there have been complaints that the Queen does not smile enough. Lady Pamela Mountbatten, royal cousin and former Lady-in-Waiting, has pointed out that if the Queen smiled for all of the people all of the time, she would have developed a twitch by now.

Edward Mirzoeff, who spent most of 1991 filming her at close quarters, says that the Queen’s mood – and her smile – depends on the feedback she is getting from those she meets. ‘There were good days when she would get a good response and everything would flow,’ he recalls. ‘But there were days when people would be overcome by the moment and it would dry up. On a good day, she scintillates and she is aware of that – and she likes it when that gets captured on camera.’

‘The Queen is absolutely exhilarating, you know,’ says a regular royal guest. ‘That po face hides an acute intelligence and sense of humour.’

There was nothing sycophantic about the laughter when she addressed the leaving party for her former Private Secretary Sir Robert (now Lord) Fellowes. ‘Robert is the only one of my private secretaries I have held in my arms,’ she declared (Fellowes is her godson). The Queen loves dry asides, like the one from another Private Secretary, Sir William Heseltine. As she cleared up after lunch in a Balmoral log cabin, he prompted much royal mirth by remarking: ‘Queen Elizabeth swept here …’

On occasions, her problem can be containing her mirth rather than exhibiting it. A visit to Trinity College, Oxford, earlier in the reign went magnificently askew when the Lord-Lieutenant, the Earl of Macclesfield, fainted during lunch, followed swiftly by his wife, who thought he had died. As Miles Jebb recounts in his history of the Lord-Lieutenants, a college servant tripped over in the confusion, dropping a tray of drinks. Summoning up Herculean reserves of composure at the end, the Queen remarked: ‘We’ve had a wonderful lunch. Bodies all over the place!’

Sometimes, it’s an innocent phrase which has the Monarch chuckling all the way home, such as the remark from a mayor of Dover as he was showing her some ancient regalia in a glass case. ‘When do you wear it?’ she asked. ‘Only on special occasions,’ he replied. Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, was accompanying the Queen to Stirling Castle during his days as Secretary of State for Scotland. ‘There’d been this restoration work going on and she asked the foreman: “When will this all be complete?” Back came the reply: “It won’t be in your time, Ma’am.” She dined out on that!’

A piece of well-judged humour can go a long way. It is the
time-honoured duty of a senior government whip, always known as the Vice-Chamberlain of Her Majesty’s Household, to write what is known as a ‘message’. It’s a daily account of the day’s proceedings in the House of Commons written for an illustrious readership of one – the Sovereign. During John Major’s Conservative administration in the mid-nineties, the task fell to Sydney Chapman, MP for Chipping Barnet.
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As the Tory party’s ‘Back to Basics’ morality crusade foundered on a succession of personal scandals, the MP found himself lost for appropriate words one day. ‘It was a very quiet day in Parliament,’ says Chapman. ‘There were all these scandals going on so I composed this message, in the traditional third person way, saying that even Her Majesty’s Vice-Chamberlain had dreamed that he himself was involved in a scandal and had been caught writing secret notes to a married lady of great importance living in a large house. I thought I might have overstepped the mark. But it obviously went down all right because I later got a very nice call from someone at the Palace saying: “Everyone here wishes they were Sydney Chapman right now.”’ It clearly didn’t do him any harm. When he finally stepped down from the job, he had the unusual distinction of being offered an instant knighthood.