Her Majesty (61 page)

Whatever the answer, it is emphatically one for Parliament, not the Supreme Governor, to resolve. The Queen’s clear view is that her own Church should be a broad and inclusive one. She studiously avoids overt opinions on schismatic issues like gay clergy. George V or George VI would probably have had robust views on such matters, but the Queen would appear to be more open-minded. ‘I don’t think there’s any hint of her, say, being uncomfortable with women priests,’ says the Archbishop. ‘The fact that there are female royal chaplains is not insignificant. I would guess her feeling is: “The world’s changing. Never mind what I might feel about this. It’s important that these things be affirmed as positive changes.”’

It’s another example of the Queen leading by gesture rather than command.

One of the most colourful, sacred rituals in the Queen’s calendar is one which, to a considerable extent, she has reinvented herself. Royal Maundy attracts less attention than it used to. The BBC gave up regular television and radio broadcasts years ago (although the event did return to the screen in 2011 as a royal wedding warm-up). For many of her staff, though, Royal Maundy remains the most enjoyable ritual of the entire royal year. It dates back at least as far as the thirteenth century when King John is known to have washed the feet of the poor and given them gifts of food and clothing on Maundy Thursday – the day before Good Friday. Through the centuries, sovereigns would take part in this homage to the story of Christ’s Last Supper. They gave up foot-washing post-James II and, by the mid-eighteenth century, they had stopped turning up altogether. The task of handing out charity – a token sum of money – was left to whichever bishop happened to hold the title of Lord High Almoner.

By Victorian times, the recipients were not ‘the poor’ so much as public-spirited members of the local community. It’s always been equal numbers of men and women, the numbers rising each year to match the Monarch’s age. In 1932, George V revived the practice of attending in person and royal appearances became semi-regular from then on. But it
was the Queen who gave the ceremony a vigorous new impetus. Royal Maundy was her first public engagement after the death of her father. She’d cancelled everything else but this event seemed appropriate. Then she had the idea of moving the ceremony out of Westminster Abbey and taking it to the country, choosing a different cathedral every year (it returns to the Abbey every tenth year, as it did in 2011). There are now just a handful of cathedrals which have not had the pleasure. And the event grows larger with each passing year.

‘The thing I most enjoyed during my time was the Royal Maundy. It’s magical,’ says a retired Private Secretary. ‘It encapsulates what’s best about the monarchy. You are walking through a great cathedral as the choir and congregation are singing and the Queen is performing a ritual which goes back for ever and which is giving a huge amount of pleasure to vast numbers of people. It’s about as good an experience as you can get. If you had to sum up what the monarchy’s about, that’s it.’ Even by royal standards, there are few events so laden with symbolism. This is an event which brings out some of the most exotic specimens in the royal firmament, some of whom are only seen at this one occasion each year. They are all paid the unprincely sum of 10p in Maundy coins for their troubles.

They are also expected to assemble a day ahead of the grand ceremony to rehearse. On this occasion, Derby Cathedral has been chosen. It’s a pretty sixteenth-century church which only became a cathedral in 1927 but has the oldest bells in the land. It is not large. There are so many officials involved in this ceremony that the procession is actually longer than the cathedral and will have to wind its way up the side aisles. The present Lord High Almoner is the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester. His appointment was the usual blend of enigma and lunch: ‘In 1997, I got a call from the Queen’s Private Secretary saying that the Queen would like to hear me preach. “Would any of these dates be suitable? If not, would some other time be better?” It was a case of “There’s no getting out of this one, mate.” So I went to preach at All Saints in Windsor Great Park and then we had lunch at Windsor Castle. Nothing was said whatsoever about Almonry. Then the next day I got a call from the Private Secretary saying the Queen would like me to be the next Lord High Almoner.’ As a result, he is in charge of the Royal Almonry, one of the most ancient and arcane backwaters of the Royal Household. Pulling it all together is Paul Leddington Wright, Secretary of the Royal Almonry, a conductor by profession but a man devoted to an honorary task which his father performed before him.

The event makes a Gilbert & Sullivan opera look underdressed. Local
school children will serve as the Children of the Royal Almonry, draped in ancient linen towels to symbolise the washing of feet. The Yeomen of the Guard will be in attendance carrying the Maundy money in little leather purses piled high on trays of gold. The Clerk of the Cheque and the Keeper of the Closet will be on parade. The Maundy Wands have to be removed from their cupboard at Buckingham Palace for the Wandsmen, half a dozen men in morning coats whose original job was to stop Maundy paupers being mugged for their money. Since this year’s Maundy money will be worth £6.34, there are unlikely to be muggings. The Wandsmen are led by Leddington Wright’s brother, Andrew, a human resources director. It’s a family affair. Paul’s wife, Sheila, is in the basement of a nearby hotel helping Rosemary Hughes produce a dozen nosegays, bunches of flowers and herbs traditionally used to ward off bad smells in medieval times. The Queen and the main players will each carry one. Hughes runs a floral design business in Leicester but, once a year, earns her Royal Warrant as ‘Her Majesty’s Supplier of Nosegays’. There will be no bad smells to offend the royal nostrils in Derby but, even so, each nosegay is a complex blend (Hughes calls it a ‘recipe’) of seasonal flowers and herbs including thyme, rosemary, hebe and purple statice. Each has a hand-sewn cotton sleeve attached to the base and Hughes is always up at 6 a.m. to add primroses. ‘Everything has to be fresh,’ she says, stifling a sneeze. It turns out that she is allergic to a key ingredient of her own recipe – daffodils.

Inside Derby Cathedral, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Ford, the Comptroller, maps out every inch of the Queen’s progress. She needs a seat for the signing of the visitors’ book so he earmarks a rather finelooking chair. There is a flap. A cathedral official rushes to intervene. ‘Not that one,’ says the official. ‘The Bishop says Queen Victoria sat on it.’ Quite why Queen Elizabeth II shouldn’t sit on it, too, is a mystery. But Ford relents. ‘I have learned it’s never worth arguing with a Bishop at the Royal Maundy.’ These are nervous moments for the Crown Jeweller, Harry Collins. He spends most of his life running the family jewellery shop in Tunbridge Wells but, since being appointed Crown Jeweller in 2007, he now attends all events where the Crown Jewels are in use. Unlike, say, the State Opening of Parliament, there are no crowns or sceptres at this event but Royal Maundy still involves some of the ‘Regalia’, including priceless gold platters like the Maundy Dish. Collins has just made an unpopular decision. For centuries, the Yeomen of the Guard have processed with the Maundy money on their heads, but the dishes get heavier each year because the number of recipients increases to match the Monarch’s age. Each recipient is given £5.50 in commemorative coins in a red purse for
‘provisions’ plus a white purse containing Maundy coins equivalent to the Monarch’s years. Collins has decided that the weight of it all has now reached a tipping point. The old soldiers of the Yeomen of the Guard, he has reluctantly concluded, must stop carrying the dishes on their heads and hold them in their hands before someone has an accident. ‘It’s too much strain for the dishes, for the Yeomen and for their hats,’ he says. Some traditionalists will be cross. What is the world coming to if a Yeoman cannot put a gold platter of Maundy money on his head?

A large crowd has gathered outside the cathedral several hours before the Queen’s arrival. Margaret Kittle, seventy-five, has flown from Ontario, Canada, to watch. Inside, there are eighty-four men and eighty-four women – all over the age of seventy – waiting to receive alms from the Queen. May Brindley, eighty-seven, a lay Methodist preacher, says she thought it was an early April Fool when she received a letter. ‘I’m not a raving royalist but it’s such an honour that I can’t explain it,’ she says. Jennifer Haynes, seventy-five, a stalwart of her parish council, has no idea why she has been chosen. But she has already been invited to address both the local Mothers’ Union and the Pensioners’ Club about her experiences. By such means do royal ripples spread across a county. And the
Derby Evening Telegraph
is already preparing a sumptuous souvenir issue.

The Queen, in a powder-blue Karl Ludwig coat, is thrilled to receive her nosegay at the West Door, the Duke of Edinburgh less so. This is the one event of the year where he has to walk around holding a bunch of flowers. He grasps his bouquet manfully, as if holding a torch. He reads a lesson, as he always does. The music is much the same, too, from one year to the next. The Queen barely looks at her order of service. As with the Commonwealth Observance, she knows it all backwards. She knows that she will be distributing alms to the sound of Handel’s
Zadok the Priest
. Her face lights up as she moves down the lines of recipients, reconnecting with monarchs from eight hundred years ago. Some people are too infirm to stand. No one is obliged to bow or curtsey but most have a go. There are brief chats but the purpose is largely symbolic and religious, the gesture as important to the giver as to the receiver. ‘For all its pageantry, Royal Maundy has never failed to come over as an act of worship,’ says the Lord High Almoner. ‘It’s often said that, for the Queen, it’s one of the highlights of her year and I believe it is. It’s unique because it’s an occasion when she goes to the people to give honours. Usually people go to her to receive an honour.’

Another way to glimpse the Queen’s true values, Christian and otherwise, is through her own philanthropy. Her patronage of charities and organisations extends to more than six hundred different institutions and her reign
has seen a marked renaissance in the charitable sector. Inevitably, as the Sovereign, she must be less hands-on than other members of the Royal Family. But she can still donate. Most of her own giving is done discreetly through two vehicles, the Privy Purse Charitable Trust and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Trust. Both are run by her most senior officials, with close personal input from the Queen herself. With £35 million in the pot, the Silver Jubilee Trust is much the largest and was formed with a mandate to help young people. As such, it gives most of its annual grants – which currently run at around £1.3 million – straight to the Prince’s Trust.

There are also several other grants, some less predictable than others. The Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council usually gets several thousand pounds each year. But in 2010 there was suddenly £10,000 for a prison campaign against alcohol abuse. The royal sense of charity extends to the board of trustees. They include Sir Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Pilloried by most of the world since the collapse of his bank in 2008, he had previously been a key supporter of several royal charities. He stepped down as chairman of the Prince’s Trust Council in 2009 but has remained on the board of the Silver Jubilee Trust (although, perhaps for reasons of diplomacy, it is omitted from his entry in
Who’s Who
). The Queen knew him, had received him as a guest and saw no reason why a man who had given long service to royal charities should not continue to do so. He remains on the board.

Quirkier and more personal is the Privy Purse Charitable Trust which receives a steady income from visitors to Queen Mary’s Dolls House at Windsor. It hands out around £300,000 a year across a very wide range. There might be a £50 cheque to Dersingham Cricket Club on the Sandringham Estate or the Friends of Orkney Boat Museum. On a typical morning in 2010, the Keeper of the Privy Purse received a personal memo from the Queen suggesting a donation to a nursing fund in memory of Florence Nightingale. ‘I think this is a very worthwhile cause,’ the Queen wrote. ‘I think we gave something ten years ago.’ Sure enough, she had. ‘She’s got a phenomenal memory which keeps us all on our toes,’ says Sir Alan Reid. Soon afterwards, the nurses received several hundred pounds.

A contribution from the Monarch is not measured solely in financial terms. A charity which can say that it has received a contribution from the Queen will often find it easier to elicit donations from others. As Frank Prochaska has pointed out, a £500 donation by Queen Victoria to the Indian Famine Fund in 1897 kick-started a campaign which yielded the stupendous sum of £2 million. Our Queen will often make one-off payments to urgent causes – a £10,000 donation, say, to victims of the London bombings in 2005. But the overwhelming slice of this particular
pie – two-thirds in a normal year – is directed in just one direction. It goes to the maintenance of royal chapels, choirs and cathedrals.

No religious service, however, is as sacred to the Queen as the one which happens in the middle of the road in London on the second Sunday of November. The Queen’s involvement at the Cenotaph every Remembrance Sunday is brief, wordless and unchanging. This really is a piece of the monarchy which needs no tinkering or judicious adaptation whatsoever. As the years advance and the Queen stands out as the last head of state to wear uniform in the Second World War – the last to know the fear, the spirit, even the songs of that generation – her position at the head of the nation and the Commonwealth becomes ever more poignant at this event. Through wars and National Service, most families in Britain have some lineal connection with the Forces, quite possibly a name on a war grave, too. But Britain is a civilian land now. Yet the Windsors remain very much a Forces family. Of all her headships, the Head of the Armed Forces has a bond with her men and women which goes way beyond the constitutional to the deeply personal. From the moment the Queen became Colonel of the Grenadier Guards at sixteen, she has been fluent in the culture and mindset of the Services in a way which few politicians can ever hope to be. ‘We’ve managed to get a good balance in this country,’ says David Cameron. ‘There is political control of the military, and yet, as Prime Minister, you’re not Commander-in-Chief. You’re somewhere in between and that’s not a bad thing.’