On Duty With the Queen: My Time as a Buckingham Palace Press Secretary (5 page)

At 4:45am we roared into London’s Heathrow Airport in the lap of luxury. With cars awaiting our arrival on the apron, the Princess was whisked off to Kensington Palace, getting her home with plenty of time to spare before her boys woke up.

M
y first year in the Royal Household flew by in a haze of activity. We arranged every tour schedule two to three months in advance, which required a lot of pre-tour organization and administration, as well as two roundtrips to each country – once for the recce, and then again two months later for the tour itself.

Following Diana’s solo trip to New York, we had two further overseas tours, this time involving both Charles and Diana. By the end of that year, I had notched up seven overseas trips, travelling once to New York and twice to the Gulf, Indonesia and Hong Kong respectively. I was in my element, though my suitcase was taking a battering.

May 1957 saw the beginning of my adventure to the African continent, and the beginning of a wanderlust that I never relinquished. My mother, then 36, and I set off by train from London’s Waterloo station, she looking glamorous
in a sharp tailored skirt suit, and I in grey flannels, blazer and tie. In those days one always dressed formally when travelling; T-shirts and trainers were not yet in fashion and as such were strictly reserved for the playing fields.

I had resigned myself to departing England’s shores for a life on a continent that seemed a million miles away. Being 16, I was excited by the adventure of it all, which helped quell my natural teenage anxieties.

Over the course of almost three weeks our journey would take us around the coast of Africa to Durban, but I was perplexed by a number of questions: What did one do at sea for all that time? Was there entertainment? Would there be anyone else my age, and uppermost in my mind, would there be girls on board? The issue of quite what I was going to do once we arrived in Rhodesia didn’t even enter my thinking; all I could see was three weeks of playtime ahead, and I fully intended to make the most of it.

The train took us to Southampton, a bustling seaport with ships of every conceivable size from all over the world loading and unloading their cargo. There were ocean-going liners awaiting passengers, civil servants heading off to colonial postings and migrants setting off to begin a new life on distant shores. It was a different era – a time in which Great Britain still had her colonies and exported not only goods, but also people. Those emigrating represented a chance to live a different kind of life in decidedly less inclement surroundings. Ocean cruising simply for the sake of a luxury vacation would not become mainstream for several years.

My mother and I fell into the migrant category,
travelling aboard the Union-Castle Line’s
Athlone Castle
– a modest ship of a little under 26,000 tonnes – to begin our new life in Southern Rhodesia. The journey from Southampton to Cape Town took 13 days, but it was not our final port of disembarkation. We still had to sail an additional four days around the Cape, stopping off at Port Elizabeth and East London before reaching our destination, Durban.

The journey was not without incident. We sailed through the infamous Cape Rollers – waves that can reach dizzying heights in excess of 40 feet. For a ship with no stabilizers, it left nothing to the imagination as we rocked and rolled on the high seas.

Otherwise life on board was fairly soporific. An endless round of sunbathing, eating and drinking by day, followed by nights that involved more of the same, with the only difference being that dancing replaced sunbathing. As we neared Cape Town, the end of the line for some, there was a final flurry of excitement when it was announced that there would be a last night fancy dress party.

In contrast to the generally low-key approach to leisure time, which had prevailed up until that point, there was suddenly an outpouring of competitive creative genius. Everyone was keen to impress, and the talk turned to whom would come dressed as what.

My mother had made several firm friends while onboard, not difficult to do as a glamorous single woman, and certainly not within the close confines of a ship at sea. She had chosen her friendships wisely, for on the evening of the party three imaginative young men in her group
appeared with some handy props in the form of what was apparently the ship’s entire stock of black crepe paper with which they fashioned some show-stopping costumes. The three men dressed as nuns; I borrowed a cabin steward’s tunic, and my mother appeared in a short negligee, a bra and five pairs of panties.

There was a method to this madness. As a steward I carried a tray on which were set bottles of gin and tonic and a propped-up envelope reading ‘ship’s issue’. Together we had entered the competition as ‘the captain’s nightcap,’ and although we didn’t win first prize, we certainly raised a few laughs – not least from the captain, who was one of the judges.

That night wasn’t just an introduction into the ways in which adults make their own entertainment at sea. It was also the occasion of my first proper drink. At 16½ I had tried a thimbleful of watered-down wine many times, but I had never had a proper adult-sized drink. Bobbing around somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean with land a million miles away, I threw caution to the wind and accepted my first beer. I didn’t particularly like it but, with no duty to pay, at least it was cheap. Where the gin and tonic ended up I have no idea.

They say all good things must come to an end. Any notion I might have had that this would be something of an extended holiday was sadly and quickly disabused.

Having taken no exams, I had no qualifications, and therefore immediately became the subject of intense family discussions. A path was set for me. I would commence an
apprenticeship, and spend the next five years training to be an electrician. I had no say in the matter. It had all been arranged. My mother’s Uncle Walter had used one of his contacts to get me a job in what was the country’s largest electrical engineering firm. He took me for an interview with the owner and the foreman under whom I would be working. I was shown around the factory – a blur of grease, oil, loud noise and stares at the skinny Englishman. I was told to report the next day at 8am sharp.

Although I began my apprenticeship within days of arriving in Bulawayo, I found it incredibly difficult to establish friendships there. I was 17, and had not been schooled there, so meeting people wasn’t easy. I joined Queens Sports Club and tried playing football, but with winter daytime temperatures of 25ºC, I soon realised it was not for me, and despite the heat, cricket was not played during the winter months. Life in 1950s Rhodesia revolved around work, sport, the club bar and home. Adjusting to my new existence was very challenging and, tragically, five months after we arrived, Uncle Walter died. He had been rushed to hospital with suspected appendicitis. Two days after his operation, he collapsed in the bathroom and died of a massive heart attack. My mother was devastated, having shared so little time with him since their parting in Germany in 1934.

My saving grace during those trying times came in the form of a newspaper advertisement announcing auditions for an upcoming production of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical,
Oklahoma!
I was offered a place in the chorus. The only downside to the amateur production
was the ten week rehearsal period for only one week of performance. I was crushed when the final curtain fell.

There was one major aspect to living in Southern Rhodesia that had never been explained to me. The country was just one of the three that made up the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland – Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Nyasaland (now Malawi) and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). All were under the umbrella of the federal government, with a governor in each of the three countries and a governor general overseeing all of them. It was one of those ‘blue sky’ ideas cooked up by the Colonial Office in London in 1950. It was doomed to failure and lasted precisely ten years from 1953 to 1963.

If the idea of a federation with so many governors was confusing to an outsider, then the idea of Southern Rhodesia – the only country within the federation to have had its own internal self-government and parliament since 1923 – was even more confusing. It’s no wonder there were undercurrents of unrest amongst the indigenous population.

Social unrest requires government action and as a result, every white male over the age of 18 who had completed his education was required to do national service. A university course was the only exemption, and even that was temporary. Conscientious objectors were recommended to do their national service or conscientiously object from the inside of a prison cell.

This left me in a dispiriting situation. I had just left the United Kingdom, where national service was being phased
out. Had I stayed, given my age, I would have escaped it. Now I had arrived in a country which for a period of time required me to do national service.

I have always believed that if one is required to do something and has no choice in the matter, then the best thing to do is to make the most of it and enjoy it. I don’t doubt that my early experience at boarding school informed my way of thinking, but when it came to tough regimes – and national service in Rhodesia was certainly that – I already had the mental tools to cope.

Llewellyn Barracks, 12 miles north of Bulawayo, had previously been an RAF (Royal Air Force) pilot training camp during World War II, so it already had the infrastructure for military training. It was here that I went to do my army training with the Royal Rhodesia Regiment in the winter of 1959. Despite this being Africa, it really felt like winter, with nighttime temperatures dropping well below freezing. When I arrived the camp was undergoing renovation, which meant that none of the barracks had heating or hot water. Each day dawned with the rude awakening of a cold shower.

Things didn’t improve much after that. There was little time off in the army. The daily routine of weapons training, drill and PT (Physical Training) saw to that. The staff instructors always took a sadistic delight in finding something for us to do. Often this something stretched well into the night. Top of their to-do list was a full kit inspection in which everything had to be laid out perfectly on our beds. Even if you thought it was correct (and it generally was), they invariably didn’t think so, and
revealed their displeasure by tossing over your bed, spilling everything across the barrack room floor.

There was rarely any respite from full kit inspections. The same routine was repeated over and over until the instructors got bored and went off to annoy someone else. When we did have downtime it was spent well away from the barracks, hoisting beers in the canteen, putting the world to rights and playing snooker. The more talented among us provided the accompaniment by bashing out music on makeshift instruments.

We managed to find entertainment in the great outdoors if we were overnighting in the bush on exercise. While not quite in the mould of David Attenborough, we would often go out hunting for spiders and scorpions, put them under a glass jar and take bets on which would annihilate the other first.

The victor’s prize was its freedom. We could only wait impatiently for our own.

As a glamorous 36-year-old new arrival to Bulawayo, my mother was pursued relentlessly and never short of a date. But it wasn’t long before one man in particular stole her heart. He was a widower, who had sadly lost his wife as she gave birth to their third child. He never really got over it and dealt with his grief by drinking heavily.

He proposed to my mother within weeks of their meeting. She accepted, but on the condition that he give up alcohol altogether. He conceded, and never drank another drop. In January, 1958, eight months after arriving in Rhodesia, my mother became Mrs Asher Bernstein.
Asher, who ran a successful retail furniture business, was a tough, no-nonsense South African who had played rugby and cricket. At one time, he managed the Rhodesia Cricket Team on tour, and served on the Rhodesian Rugby Board. When his playing days ended, sport administration remained very much in his blood.

Never one to sit around, my mother always worked… not because she had to, but because she wanted to. Given her experience with one of the largest dress manufactures in London, she secured a job as a fashion buyer with Edgars, a South African retail outlet that was beginning to get a foothold in Rhodesia. The company is still there today, although now it is a fully owned Zimbabwean subsidiary. She remained with the company until her retirement in 1984.

Her marriage to Asher lasted until she was widowed in 1994. Currently a strong and robust woman of 93, she still lives in Bulawayo – a proud mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

Through my work in the theatre I gathered a small circle of friends. Together we developed a New Year’s Eve tradition. After midnight we would jump into our cars, a little worse for wear, and drive 22 miles outside of Bulawayo to the Matopos Hills. There we would watch the sun rise over the grave of Rhodesia’s founder, Cecil John Rhodes.

Following my return to the UK in 1974, I went back to Bulawayo as often as possible in the ensuing years. It gave my daughter, Victoria, an opportunity to spend time with her grandparents, whom she adored.

My one sadness about our move to Rhodesia was that I never did see Uncle Eric again. He was a good man that life had dealt a bad hand.

It is sometimes assumed that the Royal Family’s programme of global travel is instigated by and for them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Overseas visits don’t happen because a member of the Royal Family fancies visiting one place or another. They come about in order to meet the needs and wants of the government according to current diplomatic relations, to promote British exports, or as part of a programme of cultural or educational exchanges. At times they are scheduled simply for the strategic importance of a particular country within its region.

Once a tour has been suggested, the next step is to approach a senior member of the Royal Family with a view to their undertaking a tour on behalf of ‘UK plc’.

Only then is an invitation issued by the host country’s head of state and plans drawn up for what the visit should entail. Getting the right programme mix is always a challenge for the private secretary. Such an invitation marks the start of intense negotiations. Their Royal Highnesses’ private office will suggest certain events or locations. The British Ambassador will put forth his own list of proposals that the British Government would like for the royal in question to do. Finally, the host country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs will push for the inclusion of its own ‘must sees and dos’ in order to best present its country to the world’s press.