The Queen Mother (159 page)

At the end of April she spent two days in Scotland for public engagements; she then flew for a weekend to Spain to stay privately with the Duke and Duchess of Wellington, and then before the last of her private European visits, to Umbria, she went back to Birkhall for her annual two weeks’ fishing with friends.

Ted Hughes was again among the guests and at a picnic below Lochnagar, as they listened to the wind in the trees, they had a conversation typical of their friendship. She asked him if he thought that trees could communicate with each other. The exchange kept coming back to him and he wrote a poem about the picnic. Sending it to her, he told her that he thought the verses were ‘rough and playful’, but there was also a mystical quality to them.
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He wrote of her question:

She was at Royal Lodge when she received the poem, and wrote to tell Hughes that it transported her ‘at once to my beloved hills, and to the “steep frowning glories of dark Lochnagar” (Lord Byron!!), and to the birds and the deer and the elusive salmon and the dear creaking
pines. It is such a wonderful and
loving
poem, and I send you my most hearty thanks for giving us something so special.’
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She had a summer full of engagements. At the end of May 1992 she unveiled a statue of one of her heroes, Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, the wartime leader of Bomber Command, outside the RAF Church, St Clement Dane’s, in the Strand. (In 1988 she had unveiled a statue of Lord Dowding of Fighter Command near by.) Charged with destroying German industry, Bomber Command had a higher casualty rate than any other unit in the British armed forces. Queen Elizabeth knew well that, despite the appalling odds, its young airmen had flown into danger night after night, month after month. The missions included the saturation bombing of Dresden, where 35,000 people died in British attacks in February 1945. Dresden was an important military communications centre through which German troops passed to the Eastern Front, but after the war was won Harris had been the subject of fierce criticism because of such attacks. Some post-war historians even called British bombing policies war crimes’.

Queen Elizabeth had no time for such views. She knew that Britain now had a completely new relationship with the democratic state of Germany, but her heart was still with the heroes of the war against Nazi Germany.
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She believed that Bomber Command, and Harris in particular, had been treated badly since the war. Far from seeing them as criminals, she thought that the young bomber pilots, whose airfields she and the King had often visited, were the bravest of the brave.
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In April 1983 she had opened the Bomber Command Museum at Hendon,
where Harris had come to welcome her. It was, according to the lady in waiting’s diary, ‘A very moving occasion, so full of memories for all concerned’.
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Now, eight years after Sir Arthur’s death, as she unveiled his memorial, demonstrators tried to interrupt Queen Elizabeth’s speech. She seemed surprised, but after a moment’s pause she continued. (Subsequently the statue had to be protected by police because it was frequently defaced with red paint.) That day she entertained some of the RAF officers present to lunch at Clarence House and one of them, Air Marshal Sir John Grandy, wrote to her to say, ‘We were all worried but your great calm and disarming smile, courage and brave example against that ridiculous attempt to upset you was superb.’
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F
AR MORE
upsetting than transient demonstrations was the turmoil afflicting her own family. It was the misfortune of the Royal Family that the globalization of the media was now making the so-called cult of celebrity into an ever more valuable commodity. Newspapers, fearful of losing market share to television and other media, became more invasive. Tabloid editors juggled the lives of real people with those of fictional characters from television soap operas for space on front pages. Actors and actresses were deliberately confused with their screen personalities. The borderlines between fact and fantasy became ever more blurred.

Exaggerations, inventions, lies about different members of the Royal Family became commonplace. The editor of the
Sun
, Kelvin Mackenzie, was reported to have instructed his staff, ‘Give me a Monday splash on the royals. Don’t worry if it’s not true – so long as there’s not too much fuss about it afterwards.’
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Donald Trelford, editor of the
Observer
, a more sober paper, wrote, ‘The royal soap opera has now reached such a pitch of public interest that the boundary between fact and fiction has been lost sight of … it is not just that some papers don’t check their facts or accept denials: they don’t care if the stories are true or not.’
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No other European royal family was being subjected to such ruthless and sententious assault.

The revelation of problems and peccadilloes in the family was highly profitable. But there was a more important cause of tension. Though many journalists sought to deny or belittle the idea, a large majority of the population still believed that one of the Royal Family’s
functions was, in the words of the writer Rebecca West, to hold up to the public ‘a presentation of ourselves doing well’.
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When some of them did badly, we did not like what we saw of ourselves. And all too often we found it difficult to remember that the mirror of the media distorted as much as it revealed.

The marriages and divorces of younger members of the Royal Family have since been written about endlessly and often cruelly. These crises obviously touched Queen Elizabeth profoundly; she worried constantly about her grandchildren. But she rarely committed her views to paper. Such caution was characteristic: since joining the Royal Family in 1923 she had always made it a rule not to talk about members of the family with anyone outside it, not even with her own Bowes Lyon relations. Still less did she write to anyone about family matters. Given the ever increasing danger of leaks, her discretion was well placed.

What one can venture to say is that Queen Elizabeth, like other members of the Royal Family, had welcomed Lady Diana Spencer’s entry into the family. In her public life, the Princess of Wales gradually showed that she could use her natural warmth and spontaneity to good effect. After a tour of Australia in early 1983 in which she had been the centre of obsessive media attention, Queen Elizabeth wrote to congratulate her. The Princess replied that she was ‘enormously touched by your letter – the thought gave me a lot of happiness. Charles is the one who deserves all the credit by showing me what to do & how to do it, always patient & ready to explain. The whole Tour seems to have helped me a great deal on how to cope with my public duties, so all in all, a good experience!’
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Her success as a new member of the Royal Family was similar to that of the young Duchess of York in 1923. But, unlike the Duchess of York, personal contentment eluded her, as it did her husband. The births of their two much loved sons, Prince William in 1982 and Prince Harry in 1984, gave joy to them as well as to everyone else in the family. But hopes that motherhood would bring the Princess fulfilment proved illusory. Within the family, enthusiasm and hopes for the marriage gave way to anxiety and concern. The Prince’s response was to retreat into his grandmother’s concept of duty. He had always been diligent; now his work became ever more important to him. The Princess was younger and her unhappiness was more volatile. She began to move along a separate trajectory in both her personal life and
her official duties, which she continued to carry out with aplomb. By 1986 the marriage had all but broken down.

The Waleses were not alone in their problems. Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, had become the first of Queen Elizabeth’s grandchildren to separate from her husband. She and Captain Mark Phillips were divorced in April 1992. By this time the marriage of Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s second grandson, was also in trouble. He had met Sarah Ferguson in 1985 and they had subsequently fallen in love. She was a friendly, outspoken young woman and the match was welcomed not only by journalists who considered that Miss Ferguson was that famous cliche ‘a breath of fresh air’, but also by most of the Prince’s family. Queen Elizabeth thought she was ‘such a cheerful person, and seems to be so thankful & pleased to be part of a united family’.
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(Sarah Ferguson’s parents had divorced when she was a child.) The wedding, in July 1986, engendered widespread pleasure and on the same day the Queen created the Prince duke of York, the title held by both his grandfather, King George VI, and his great-grandfather, King George V. The new Duke and Duchess had two daughters, Princess Beatrice, born in 1988, and Princess Eugenie, born in 1990. But their marriage also deteriorated.

In these hard times Queen Elizabeth gave her grandchildren, particularly the Prince of Wales, as much support as she could. The Prince visited her often and loved to bring his sons to stay with her at either Birkhall or Royal Lodge. There were some in the Royal Household who wished Queen Elizabeth would give him robust advice. But that was not her style. She never liked to acknowledge, let alone confront, disagreeableness within the family. It was a characteristic which had earned her the nickname ‘imperial ostrich’ among some members of the Household. She thought her role was not to try and change people’s courses but to be an anchor.

Nineteen-ninety-two began well with the sort of holiday which Queen Elizabeth most enjoyed, a family Christmas and New Year at Sandringham. In thanking her sister, Princess Margaret urged her, ‘Do keep Mummy there as long as poss. And please
say
it to her otherwise she gets in a tizz about being there for so long.’
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While she was in Norfolk Queen Elizabeth received from Ted Hughes a special edition of his poems,
Rain-Charm for the Duchy
. She thanked him for the ‘enchanting’ book with its ‘rich and rustling’ paper, and for his accompanying letter ‘with its thrilling description of
landing a fish in such wild & stormy conditions. It must have been too exciting for words, & I felt an envious thrill myself when reading of the battle with the fish and the wind and the rocks.’
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The happy start to the year was brought to an abrupt end by the announcement that the Duke and Duchess of York were to separate. Worse was to come. In June 1992 the
Sunday Times
began to serialize a book called
Diana: Her True Story
. Highly sympathetic to Diana, this work created a sensation, particularly when it was revealed that the Princess had collaborated covertly with the author, Andrew Morton. This was deeply shocking to Queen Elizabeth. She had been sympathetic to both the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York over the enormous pressures they faced from the media. But the washing of dirty linen in public was utterly abhorrent to Queen Elizabeth. Her entire life was based upon obligation, discretion and restraint. The Princess’s public rejection of her husband and his life was contrary to everything that Queen Elizabeth believed and practised. She also regretted it when, subsequently, Prince Charles discussed his private life in a wide-ranging series of interviews with Jonathan Dimbleby for a film and a book. ‘It’s always a mistake to talk about your marriage,’ she said to Eric Anderson. But she was proud of the Prince’s achievements, such as the Prince’s Trust,
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and she hoped that the book, a serious study of his career,
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would help history to judge him better.
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She did not cast the Princess aside at this time but she gave her grandson as much emotional support as she could. She also talked almost daily to her daughter the Queen, who was distraught about what was happening to her children and the fact that it was taking place so publicly. Queen Elizabeth often asked members of the Household, ‘Is the Queen all right?’ They in turn recognized that the frequent conversations between mother and daughter helped the Queen to maintain her sangfroid and sense of perspective.

Everyone in the family felt the impact of the unhappiness among the younger generation. Prince Philip exchanged a series of affectionate letters with the Princess in which he offered ‘to do my utmost to help you and Charles to the best of my ability. But I am quite ready to concede that I have no talent as a marriage counsellor!’ The Princess
was grateful, and said she hoped to be able to draw on his advice in the months ahead, ‘whatever they may bring’.
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Princess Margaret wrote to the Queen after staying with her at Balmoral in September 1992 thanking her and sympathizing with her worries about her children. She hoped that her sister was able to have a little peace in the familiar hills, adding, ‘I personally found great comfort in being with you and in that particular place.’ After leaving Scotland, Princess Margaret had been to Italy. ‘I think you would be very touched at how many people expressed great sympathy for you,’ she wrote. ‘Everyone loves you all over the place, I was so pleased for you and you must be encouraged by this I hope.’
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Sorrows marched in battalions that year, and not only through the hearts of Queen Elizabeth’s grandchildren. On 20 November 1992, while she was giving a lunch party at Clarence House, there came a distant echo of the fire at Glamis in 1916 – she was told that Windsor Castle was on fire. She drove down to Windsor to be with the Queen, who had already arrived from London and was watching in agony as her favourite home burned. Prince Philip was away and Queen Elizabeth invited her daughter to stay with her at Royal Lodge that weekend. Alone together they were able to talk over all the unhappinesses of the time. It helped. The Queen later thanked her mother, saying, ‘It made all the difference to my sanity after that terrible day.’
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