The Queen Mother (163 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
In this turbulent week, the Queen was very much at the centre of the family, as well as the centre of the press storm. It is safe to say that, in the unchanging peace and seclusion of Balmoral, the family was stunned by this extraordinary, sometimes angry outpouring of emotion. So were millions of other people in the country. At the Castle Robin Janvrin, now the Queen’s Deputy Private Secretary, calmly helped navigate a course through all the swirling cross-currents. At the end of an agonizing, perplexing week, the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and his sons flew down to London. They talked to people in the crowds outside the palaces. The Queen then made a live television broadcast in which she spoke, as both queen and grandmother, of her admiration for the Princess of Wales and her gratitude that people had shown how much they cared.
Queen Elizabeth also flew down to London on 5 September for the funeral on Saturday 6 September. She returned to Birkhall immediately afterwards to rejoin the friends who had already been invited to stay. Characteristically she said very little about it to her guests. A few days later, Princess Margaret wrote to her sister to express ‘my loving admiration of you, how you kindly arranged
everybody’s
lives after the accident and made life tolerable for the two poor boys … there, always in command, was you, listening to everyone and deciding on all the issues … I just felt you were wonderful.’
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But the public reaction to the death of the Princess brought home to many observers how much had changed in Britain since the death of King George VI and how hard it was for the monarchy to keep pace with these changes. It was, and remained later, difficult to define just what the widespread display of emotion meant. One argument, put forward by the constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor, was that it showed that, although the British were still a monarchical people, they wanted a demystified monarchy, in touch with their needs, ‘a practical monarchy’.
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That is, in effect, another way of describing the welfare monarchy, represented by the work that Queen Elizabeth did throughout her life for her charities and other patronages.
There was another, not necessarily conflicting suggestion, that the week’s events showed a yearning for the
ideal
of monarchy. Monarchs used to have a vital, sacred role in society, but few traces of this remained at the end of the twentieth century. Rowan Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Wales (and later Archbishop of Canterbury), pointed out that in our secular society there was no easy way
for the monarch to represent the sacred, the unquestioned given in human affairs. Perhaps, as Williams argued, what we saw was ‘a potent lament for a lost sacredness, magical and highly personal, but equally a ritualised focus for public loyalty. The lost icon was not simply the dead princess; it was a whole mythology of social cohesions around anointed authority and mystery – ambiguous, not very articulate and not easy for either right or left in simple political terms.’
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Life at Birkhall had to continue. On 8 September Queen Elizabeth flew to Fort George in Inverness-shire to visit the 1st Battalion The Black Watch; the visit marked the sixtieth anniversary of her appointment as colonel-in-chief of the regiment. In the next few weeks the Prince of Wales brought his sons to stay with her twice at Birkhall.
After Queen Elizabeth returned to London her winter programme was less onerous than in the past but, as usual, she visited the Field of Remembrance at St Margaret’s, Westminster on 7 November. She went to the Royal Smithfield Show at Earls Court on 27 November and, in fine form, attended the Middle Temple Family Night dinner on 4 December.
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N
INETEEN
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NINETY
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EIGHT
began badly. While visiting the horses in the stable at Sandringham on 25 January, Queen Elizabeth slipped, fell and broke her left hip. She was taken by ambulance first to the hospital in King’s Lynn for examination and then to King Edward VII’s Hospital in London. She was in great pain and the ride was far from comfortable for her. In such circumstances, Ian Campbell, the doctor from Sandringham who accompanied her, was astonished when she said to him in the ambulance, ‘You’ll miss supper, won’t you?’ At the hospital she immediately ordered sandwiches for him and the nurse who had travelled with them.
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That evening Roger Vickers, with Dr Robert Linton as anaesthetist, operated on her and replaced her broken hip. She returned to Clarence House on 17 February to convalesce.
She cancelled a mere seven official engagements as a result of the accident and operation. Altogether she had forty-six official engagements in 1998. She was able to make a brief appearance at the lawn meet of the Eton Beagles at Royal Lodge on 3 March, but she cancelled
her Musical Weekend that year and she was disappointed to forgo her annual visit to the Irish Guards in Münster, Germany, to present them with shamrock. Her first public engagement was to attend the annual general meeting of Queen Mary’s Clothing Guild in St James’s Palace on 25 March.
After Easter at Windsor she flew to Scotland to spend two weeks at Birkhall. Ted Hughes, who was by now seriously ill with cancer, came again with his wife to experience what he had called, after his last visit, ‘the healing warmth of your kindness to me’.
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It was to be their final encounter. The fishing was not at its best that spring but Hughes was pleased because that gave them ‘more time to lounge and loll and gaze and meditate’.
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He particularly enjoyed an afternoon when, after lunch at Polveir, they just sat and listened to the river.
He had brought the Queen Mother his new book
Birthday Letters,
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a series of poems about his life with Sylvia Plath. When the Queen Mother asked him why he had published them, he replied that he thought it was important for him as ‘a kind of purging’, and he had done it both for his children and for himself.
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Since he had published the book (and ignored everything the critics had said about it), ‘I have felt vastly unburdened. It has quite changed my life and whole outlook for the better.’ He thought that Queen Elizabeth had helped change his life too. ‘When I remember your gesture and your words, “We must be strong!” I feel it like a huge smile of joy, like a surge from a tremendous battery, going through me as well. And I remember it constantly.’
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He needed all such strength to resist his illness. On 16 October he and Carol went to Buckingham Palace where the Queen bestowed upon him the Order of Merit.
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A few days later, on 28 October 1998, Ted Hughes died.
Queen Elizabeth sent a wreath of yellow, white and cream flowers; they accompanied his coffin, and Carol Hughes then cast them upon the waters of his favourite river, the Torridge in Devon.
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The following May Queen Elizabeth attended Hughes’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey. She walked up the long aisle on the arm of Prince Charles. At the end, the congregation heard Hughes’s rich Yorkshire voice reading the Song from Shakespeare’s
Cymbeline
. As it echoed round the ancient church many were moved to tears.
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly work hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers, come to dust.
Until the end of Queen Elizabeth’s life, Ted Hughes remained always in the pantheon of people to whom she raised high her glass at dinner.
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Penelope Mortimer,
Queen Elizabeth: A Life of the Queen Mother
, 1986.
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See
this page
. She had given a number of her dresses and hats to the costume department of the museum.
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Mr William Slack, Sergeant-Surgeon to the Queen, carried out the operation and Dr Derek Cope was the anaesthetist.
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Her tour staff were not the only ones worried about her. The Queen was concerned about the heavy programme for this tour, and gave strict orders that no ‘extras’ should be added. When Queen Elizabeth expressed a wish to go up the CN Tower, Sir Martin Gilliat told Harris Boyd, the Canadian Federal Coordinator of the tour, that there was nothing for it – they would have to arrange the visit. There was initial relief when the weather seemed to rule it out; but Queen Elizabeth got her way in the end. She had not yet made her regular telephone call to the Queen; Boyd suspected that she put it off until after the CN Tower visit, for fear of being forbidden to go up. As he remarked later, the Queen Mother always went outside her programme.
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Galen Weston, successful Canadian businessman whose fortune came from one of the oldest family businesses in Canada, the George Weston Food company. His wife, Hilary, served as lieutenant governor of Ontario 1997–2002. In the 1980s they took a long lease on Fort Belvedere, King Edward VIII’s favourite home, in Windsor Great Park.
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Unfortunately this memorial was later vandalized and extinguished. Complicated plans were devised to enable her to light another flame in London and for it to be flown back to Canada, but this proved too difficult and eventually she authorized its relighting by someone else.
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On 20 July 1982 the IRA exploded a nail bomb placed in a car in Hyde Park as a detachment of sixteen horses from the Queen’s Life Guard (found from the Blues and Royals) was passing, en route to a changing of the guard. Three soldiers were killed, as were seven horses. Sefton suffered serious injuries including a severed jugular. Under the orders of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Parker Bowles, a groom used his shirt to staunch the wound in Sefton’s neck and after extensive surgery the horse survived. He became something of a national hero and in his name hundreds of thousands of pounds were raised to construct a new surgical wing at the Royal Veterinary College.
In an even worse atrocity, on the same day another IRA bomb exploded under the bandstand in Regent’s Park when a band from the Royal Green Jackets was giving a concert. Seven members of the band were killed and many in the audience were wounded.
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SOE’s mission was to conduct unconventional warfare against the Germans throughout Europe in preparation for the eventual Allied invasion. Many of the secret agents were betrayed, arrested by the Gestapo and executed or sent to concentration camps. The memorial that Queen Elizabeth unveiled in Valençay commemorated the ninety-one men and thirteen women members of SOE who had given their lives for the freedom of France. After Queen Elizabeth’s death in 2002, the Princess Royal became patron of the Special Forces Club.
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In November 1990, on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Coventry, Queen Elizabeth had visited the city for a service of reconciliation attended also by Dr Richard von Weizsäcker, President of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ceremony called for Queen Elizabeth to exchange ‘Symbols of Peace’ with the President. These were her words: ‘Mr President, I present to you this Cross of Nails from Coventry – a symbol of reconciliation, friendship and peace. May God bless the people of your country.’ The President presented a ‘Bell of Peace’ to Queen Elizabeth. (RA QEQMH/PS/ENGT/1990: 14 November)
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In May 1982, the
Sunday People
had published a story that she had refused to attend Harris’s ninetieth birthday as a ‘deliberate slur’. Sir Arthur wrote to Martin Gilliat to say that he was used to this sort of ‘sensational sneer and smear’ and always just ignored it. Sir Martin clearly felt that he should reassure Harris and wrote to him: ‘As you know from those far off days of World War II, both The King and Queen Elizabeth have always had a very special regard for you and it is a source of real sadness to Her Majesty that owing to long arranged commitments she cannot be at the 90th birthday dinner which is being given in your honour.’ (RA QEQMH/PS/GEN/1982/Harris)
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The Prince’s Trust, the successful charitable organization founded in 1976 by the Prince of Wales, helps create opportunities for young people from underprivileged backgrounds.
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Jonathan Dimbleby,
The Prince of Wales
, 1994.
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One change about which Queen Elizabeth had not been enthusiastic was the admission of women (apart from members of the Royal Family) to the Order of the Garter, the most senior British Order of Chivalry, which was in the gift of the sovereign. Her resistance was overcome when the Queen decided that one of the first non-royal women to be made a member of this great Order in modern times should be one of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite politicians – Margaret Thatcher.
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Princess Margaret, Margaret Rhodes (née Elphinstone) and her sister Jean Wills.
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Mr Jonathan Jagger, Surgeon-Oculist to the Royal Household, performed the operation; Dr Leonard Hargrove was the anaesthetist.
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Lord St John of Fawsley (b. 1929), formerly Norman St John Stevas, Conservative politician, barrister, author and constitutional expert. Twice Minister of Arts, chairman of the Royal Fine Arts Commission 1985–99.
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Raymond Leppard CBE (b. 1927), acclaimed musician and conductor who performed at venues all over the world, including the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was musical director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 1987–2001.
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The Queen had given her mother a last voyage in
Britannia
in July 1996. The yacht sailed to Cornwall, carrying a party of Queen Elizabeth’s friends and Household including Lord and Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Mr and Mrs Gerald Ward, Lady Grimthorpe and Sir Michael and Lady Angela Oswald. They visited the gardens at Trelissick, before sailing back up the Channel.
