The Times Great Women's Lives

by Sue Corbett

  Her widowhood was clouded by a family crisis. When the King died she asked Group Captain Peter Townsend, a much decorated Battle of Britain fighter ace who had been an equerry since March 1944, to stay on as comptroller of her household. Townsend was already estranged from his wife; he was therefore romantically footloose and a likely focus of romantic thoughts. It was hardly surprising that he and Princess Margaret fell in love with each other.

  The affair trailed on until October 1955 with Townsend meanwhile getting divorced and being rusticated for a time in Brussels. By then the princess was free to marry without her sister’s consent, though it was made clear that if she married Townsend she would have to forfeit her royal title and perquisites. In the end she renounced him, “mindful of the Church’s teaching” and of her “duty to the Commonwealth”. Five years later she married Antony Armstrong-Jones, who became Lord Snowdon, and from whom, in 1978, she was divorced.

  These events must have caused the Queen Mother, an Anglican traditionalist, a lot of distress. Yet she was also adaptable and worldly-wise. It was noteworthy that some of her best friends were divorcees and when the Snowdons’ divorce occurred she appeared to accept it with equanimity, remaining on good terms with her daughter’s ex-husband.

  As Queen Mother she travelled far more than she had ever done as Queen. In 1954 she revisited the United States to receive money which had been raised there in commemoration of her husband. She also received an honorary doctorate at Columbia University in New York, where the citation described her as “a noble Queen, whose quiet and constant courage in time of great stress sustained a nation and inspired a world”; and in Washington she was a guest of the Eisenhowers at the White House. Thereafter her peregrinations were unremitting. Canada she visited nine times, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) four times, Australia and New Zealand twice, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) twice, Uganda twice, as well as Kenya, Tunisia, Jamaica and other places in the Caribbean, Cyprus and Iran. In Europe, she was a frequent visitor to France, and she went several times to Italy. Germany, though never her favourite country, was visited too.

  Nearer home, she was seen in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. And, of course, she visited every part of the United Kingdom itself, including Northern Ireland, to which she was particularly devoted. When the Queen was out of the country she would often act as a Counsellor of State, or carry out investitures.

  One of the posts that gave her most satisfaction was the chancellorship of London University, which she held from 1955 to 1980. In this she showed her capacity to disarm even radical lecturers and students, and it must have been a tribute to her, as well as to her grand-daughter, that when she eventually stood down Princess Anne was elected to succeed her by a convincing majority, in a secret ballot, against strong competition.

  Among recreations, none meant more to the Queen Mother than racing. Her passion for National Hunt racing made her the most popular owner in the land by a long way. Both through her understanding and love of horses and her immense enjoyment of steeplechasing and its world, she became, over half a century, the embodiment of the sport, as well as its greatest ambassador. As such, she helped to transform the image of National Hunt racing and enhance its prestige.

  Yet it all came about by accident. Whoever made the seating plan for the Royal Ascot dinner at Windsor Castle on June 15, 1949, must take the responsibility. Lord Mildmay, that idol of National Hunt racing, later tragically lost in a bathing accident, happened to be seated between Queen Elizabeth and her daughter, then Princess Elizabeth. It was he who suggested that they should try their luck at owning a steeplechaser. There was a ready response. Mildmay would find a suitable horse to be trained by Peter Cazalet. It was Monaveen. Owned in partnership, he was the first of the Queen Mother’s more than 450 winners.

  Monaveen had to be put down in 1950. But he had fired the Queen Mother’s ambition to go into racing and register her subsequently famous blue colours with buff stripes. The first horse to carry these successfully was Manicou, who appropriately triumphed in the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day, 1950. There followed many more important winners, including Laffy (1962 Ulster Harp National); Makaldar (1965 Mackeson Hurdle); Inch Arran (1973 Topham Trophy); Tammuz (1975 Schweppes Gold Trophy); Insular (1986 Imperial Cup); Special Cargo — one of her special favourites (1984 Whitbread Gold Cup and three times in a row successful 1984-86 in the Grand Military Gold Cup which his owner also captured with The Argonaut in 1990 and Norman Conqueror in 1996).

  The Queen Mother’s most prolific jockey was David Mould who, between 1966 and 1973, rode 106 of her winners. Her big disappointments came in the Grand National, particularly when Devon Loch looked a certain success in 1956 but slipped on the run-in. Against that, she had a remarkable steeplechaser in Game Spirit who ran up an astonishing 21 victories between 1971 and 1976. His name, above that of any of her horses, perhaps most fittingly represented her own character.

  Another outdoor sport that she much enjoyed was fishing, particularly salmon-fishing. She was very fond of gardens, as was her brother Sir David Bowes-Lyon — whose death in 1961, while staying with her at Birkhall, was a great blow to her — but she did not do much active gardening herself. She was, however, an energetic walker.

  During a time when royal patronage of the arts was not very conspicuous, she was the principal exception. Advised by Kenneth Clark, she became a modest collector of relatively modern paintings, including works by Augustus John, Sickert, Wilson Steer, Matthew Smith and Paul Nash. She also bought a Monet that had belonged to Clemenceau, and it was at her invitation that John Piper produced his series of drawings and watercolours of Windsor.

  In 1964 she had an emergency operation for appendicitis, and two years later underwent a colostomy. But her basically strong constitution enabled her to weather these vicissitudes and throughout the 1960s and 1970s she maintained an extensive diary of royal engagements. Among other things she was occupied by her patronage of no fewer than three hundred charities and was colonel-in chief of 13 regular regiments, eight of them in the British Army and five in the forces of Commonwealth countries.

  Among these her colonelcies of both the Black Watch and the Black Watch of Canada emphasised her ties with Scotland. She was also honorary colonel of three Territorial Army units, the Royal Yeomanry, the London Scottish Regiment and the Inns of Court Regiment, and was commandant-in-chief of women in the Royal Navy and RAF and was patron of the Women’s Royal Army Corps Association.

  In the summer of 1980, on the occasion of her 80th birthday, she drove to St Paul’s in a landau with Prince Charles through cheering crowds. Her 90th birthday was the cause for even more extended congratulations. Though she had specifically asked that no fuss be made, there were celebrations in Scotland, Wales and England lasting well over a month. These included a recorded concert featuring works especially commissioned by young composers, organised by the Prince of Wales to raise funds for his charitable trust. In his foreword to the recording, the Queen Mother’s favourite grandson described it as: “a wonderful reason for commissioning some new music: to celebrate a very special occasion and an even more special grandmother.” On the day itself a crowd of 4,000 stood for hours outside Clarence House with the temperature in the nineties, waiting for her to appear.

  But clouds were gathering again over the personal lives of members of the royal family. The marriage of her granddaughter Princess Anne had already failed in the 1980s. Now, in quick succession in the early 1990s the marriage of her second grandson, the Duke of York, foundered and was closely followed by the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Both events were accompanied by unsparing reporting of details of private conflicts and sexual infidelities that would have been undreamt of a generation earlier.

  The disintegration of the Prince of Wales’s marriage affected the Queen Mother deeply and, given her predilection for her eldest grandson, involved her in undoubted partisanship. Relations between the Queen Mother and the Princess of Wa
les had never been good. Under the pressure of the publicity which accompanied the painful steps towards the dissolution of the heir to the throne’s marriage, they cooled even further. But, though a staunch churchwoman to whom divorce was anathema, the Queen Mother studiously avoided giving any public hint of her feelings.

  At this time the popularity of the royal family was sinking to its lowest level during the present reign. The indulged lives of the younger generation, with their seemingly incessant round of parties and beach or skiing holidays, grated on a British people which was having to tighten its belt in the worst economic recession since the war. Even the Queen, with her untaxed millions, found that the nation’s sympathy had its limits when a part of Windsor Castle was destroyed by fire, and the initial assumption appeared to be that the public would pay. A spate of unprecedented royal-bashing was unleashed in the popular press.

  The Queen Mother alone escaped censure. Her popularity continued undimmed. A public appeal, launched in 1990, for a monument to celebrate her life with an ornamental gate (named the Queen Elizabeth Gate) at Hyde Park raised the necessary £2 million within two years. This quite confounded her own sensitivities about the wisdom of such an appeal in a time of recession.

  Almost to the end the Queen Mother demonstrated remarkable robustness, both physical and mental, in her round of duties. In May 1992, when verging on her 92nd birthday, she insisted on unveiling a statue of Bomber Command’s wartime leader, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, at St Clement Dane’s Church in the Strand. This was in spite of the fact that she had been advised that there might be demonstrations of a more than merely vociferous character. In the event there were, but in spite of all the shouting and paint-throwing she delivered a speech of tribute to Bomber Command’s dead, in a clear and resolute voice.

  Physical frailty was hinted at in her absence from Royal Ascot in the following year. Yet, in July of the same year, on a day of brilliant sunshine, she appeared much recovered when she strolled through the Queen Elizabeth Gate on its official opening by her daughter, the Queen. During her later years there were the occasional health scares which are generally associated with those many years her junior. At 95 and then 97, she underwent hip replacement operations.

  The Queen Mother was to live to play the central role in a celebration which, perhaps more than any other, summed up her life of unstinting service to the British people — the 50th anniversary of VE day on May 8, 1995. In a moving echo of the original ceremony in 1945, though this time without Winston Churchill and King George VI at her side, she stepped out onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace, followed by both her daughters, to wave to the 400,000-strong crowd which thronged the Mall. Joining in with them in the singing of some of the old wartime favourites, this astonishingly sprightly 94-year-old seemed more than ever a symbol of the nation’s fortitude in dark years of adversity.

  By the time of her centenary in August 2000, the royal family was recovering some, though certainly not all, of its popularity. There were several reasons for this. The Princess of Wales was dead, killed in a high-speed car crash in a Paris underpass. It was an event which led to a powerful, if ultimately short-lived, outpouring of public grief, particularly among the young — especially young women — to whom, it seemed, she had been such an icon. More broadly, the awkward position of the Prince of Wales at that time reminded people that he was, after all, another human being and was no more to be protected from the grief of such a tragedy than anyone else. The censure attaching to his relationship with his paramour, Camilla Parker Bowles, gradually abated.

  A return visit to St Paul’s Cathedral on July 11 marked the start of the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday celebrations. Almost all of her descendants, as well as distant relations and in-laws from several European royal families, were present to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury lead the nation in tribute to her. Meanwhile, members of parliament heard the Prime Minister’s congratulation in the form of a Humble Address in the House of Commons.

  Certainly, there were words and actions of dissent. A Channel 4 television programme made insinuations about her steely nature and extravagant lifestyle, but they made no great impact on the population at large. Dissident Irish Republicans tried to disrupt a colourful parade that was part military and part fun held at Horse Guards on July 19 through a series of security alerts which paralysed most of London’s rail, underground and bus routes.

  With no precedent for celebrating such longevity in the Royal Family, her advisers had dreamt up the colourful occasion which was an effervescent and eccentric 90-minute spectacular involving more than 7,000 participants, from schoolchildren to holders of the Victoria Cross. On her birthday itself, August 4, 2000, the Queen Mother, like all centenarians, received a personally signed card from the monarch. Standing outside Clarence House beside the Prince of Wales, she struggled for a moment with the envelope until her equerry stepped forward to slit it open with a ceremonial sword. Touchingly, it was signed “Lilibet”, Queen Elizabeth II’s childhood pet name.

  Meanwhile, the crowds had gathered in their thousands and, escorted by the Prince of Wales, the Queen Mother travelled in an open landau, garlanded with flowers in her racing colours of blue and buff, to Buckingham Palace for a celebratory lunch with the extended family. But before sitting down there was, much to the delight of the crowds, time for a wave from the balcony.

  Certainly it was a tribute to her person that while the popularity of lesser royals ebbed and flowed, hers seemed to remain constant. Her role always as consort but never monarch had given her a detachment from any constitutional entanglements. There was also a genuine public admiration of the behaviour of a queen who, having been widowed at a relatively young age, had not, as she might well have done, retired into pampered seclusion, but had continued to make a positive and colourful contribution to public life. Above all, she gave the impression always of making herself available to people and of placing herself and her time at their disposal.

  Astonishingly, to those who might have imagined that her 100th birthday would be her last, she courageously negotiated another 12 months, at the end of which she was able to celebrate her 101st. She did so shortly after having had a blood transfusion which, though it had seemed to be a prognostication of irreversible decline, left her evidently much invigorated.

  On August 4, 2001, she entertained a dozen of her closest family to lunch at Clarence House, and when she rounded off the birthday celebrations with a visit to the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, it was not so much her health which gave cause for concern as that of Princess Margaret, who attended her in a wheelchair, visibly a shadow of her formerly vivacious self.

  As the year drew on Princess Margaret could be seen to be in palpable decline. In 2002, while the Queen Mother made a very slow recovery from a cold caught over the Christmas period, it began to seem to be a distinct possibility that her daughter might precede her to the grave. And, indeed, the Queen Mother was herself still struggling against the effects of a chest infection which, worryingly to those around her, continued to confine her to bed, when the death of Princess Margaret was made known on February 9.

  What her private feelings were in a moment of such painful bereavement cannot be known. In a spirit which was characteristic of her, she declared that she would travel from Sandringham to her daughter’s funeral service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and she did. Even a fall in her sitting room at Sandringham two days before, as a result of which she sustained a cut arm, could not shake this resolve, despite the Queen’s efforts to dissuade her.

  The Queen, her elder daughter, survives her.

  Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was born on August 4, 1900. She died on March 30, 2002, aged 101

  BARONESS CASTLE OF BLACKBURN

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  LABOUR FIREBRAND WHO LAUNCHED CHILD BENEFIT AND THE BREATHALYSER — AND A DOOMED ATTEMPT AT TRADE UNION REFORM

  MAY 4, 2002

  For more than 20 years Barbara Castle was Britain’s best-known woman politic
ian. As a minister she was astute, accomplished, combative and controversial, her successes eclipsing memories of Margaret Bondfield, Ellen Wilkinson and Florence Horsburgh, the only three previous women Cabinet ministers. She was the favourite of party activists, frequently topping the poll in the constituency section of the national executive. Ladbroke’s regularly took bets on her becoming the first woman Prime Minister. This alerted some of her political opponents to the possibility of having a woman at No 10 and, to that extent, Castle, to her dismay, was sometimes said to have played a part in the election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative leader and the longest-serving 20th-century inhabitant of No 10.

  Barbara Castle was an easily identifiable figure from the moment she arrived at the Commons in the Labour landslide of 1945. Her temperament matched the fiery colour of her hair. Inevitably, the popular papers called her the Red Queen as she exhibited from her backbench seat below the gangway a pent-up fury about the slow pace of socialist reform. She had joined the Independent Labour Party when she was 16 and her fundamental beliefs never changed.

  She once summed up her nature as being constitutionally incapable of turning down a challenge, however risky, and claimed that once she was embroiled in anything she had to try to make it work. This attitude was responsible for some of her greatest achievements: equal pay, the introduction of seat belts, the state earnings-related pension scheme (Serps), equal pension rights for women, child benefit, the statutory right to belong to a trade union — and, of course, the Breathalyser. “I suppose the Breathalyser’s what I shall be remembered for,” she used to say.