Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  For much of the reign, she preferred to travel in a trusty Vickers VC10, either from the Royal Air Force’s Air Support Command or from BOAC (the state-owned precursor to British Airways), stopping off every 2,000–3,000 miles to refuel. The RAF operation manual for Royal Flight 1007, for the 1972 state visit to France, shows a typical layout. The Queen and Prince Philip had the front quarter of the RAF VC10 Mk 1, with a C-shaped sofa on the starboard side and a four-seat dining table to port, plus a galley and bar and screened-off fold-out beds on either side of the aisle. The ‘VIP’ toilet, just behind the cockpit, was twice the size of the adjacent ‘crew’ toilet. The largest compartment on the aircraft was the royal ‘dressing room’, sealed off behind a curtain. To the rear of the royal quarters were thirty-eight rear-facing seats for royal staff and air crew, including a smaller dressing room.

  Though her trip to Paris was a short daytime flight of no more than an hour, the RAF inventory included ‘VIP china, glassware, linen napkins, tablecloths’ and a ‘comprehensive’ bar. Although this was to include whisky, gin, brandy, vodka, sherry, sweet and dry Martini, beer and cigarettes, plus mixers including Angostura Bitters, bitter lemon, tonic and Worcestershire sauce, there was not a drop of wine on board, let alone a glass of champagne. Perhaps it was felt surplus to requirements on a trip to France.

  At the start of her reign, the emphasis was very much on long tours of British colonies and Commonwealth realms or protectorates. In her first three years on the Throne, the Queen would spend nearly six months in her own territories and just six days in non-Commonwealth countries (three of them with Britain’s old friend, the King of Norway). Commonwealth republics like India, however, had to wait nine years before they received a visit. There was a marked upturn in royal attention towards European nations in the run-up to Britain’s various attempts to join the Common Market. As the reign progressed and jet engines improved, tours and journey times became considerably shorter. The Queen’s return from Australia in 1970, for example, would involve just over twenty-six hours of flying time in a BOAC Super VC10, with an extra three hours on the ground at four different refuelling stops. The BOAC flight details show that the Queen flew for four hours from Sydney to Nandi (during which dinner was served: smoked salmon, steak and Neapolitan cassata), six hours and twenty minutes from Nandi to Honolulu (a late supper of cold duckling and orange salad), five hours and twenty-five minutes from Honolulu to Vancouver (with a full English breakfast), six hours and twenty minutes from Vancouver to Gander (during which lunch became afternoon tea, followed by a dinner of Canadian salmon mayonnaise and veal Marsala) and finally four hours and forty-five minutes from Gander to London (with another cooked breakfast). Unlike the trip to France, a wine list was included: a 1967 Chablis, a 1964 Château Mouton and Mumm Cordon Rouge throughout.

  It is unlikely, though, that the Queen will have consumed very much of anything. A firm believer in the philosophy of all things in moderation, she would always be abstemious on a long tour packed with official lunches and dinners. Frank Judd# was the Foreign Office minister accompanying the Queen for the latter part of her 1979 tour of the Middle East. Flying home on the royal plane (a chartered British Airways jet), he was delighted to be invited to join the Queen for dinner. ‘The plane was divided up with a sort of business class for officials and a special sealed off-part for the Queen,’ he recalls. ‘There were six of us round the table there. British Airways had really bust a gut and produced this magnificent menu and we were all looking at it. The Queen looked round the table, smiled disarmingly at us and said: “After all that hospitality on this trip, I am having one course!” We had to do the same.’

  Some tours could indeed become an ordeal by gluttony. Sir William Heseltine remembers the voyage home in the Royal Yacht after the 1972 state visit to France. ‘President Pompidou and Sir Christopher Soames [the British Ambassador] were both vying to make it the success of the century. Both were gourmets and were absolutely determined to outdo each other in the splendour of the meals. As we left, I remember saying to the Queen: “Do you mind if I don’t come to dinner?” I couldn’t eat another bite. I couldn’t face it.’

  THE BRIEFING

  As all the politicians and diplomats who have accompanied the Queen on her travels are aware, she does her homework. The former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, learned that when he accompanied the Queen to Lagos in 2003. ‘On my way to Nigeria, I had lunch with the Queen, the Duke and the doctor on the plane,’ he says. ‘She was very well-briefed and I knew that I needed to be very well-briefed. It was not that she’d try to catch you out, but you had to have a base of knowledge. We talked about developments in Nigeria and the fact that it is divided into the Muslim North and Christian South – a direct legacy of empire.’

  He noticed that the Queen had spent much of the flight working her way through a thick ring-binder file with a labelled fingerindex. ‘It was just for her and she read it,’ says Straw. These manuals would usually include the nuts and bolts of particular engagements, including timings (to the nearest second). They would also be leavened by the personality notes compiled by the FCO. In the days before emails and instant leakage, the FCO authors did not hold back. Of an early Zimbabwean Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr the Hon. Witness Mangwende, the FCO notes observed: ‘A bad foreign minister. He probably owes his position to personal connections. A large, bluff man of limited intelligence and a ponderous sense of humour. His world view is one of knee-jerk “anti-imperialism” notably anti-Americanism. Suspicious of Britain. Identifies almost unthinkingly with almost all radical causes. Intelligent and attractive wife, Elen.’

  A set of briefing notes ahead of the 1979 Commonwealth summit in Lusaka reads like a cast of characters from a soap opera. There was the African Cabinet minister who ‘divides his time between his office and his mineral water factory . . . fond of la dolce vita, his excitable and probably xenophobic personality make him less than pleasant company. His present wife is a schemer’; the Malaysian foreign minister – ‘he is friendly, likeable and honest with the mannerisms of an English country squire. One son at Cheltenham, one daughter at Benenden’; and a certain Cabinet minister from Papua New Guinea who ‘has a drink problem which gives rise to appalling behaviour. This is often overlooked in PNG.’

  Many entries could be as revealing about the mindset of the author as that of the subject. Ahead of the 1971 state visit to Turkey, the Queen’s host, President Cevdet Sunay, was described as a ‘soldier of the old school; efficient; loyal; solid and unimaginative; underlying warmth of personality and pawky [sic] sense of humour which can emerge attractively . . . an intelligent interest in international affairs . . . much less of a backwoodsman than he looks’.

  As well as enjoying her pre-tour briefing notes, the Queen would be even more interested in a list of ‘Topics to be avoided’. ‘She found that they would often get a good conversation going,’ says a former Private Secretary. In the case of Turkey, for example, the Foreign Office files show that the following were no-go areas in 1971:

  ‘Minorities. In particular, there are no Kurds in Turkey as far as the Turks are concerned. There are perhaps people (3 million) of ‘rather special origin’ in the extreme south east but they are

  ‘Turks’ . . .

  Turkish antiquities.

  British Occupation of Istanbul after the First World War. Mention of President Sunay’s time as a British prisoner of war should also probably be avoided unless he brings it up . . .

  Islamic Turkey. There are strict laws against religious propaganda . . . Turkey’s civil law allows only one wife and outlaws the turban and the fez.

  Cyprus.

  Place names: Istanbul – never Constantinople.

  The Turks are not Arabs.

  There are no harems in active use . . .’

  Jack Straw was already familiar with what he calls the Queen’s ‘encyclopaedic knowledge’ of places and people. During his days as Home Secretary, he had been formally required to attend her swearing-in o
f bishops and had been astonished by her capacity to recall diocesan minutiae. Now, as Foreign Secretary, he was seeing it all over again. On that 2003 visit to Nigeria, the Queen’s briefing notes reminded her that she had been presented with a bouquet of flowers by a nine-year-old princess on her first visit in 1957. The same princess was to be re-presented to her again. ‘She remembered her!’ says Straw.

  The Queen also enjoyed tossing the odd question in the direction of Prince Philip, who would usually be immersed in a book or paperwork. Sometimes she was just being mischievous. Former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind recalls travelling to Prague alongside the Queen and the Duke in 1996, when a member of the RAF crew handed them a copy of the flight path. ‘Philip,’ murmured the Queen, ‘what’s this place – Praha?’ ‘It’s Prague,’ the Duke retorted. ‘Why don’t they call it Prague?’ the Queen went on. ‘It’s like “Paree” and “Paris”,’ said the Duke, immersed in his book. Rifkind wasn’t sure where to look. ‘My wife and I were pretending we couldn’t hear but it was like Monty Python,’ he chuckles. ‘I think the Queen was having some fun. She is far too bright to be remotely puzzled as to why it’s called “Praha”.’

  The Queen would also use these opportunities to pick up extra nuggets of information, which she might not be receiving from her Prime Minister. ‘There was a feeling that you must be careful not to interfere with the Prime Minister’s audiences but she was always wanting to talk, especially on plane trips. That’s the best time to talk to her,’ says David Owen, her Foreign Secretary in the late Seventies.

  MAKING AN ENTRANCE

  Once on the ground, the Queen would usually be greeted by her ambassador for a short series of introductions along the red carpet at the airport. Most heads of state, including the Queen herself, prefer to lay on a formal state welcome somewhere more telegenic and atmospheric than an airport – be it the White House lawn in Washington or the Quirinale in Rome. Some, like King Bhumibol of Thailand, liked to do both. When the Queen arrived on her state visit in 1996, he and his family travelled to greet the Queen and Duke at the airport. There was momentary embarrassment when the chartered British Airways 767 overshot the red carpet and clipped the steps. The two royal families then drove at speed through Bangkok in one of the longest motorcades the Queen had ever seen, comprising more than fifty vehicles, many of them Rolls-Royces in the Thai royal livery (yellow), to another welcome ceremony.

  As the years progressed, these grand arrivals would become more demanding for the monarch. When the Queen first visited Thailand in 1972, she arrived on board the Royal Yacht at the start of a relatively leisurely six-week tour of South East Asia. Jet lag was a minor concern. In 1996, the year of her seventieth birthday, and having just crossed seven time zones, the Queen had to hit the ground running. Within hours of landing she was at a state banquet, saluting the Golden Jubilee of a monarch whom she addressed as ‘my brother’. It was the same form of address with which Queen Victoria had addressed King Bhumibol’s forebear, King Rama IV. If there were moments of fatigue, she could perhaps reflect on her own good fortune compared to that of her fellow monarch. Bhumibol had reigned through seventeen military coups, twenty-one prime ministers and fifteen different constitutions since acceding to the Throne half a century earlier, following the mysterious death of his elder brother (‘whether by murder, accident or suicide has never been finally established,’ noted a Foreign Office internal assessment).

  Day One would be a test of all the main requirements of every tour: speech-writing, gift-giving, providing the media with something to report, and the royal wardrobe. Not for nothing did that royal VC10 have such a large changing area. Newcomers to the Royal Household are always taken aback by the number of times a change of clothes can be required on official duties. Dame Margaret Beckett, Britain’s first female Foreign Secretary, remembers when she and her husband, Leo, found themselves on a plane with the Queen and the Duke for the first time. ‘What I hadn’t expected was that we were up at the front of the plane,’ she recalls. ‘My husband was impressed by the speed with which the Queen changes outfit. There’s this place at the end of the plane and she disappears in to it and – zip-zip-zip – out she reappears in a completely different outfit for a different event.’

  During the Thai tour, in 95-degree heat, the Queen would appear in at least four different outfits in the course of a day, all of them chosen with the help of her dresser, Angela Kelly. The Queen’s dresser has always been a figure of considerable power and influence at the court of Elizabeth II. From her earliest years, Princess Elizabeth was devoted to Bobo MacDonald, the Scottish farmer’s daughter who shared a room with her as a baby and grew up to share her confidences throughout her life. When the Princess went on her honeymoon, she also took her corgi, Susan, and Bobo with her. ‘Look after the Princess for me, Bobo,’ King George VI had whispered as he waved his daughter off for the last time in 1952. Bobo could tell the Queen things that no one else – with the possible exception of Prince Philip – would dare to raise. New royal staff would be warned: ‘Don’t upset Miss MacDonald or you’ll ruin the Queen’s day.’

  On board the Royal Yacht, where she was known as ‘The QE3’, Bobo had her own cabin, which would be locked and never used by anyone else if she was not on board. For much of the reign, it would be Bobo who mapped out the day-dresses, ballgowns and jewellery for every step of every royal visit. The most senior members of the entourage and of the government would defer to her, while also enlisting her help. One former Private Secretary chuckles at the memory of a tricky moment ahead of a grand dinner in Canada. ‘The Queen said that she didn’t want to wear a tiara as it would mean having her hair done all over again. Unfortunately, the Canadians were expecting the full works,’ he recalls. ‘Someone said: “Talk to Bobo.” So, I did and I remember she said: “Och, my wee small girl’s getting spoiled!” That sorted it out. And sure enough, the Queen came down to dinner looking a million dollars.’ Bobo, who never married, continued to live above the Queen’s Buckingham Palace apartment until her dying day in 1993, aged eighty-nine.

  No matter how illustrious the dress designer, if ‘Miss MacDonald’ did not like something – or someone – then the outfit was doomed. On the first post-Coronation world tour, Bobo was responsible for more than 100 dresses, including the Coronation dress itself, which the Queen would wear three times. Its creator, Norman Hartnell, had produced a large part of the tour wardrobe, including the Queen’s ‘wattle’ dress, the emblematic crinoline gown decorated with the Australian national flower and immortalised in Sir William Dargie’s portrait of the Australian Queen. From her earliest travels, she was keen to deploy fashion as a diplomatic tool in a way completely beyond the reach of kings and princes. So, for the 1956 tour of Nigeria, Hartnell created a duchesse-satin evening gown for the Queen’s address to the House of Representatives. He also used pearls and beads to create what the Royal Collection calls ‘a long encrustation around the neckline in a style reminiscent of African tribal necklaces’. For the 1961 tour of India and Pakistan, Hartnell produced a pearl-encrusted evening gown in the pattern of an Indian lotus flower for her first evening in New Delhi. On the Queen’s first evening in Pakistan, the effect was even more dramatic. Hartnell had designed a duchesse-satin gown in ivory and emerald green, perfectly matching the insignia of the Order of Pakistan, which she had been given by President Ayub Khan earlier in the day. To cap it all, she was wearing the Vladimir Tiara hung with the Cambridge emeralds. Bobo had excelled herself that night.

  Another Hartnell classic was the turquoise silk-crêpe dress for the Queen’s 1976 trip to Canada and the Montreal Olympics, complete with interlocking rings (even the famously litigious International Olympic Committee was not going to prosecute the Canadian head of state for copyright infringement at her own Games).

  As the years passed, Hartnell would gradually lose ground to Hardy Amies, another old-school designer whose name became synonymous with royal fashion. ‘It’s quite simple,’ Amies said of Hartnell ye
ars later. ‘He was a silly old queen and I’m a clever old queen.’ Amies, like his most important client, was unmoved by what might or might not be in fashion at any particular moment, well aware that a monarch should neither be in nor out of fashion but, rather, above it. ‘The Queen’s attitude is that she must always dress for the occasion, usually for a large mob of middle-class people towards whom she wishes to seem friendly,’ he said in 1997, six years before his death. ‘There’s always something cold and rather cruel about chic clothes which she wants to avoid.’ Chic or not, Amies was not cheap. ‘Thank you for the enormous bill which will take a little time to pay’, the Queen wrote back after receiving one invoice. It was through Amies that the Queen met the man who would design her hats for decades, Australian-born Freddie Fox. Ahead of their first meeting, Amies gave him three pieces of advice: ‘Don’t touch the Queen, don’t ask questions and don’t turn your back.’ In due course, Fox would have the distinction of designing for three generations – the Queen Mother, the Queen and the Princess of Wales. His chief aim with all the Queen’s hats was to ensure that the brim would keep the sun off the monarch’s face, while not obscuring the public’s view of her.