Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  What remains etched in the minds of so many of the Queen’s staff, past and present, is her sense of teamwork on these tours. Those close to her point out that the Queen has spent her entire life in a military environment. As well as being Head of the Armed Forces, her father, husband, sons and grandsons have all been officers, and she seldom leaves home without a uniformed equerry at her side. Her annual birthday party is a military parade. Though her own career in the Forces was a short one, she remains very proud that she served in uniform during the Second World War. And when she is on tour, she feels very much like the commanding officer of her unit. Lynda Chalker,‡‡ the Minister for Overseas Development, was in attendance during part of the Queen’s 1994 tour of the Caribbean. They were walking to a church service when Chalker put her foot through a piece of plyboard covering a hole in the pavement. ‘The coppers hauled me out and we went into the church. The Queen asked if I was OK. I said: “It hurts a bit”. And the Queen said: “Gentlemen, some ice”. Her care for other people is tremendous. There are loads of anecdotes like this.’

  As a commanding officer, the Queen would have little time for ‘girl talk’ on tour. All members of the entourage were treated much the same, and there could be little sympathy for those struggling to maintain the pace. Canadian politician Alvin Hamilton told author Sally Bedell Smith of a long day touring Saskatchewan, during which the Queen never requested a ‘health break’. ‘You need not worry,’ the Private Secretary told him. ‘Her Majesty is trained for eight hours.’ On a handful of occasions, however, the Queen has insisted on all-women company. After the Dunblane primary-school massacre of 1996, she asked her assistant Private Secretary, Mary Francis, to accompany her to meet the families and staff. ‘She really did break down there,’ says one of her team. ‘She said: “I want a woman with me because they understand”. She knew how she would feel.’

  Though never one for idle chat with staff going about their business on a normal day at the office, the monarch is often in a very different frame of mind on tour. Every member of the team, however, is well aware that, at any official engagement, the spotlight should always remain on the Queen.

  Frank Judd recalls the moment when he himself broke this cast-iron rule during the 1979 royal tour of the Gulf. He had been asked by the Foreign Secretary, David Owen, to break off from the tour for a few hours, to deliver a private reprimand to a local emir who had been breaching international sanctions against Rhodesia. Judd had also been authorised to give an off-the-record background briefing to a journalist. The following day, however, his remarks had been printed in full, and Judd suddenly found himself and his secret meeting all over the news. The royal tour had been eclipsed. ‘All I can say is that nobody in the Queen’s entourage or the Queen said anything to me,’ he recalls. ‘But I had the distinct impression that she was encouraging me to keep closer to her.’ Judd had been doing his job, he had been let down by a journalist and the Queen was making it very clear that she did not hold it against him. He was part of the team – her team. ‘I was very moved by that,’ he says. ‘I thought: “That’s my monarch!” if you know what I mean.’

  When on board the Royal Yacht, the minister in attendance was always treated as part of the Royal Household. Judd remembers being asked to join the Royal Family for one of Prince Philip’s barbecues on an empty beach as Britannia cruised the Persian Gulf. He would be touched, once again, when he went round to Buckingham Palace a few months later. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives had just won the 1979 election and Judd, along with all the other outgoing Labour ex-ministers, was invited to receive a formal farewell from the Queen. After a long and punitive election campaign, he recalls that the atmosphere was rather jolly as the jobless politicians stood around gossiping before the Queen’s arrival. ‘We were almost demob happy and very relaxed,’ he says. ‘And I suddenly became aware there was someone outside the group waiting and it was the Queen. I said “Hello, Ma’am” and she said: “I’ve got something here for you, a memory of happier times”. And she gave me an envelope addressed to me, with the words “Memories of a happier occasion” in her handwriting. And in there were photographs which she took of the barbecue. And there were photographs of me and her Private Secretary sitting in our deck chairs eating steak – very funny photographs – which I treasure to this day.’

  A lifelong ‘international socialist non-conformist’, Judd had been intrigued by what he discovered as he travelled through the Gulf with the Queen. It was abundantly clear that, for all the diplomatic niceties, the warm words and the gifts of precious carpets, she was keenly aware of the problems in the countries she was visiting. It is an old Palace joke that members of the Royal Family think the whole world smells of fresh paint. Judd found that the Queen was under no such illusions. ‘Let me say that I became very convinced of her liberal humanity on that trip,’ he says. ‘She did not have the wool pulled over her eyes. And she saw some of the underlying – what we would now call human rights – issues very clearly on her own account. And in private would give vent to her feelings.’

  He will not divulge what was said, out of respect for the Queen’s neutrality, but he remains a great admirer of the way she handled herself, both overseas and at home. ‘The whole point of a constitutional monarchy is that it is entirely irrational. It has no logical basis whatsoever,’ he argues. ‘It is the lock in the constitution. By accident someone is monarch and by accident they have this role. Now disaster could follow from that situation but our Queen has been anything but a disaster.’

  THE UNEXPECTED

  There are so many parts of the royal calendar that work like clockwork, year in, year out. It is during tours and state visits that things tend to go off-script. It might be an innocent remark, like that of the mayor showing the Queen some ancient civic regalia in a display case. ‘When do you wear it?’ she asked, by way of small talk. ‘Only on special occasions,’ came the mayoral reply, a line which would be gleefully recalled for a good deal longer than the regalia. Like all members of the Royal Family, the Queen enjoys those moments when things don’t go entirely to plan.

  In 1982 she was invited to Canada to sign the new Canada Act, embodying key constitutional changes, in a grand public ceremony. Members of the Canadian government then had to sign an associated document but, in doing so, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau managed to break the nib of the official pen. Next up was the Justice Minister, Jean Chrétien, who found that he couldn’t sign a thing. ‘Merde!’ he muttered within royal earshot, then suddenly remembered himself and looked up. The Queen was highly amused. And on her 1952 tour of Kenya, she was introduced to a little boy born on the same day as Prince Charles and named Prince as a result. If anyone thought he was going to surrender the bunch of flowers that he was supposed to present to the guest of honour, they could think again. Bouquet presentations – and non-presentations – have been a rich source of royal entertainment over the years, as have power cuts.

  ‘It’s awful getting dressed in the dark. I was just putting on my tiara!’ the Queen joked as the Governor-General of Jamaica, Sir Howard Cooke, led her to dinner by candlelight at his residence in Kingston during her 2002 Golden Jubilee visit. The power had gone off twice during the course of the evening – at one point official cars were lined up outside, to illuminate the hall with their headlights – but it seemed that the guest of honour was thoroughly enjoying the unexpected drama.

  After all, what often gets overlooked in the planning and execution of a state visit is the fact that the two heads of state are supposed to be enjoying themselves. David Owen’s happiest memory of his 1979 tour of Saudi Arabia is the dinner the Queen gave for King Khalid on the Royal Yacht in Dhahran. ‘We had a really good party and everyone felt it had gone really well,’ Lord Owen remembers. ‘The old king hobbles down the steps with the Duke of Edinburgh and I’m standing with the Queen. The King gets in this Rolls-Royce and suddenly this stick appears out of the window. And for about 300 yards this stick is waving out of the window and he’s
obviously had a hell of a time.’

  These are occasions when outsiders catch a glimpse of the real Queen. One quality that many have noted is her calmness. Even on her way to one of the most important and sensitive tours of the entire reign, the 2011 state visit to Ireland, the Queen gave no indication of any nerves, though the rest of her entourage were decidedly on edge. ‘There were no signs of tension,’ recalls William Hague, her Foreign Secretary on that adventure. ‘You could have imagined that we were just going for a nice day out. She was quite calm. She had already mastered everything.’

  Her first Commonwealth Secretary-General, Arnold Smith, would write of her ‘calm acceptance’ of any reverse. He would often have to inform her that yet another of her colonies was about to seek independence and did not want the Queen as its head of state. He contrasted the Queen’s ‘natural’ reaction with the possessive rage of her grandfather, George V, who could explode over the smallest challenge to his regal authority. He was absolutely furious in 1923 when he learned that Canada had had the temerity to sign a halibut fishing treaty with the United States and had not consulted him first.

  Behind the gentle, non-confrontational façade there has always been a steely sense of purpose, the ‘quiet insistence’ that Commonwealth Secretary-General Sonny Ramphal has observed. Those around her would never take the Queen or her opinion for granted. ‘I was always very nervous with the Queen. In fact, I still am,’ says Lynda Chalker. ‘I think she has always been very conscious that if she says something in just a few words and in just a few seconds, it will have a dramatic effect.’

  One of the more arrogant Commonwealth leaders during the Nineties was also the world’s youngest head of state at the time. Valentine Strasser had been a junior officer in the army of Sierra Leone in 1992 when he turned up at the presidential palace with a few other soldiers to complain about the lack of pay and equipment for his men. Fearing the worst, the President jumped in a helicopter and fled, whereupon Strasser decided to declare himself leader at the age of twenty-five – the same age as the Queen, in fact, when she had become head of state herself.

  The following year, he arrived at the Commonwealth summit in Cyprus and, like all leaders, was invited to a reception with the Queen on board the Royal Yacht. Sir Robert Woodard, Britannia’s captain, remembers that Strasser ‘behaved very badly’, ignoring his outstretched hand, and thus missing Woodard’s polite warning about the step on his way into the reception. He went flat on his face. ‘I couldn’t have been more pleased really,’ says Woodard. The following day Strasser returned for his one-on-one audience with the Queen. ‘This time, he came on board and shook my hand and it was like a wet kipper,’ says Woodard. ‘He was overcome with nerves because he realised he was going to be alone with Her Majesty.’

  Like all audiences, it was a private affair, but it would later emerge that the Queen had given the hot-headed young dictator some stern advice. He would need to embrace democracy, she told him, if he was to stay in the Commonwealth and, indeed, if he was to stay alive. She also told Strasser that she would help him by introducing him to someone who knew about reforming his ways. A few hours later, at the Queen’s banquet for the leaders, her strategy was clear: Strasser found himself seated next to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who had already been primed by the hostess to give the young man a talking-to.§§

  There have been occasional moments when the Queen has decided to let off steam, such as the night she surprised fellow guests by taking to the drums after a jolly dinner during that 1976 state visit to Luxembourg. Her entourage, however, would never take such moments as a cue for over-familiarity.

  Nor would they be in any doubt when they had let her down. During a royal cruise back from Finland in May 1976, as Britannia was passing from the Baltic through the Kiel Canal, the crew were asked to alert the Queen when the Yacht was passing a well-known stud.

  The request went astray and the Queen missed her horses. Her quiet fury was obvious the moment she appeared for dinner. A chilly silence prevailed as the officers present nervously took their seats, whereupon they were treated to a fascinating display of royal angermanagement. The Queen suddenly put her napkin over her face. She then slowly peeled it down to reveal a monarch transformed, smiling warmly and changing the subject. ‘It was like a magic trick,’ says one of the guests. ‘Suddenly, here was this new smiley Queen. It was quite extraordinary. And Prince Philip did the same thing.’ It was not merely a revealing illustration of iron self-control but also provides a sense of the way the Queen feels that life is one unending performance, even on home territory among close confidantes. Though reprieved, the crew of Britannia would never make that mistake again.

  Though she may be the most famous woman in the world, the Queen has always been, at heart, a shy person, much like her father; fiercely protective and conscious of her position, while modest about her own abilities. ‘What do I know?’ she sighed to one of her ministers over a Britannia lunch. ‘I’m just a woman about the place.’

  It has always helped her identify with those for whom a royal encounter is a source of terror. It may be an old cliché that the Queen puts others ‘at their ease’, but it is a phrase that has kept recurring over the years. The veteran royal photographer Reginald Davis recalls that the Queen could be disarmingly bashful at her media receptions on tour. ‘She was marvellous but she always looked down at your feet at a press reception. Maybe it was a nervous thing,’ he says. Many have remarked on how the Queen prefers to gloss over awkward accidents. During that 1961 tour of West Africa, there was an embarrassing moment at the state banquet on board the Royal Yacht in Bathurst when the wife of one Gambian VIP, on being offered gravy, proceeded to pour it in to her wine glass. The Queen did not flinch.

  Similarly, when a photographer dropped a glass of sherry all over the carpet during a press reception in Britannia in 1981, she pretended not to notice. A few hours later there was a sharp clattering noise as the same photographer was attempting to capture her arrival at an evening event and dropped a lens. ‘Oh, dear. It just really hasn’t been your day,’ the Queen remarked by way of consolation.

  Sir Jock Slater, serving as the Queen’s equerry during the 1970 tour of Australia, remembers lining up the guests for an investiture. One recipient was becoming increasingly perplexed about what he should do and say as he went up to receive his honour, so Slater attempted to calm him by explaining that the easiest way to get it right was to do exactly the same as the person ahead of him in the queue. By the time Slater had discovered that the recipient was following a woman, it was too late. The man did ‘as good a curtsey as he could manage,’ says Slater. ‘To this day, I don’t think he knew what he had done as Her Majesty was marvellous and held out her hand to help him up as if it was the most natural thing in the world.’

  As well as putting people ‘at their ease’, another quality singled out time and again is the Queen’s ability to make them feel as if they are the most fascinating person in the room. Tom Fletcher, a former British Ambassador, recalls his first meeting with the Queen at a Commonwealth summit while working as Foreign Office Private Secretary. He showed the Queen a photograph of his grandfather meeting her during her 1956 tour of Nigeria. ‘I know everyone has one of those stories,’ he says, ‘but her eyes lit up and you got a few seconds when she was completely in the moment and her eyes sparkled and fizzed.’

  ‘When you’re talking to her, you are the only person who exists,’ says Kamalesh Sharma, the Queen’s fifth Commonwealth Secretary-General. ‘I have seen her talk to millions of people and it’s all about focus on the person.’

  THE CHOICE OF WORDS

  Like the gifts, clothes and so much else, another aspect of any tour that will require plenty of thought are the speeches. Traditionally, there might be a major one at the state banquet on the first evening, plus one or two shorter addresses during a visit. If the Queen is in one of her realms, this will be a matter for her government in that country, and the British Foreign Office will have no more
say in the matter than an ambassador from Brussels or Bogotá. If she is on tour as Queen of the United Kingdom, then the local British Embassy and the Foreign Secretary will have produced a draft version of the speech. It is unlikely to survive intact, after the royal red pen has been run over it. It is a sacred convention that, with the exception of her Christmas broadcast, anything the Queen does or says in public is approved by her democratically elected ministers. This is known as speaking or acting ‘on advice’. However, it certainly does not mean that she is an automaton reading a government script. ‘You got a draft from an ambassador or the Foreign Office and then the Queen had views,’ says Sir William Heseltine. What might sound suitably regal to an ambassador did not always chime with the monarch, and a speech could come back severely tweaked. ‘Martin Charteris used to say that it had been “Queenised”,’ says Heseltine, adding that flowery metaphors and effusive adjectives ‘wouldn’t last a minute’. As we shall see, when the Foreign Office attempted to pack the Queen’s speech with effusive praise for the EEC, ahead of Britain’s entry into the Common Market, the final version was decidedly more workmanlike.

  A key influence in all the Queen’s speeches would often be the Duke of Edinburgh. Constitutionally, of course, he could have no say in their substance. The Queen, though, greatly valued his advice. Sir Robert Woodard recalls a typical rest day on board Britannia when the royal couple would work as a team from their studies on either side of the Upper Deck – her brightly decorated sitting room on the starboard side, and his teak-panelled study to port. ‘The Queen was writing her speech for the next day and she was padding to and from his study, giving him rewrites,’ says Woodard.

  The Queen could use her speeches to make important points that no ambassador or politician could hope to make – and she was happy to do so. Ahead of her 1979 visit to Malawi, the British High Commissioner, Mike Scott, wrote to the Foreign Office complaining that the President, Dr Hastings Banda, was very reluctant to make any sort of public acknowledgement of British financial support. Since being granted independence in 1964, the former British colony had trousered £140 million in aid, easily the largest contribution from any foreign nation, with barely a word of thanks. ‘A more serious aspect lies in the failure of President Banda to mention this when he so often makes comparisons between conditions in colonial times and those which exist today,’ wrote Scott. Might the Queen work on the President’s amnesia? Come the night of the state banquet, she duly saluted Malawi’s ‘rapid economic and social development’ under Dr Banda, adding: ‘My country is proud to be a chief contributor to this important work.’ And just in case anyone had not got the message, the Queen added: ‘We have demonstrated the genuineness of our concern for your future by the provision of one hundred and forty million pounds of capital aid.’