While the usual formalities were observed – tea with the Queen Mother, a wreath-laying at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior – the details were very much tailored to suit this special guest. Mindful of Mandela’s body-clock, the Queen brought forward the start of her state banquet by half an hour, to ensure that her guest was in his bed in the Palace’s Belgian Suite by 10 p.m. Though the dress code was the customary white tie, it was made clear that Mandela was very welcome to wear his own variation – no tie at all, but with the Order of Merit around his neck. The visit came at a time when every official visitor to the UK was automatically served British beef, in solidarity with the farming industry following an international ban on British beef. Mandela, however, did not like red meat. So the Queen produced a menu of sole, curried turkey and strawberry-and-lemon meringue, served with Louis Roederer champagne and a 1993 South African chardonnay.
Unusually, the state visitor found himself with a queen on either side of him at dinner, since the Queen Mother was determined to be there, three weeks short of her ninety-sixth birthday. The Queen herself had made a little-noticed but important concession to the forward-looking tone of the visit. Although she had worn her twenty-first-birthday diamonds in Cape Town the year before, she had decided not to wear any South African jewellery on this occasion. There was a lot to choose from, but she did not want to provoke discussions about bygone eras, let alone a debate over whether jewels should be handed back. Instead, she wore her Russian tiara from Queen Mary’s collection. In her speech, she again saluted her guest’s personal example: ‘You have provided the leadership and, by your willingness to embrace your former captors, have set the course for national reconciliation.’ Mandela in turn made no mention of either colonialism or sanctions, sticking to a short script proclaiming that ‘the antagonisms of past centuries are no more’.
Mandela’s popularity would lead to good-natured chaos everywhere. When the Prince of Wales took him to Brixton in south London, the visit had to be curtailed after thousands swamped the route of the walkabout. As Princess Zenani became detached from the main entourage, a rescue party had to wade in to extract her. When Mandela addressed both Houses of Parliament, several MPs and staff brought their children along to hear the first foreigner in more than thirty-five years invited to speak in Westminster Hall, Parliament’s grandest chamber. Presidents Clinton and Reagan had been expected to make do with the Royal Gallery.
The adulation continued wherever Mandela went. When he visited John Major in Downing Street, the entire staff lined up, unprompted, to applaud him. Major was as moved as his guest. ‘Mr President,’ he told him, ‘I want you to know this is the first time in six years all my staff have wanted to show their admiration like that.’
The most entertaining display of affection was that of a collection of fiercely competitive British academics. So many universities wanted to confer honorary degrees on Mandela that he could have spent all summer being feted in a range of different gowns and mortar boards on campuses all over Britain. Time was short, however, and he felt that he could not accept one institution without offending another. Prince Philip, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, had the solution: a mass investiture in the garden at Buckingham Palace. The seats of learning would come to Mandela, not the other way round. Even then there was trouble, as Sonny Ramphal, then Chancellor of Warwick University, recorded in his memoirs. Oxford University, under the chancellorship of Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, conveyed a fabulously pompous message to the Queen’s Private Secretary, explaining that it was quite impossible for Oxford to award anyone an honorary degree outside the precincts of the university. President Mandela would therefore have to come to Oxford. The Queen let it be known, in reply, that this was clearly Oxford’s problem, not hers, and that everyone else would understand if Oxford chose not to turn up. At which point Roy Jenkins’s panic-stricken staff suddenly unearthed a reason why he could actually confer the honorary degree after all. There was then the vexed question of a running order. It was decided that each university would have five minutes to perform its ceremony in order of the date of foundation. Oxford’s ‘Woy’ Jenkins thus had the honour of leading the way – and the pleasure of being the first dignitary to attempt the public pronunciation of Mandela’s second name, Rolihlahla.
Another break with tradition was the scrapping of the state visitor’s ‘return’ banquet for the host. Mandela wondered if he might give the Queen lunch and an evening concert instead. Delighted not to have to find another non-African tiara, she joined him for a South African-style spread of scallops and asparagus tart, breast of chicken with ‘bobotie’, ‘mealies’ and beans and fruit with ice cream. Later on, the two heads of state attended a sell-out evening of South African-inspired music at the Royal Albert Hall or, as Mandela called it, ‘that great round building’.
As the performance by Phil Collins, Hugh Masekela and Quincy Jones got going, the state visitor felt the urge to dance. According to Sally Bedell Smith, he discreetly turned to Sir Robin Renwick for advice. Would such a thing be allowed in the Royal Box? ‘You should do it,’ Renwick replied. ‘Don’t worry.’ So, as the Ladysmith Black Mambazo chorus, who had performed at his Nobel Prize ceremony, began to sing, Mandela stood up and started to clap along. Other members of the Royal Family quickly followed suit, until the Queen herself was joining in. No one could recall the last time the monarch had been seen to boogie in public, least of all during a state visit. However, this had been the week when the rulebook had long since been consigned to a Palace waste-paper basket. Hence a poignant moment at the Dorchester earlier in the day. Abandoning the convention of no speeches at return banquets, Mandela had decided he would still say something, and delivered a personal tribute to ‘this gracious lady’ over lunch. The Queen, who usually avoids off-the-cuff speeches much as she avoids shellfish and cats, cheerfully broke her own rule. With no notes, she rose to praise ‘this wonderful man’.
Mandela concluded his visit with two engagements that could hardly have been more different. In Trafalgar Square he appeared on the balcony of South Africa House, to the sort of scenes usually reserved for a homecoming cup-winning football team. ‘I would like to put each and every one of you in my pocket and return with you to South Africa,’ he told them. Before that, however, he had an entirely private meeting at Buckingham Palace with his fellow member of the Order of Merit, Margaret Thatcher. Neither would reveal the contents of the meeting though, when asked later, Mandela replied: ‘let bygones be bygones’.
For both heads of state, it had been an intoxicating week. Though Mandela could usually be relied upon to say something nice about the most tedious event, he spoke from the heart before his departure when he told reporters that his welcome in ‘one of the pastures of democracy’ had been ‘beyond my wildest expectations’. For the Queen, it would be another outstanding experience – an unforgettable highlight of the bleakest decade of her reign.
With outgoing and incoming state visits completed, it also meant that her friendship with Mandela would now become more ‘normal’. When he was passing through Britain, as he often did on official or private business, he would drop in to say ‘hello’, without it being newsworthy. He was back the following year for the Commonwealth summit in Edinburgh, where he met the Queen several times. A year later, en route to addressing an EU summit in Wales, he dropped in at Windsor for tea. By now the conversation was more that of family friends than two world leaders, as they discussed the Queen Mother’s birthday and news of Prince Harry’s success at the common-entrance exams for Eton. ‘Some are very difficult,’ she told him. The President said he’d just looked at some of the exam papers and couldn’t agree more.
By 1999, as he was preparing to step down from the presidency, he was addressing her by her first name, albeit applying certain formalities at the same time. ‘Dear Elizabeth,’ he began his letter to her in April 1999, as he invited her to pay another state visit to South Africa ahead of the Commonwealth summit in Durban later in the year. He si
gned off: ‘Please accept, Your Majesty, the assurances of our highest esteem, Nelson.’ By the time she came to that summit, he met her as an ex-President. Having made way for his ANC successor, Thabo Mbeki, in June 1999, he would become even more relaxed with the Queen, while never for a moment forgetting the dignity of her position. On being appointed an honorary Queen’s Counsel in 2000, he insisted on making a twenty-four-hour round trip to London for the presentation, even though the Queen would not be at the ceremony. He felt it would be disrespectful to the monarch if he did not attend. ‘We really tried to convince him not to travel to London for one day but he insisted,’ his executive assistant, Zelda la Grange, wrote in her memoir. ‘He wanted to honour his warm friendship with the Queen.’ As soon as the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh learned that he was coming to London, they invited him to pop round to Buckingham Palace for tea afterwards.
Zelda la Grange was always amused by her boss’s familiarity with the monarch. ‘I think he was one of very few people who called her by her first name and she seemed to be amused by it,’ she wrote, adding that Mandela’s second wife, Graça Machel, would often try to correct him. ‘When he was questioned one day by Mrs Machel and told that it was not proper to call the Queen by her first name, he responded: “But she calls me Nelson”. On one occasion when he saw her he said: “Oh, Elizabeth, you’ve lost weight!” ’ Mandela’s friendship extended to the Prince of Wales and other members of the Royal Family, all of whom would make a point of dropping in to see him when in South Africa.
In December 2013, the Queen was ‘deeply saddened’ to learn of the death of her friend, at the age of ninety-five. ‘Her Majesty remembers with great warmth her meetings with Mr Mandela,’ she said in a statement, as she despatched the Prince of Wales to South Africa to represent her at his funeral. South Africa continues to command a special place in her affections. When South Africa’s new President, Cyril Ramaphosa, paid his first official visit to Buckingham Palace ahead of the 2018 Commonwealth summit, officials were left looking at their watches as the audience ran on and on, to more than twice the allotted time. The Queen had wanted to show the new President – a protégé of Mandela – some of her correspondence with him. She had even had facsimile copies of it framed as a gift. The previous month, she had welcomed Thembi Tambo, daughter of former ANC president, Oliver Tambo, as the new South African High Commissioner to London. Her memories of those ‘outstanding’ experiences are as strong as ever.
Mandela’s death came just nine months after that of Margaret Thatcher, his great foe in the eyes of most people – except those of Mandela himself. In the space of a year, the Queen mourned two of the most important political figures of her reign, giants who would dominate their times.
It was a sign of the Queen’s regard for her first female Prime Minister that she attended Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in person. With the exception of close family and very close friends, the Queen normally stays away from funerals, for fear of intruding and of upstaging the other mourners. Her presence at St Paul’s Cathedral elevated the event to a proper national occasion – a state funeral in all but name. At the end, the Queen spoke warmly to the Thatcher family on the steps of the cathedral. If there were any lingering doubts about her enduring respect for her former Prime Minister, they could be laid to rest alongside her. Margaret Thatcher might not have been garlanded with an honorary degree from her old university, Oxford, as Mandela had been. She might not have been honoured with a statue in Parliament Square, as Mandela had been. However, in simply being there as sovereign, the Queen had paid her a compliment granted to just one other politician of modern times: Winston Churchill.
* Caroline Stephens (later Lady Ryder) was Mrs Thatcher’s diary secretary.
† The Princess did, indeed, meet Jamal and made subsequent visits to the orphanage that was looking after him. ‘There were places which we really felt were doing a particularly good job,’ she says.
‡ In 1967, Pindling formed the first black Bahamian administration, led the islands to independence in 1973 – when Prince Charles had a famous dance with Mrs Pindling – and served as Prime Minister for more than two decades. He was knighted in 1983 and had the national airport named after him, following his death in 2000.
§ During her 2007 state visit to the USA, the Queen was most intrigued by President George W. Bush’s 9 p.m. bedtime. ‘Does he get up very early?’ she asked her Ambassador.
¶ More than thirty years later, the Mulroney family would have a delightful and very different royal encounter when the former Prime Minister’s twin grandsons, Brian and Ben, were pages at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Granddaughter Ivy, four, was a bridesmaid. The children’s mother, Jessica, is a close friend of the Duchess.
Chapter 11
BREAKING THE ICE
‘We have played a card which only Britain can play’
Garlanded with prizes and plaudits (and now the ultimate posthumous accolade of modern times – an international airport bearing his name), Václav Havel stands in the front rank of twentieth-century statesmen. As such, he could spot a class act when he saw one. Having become the first President of the Czech Republic, he had only a few things left on his bucket list. One of them was a visit from the Queen. Her arrival in 1996 would be an occasion for casting precedent and protocol aside, as he made this a more spectacular and personal affair than any previous state visit in his nation’s short history. After she had left, the poet/playwright/exprisoner/president used his weekly broadcast to the nation to paint a portrait of his guest. It wasn’t saccharine stuff about a nice woman in smart clothes who had been very gracious. Rather, he explained that the visit had been a lesson in political manners. He had been struck by the way in which the Queen had combined ‘the dignity of the throne’ with ‘an ability to take things for what they are, curiosity, a sense of humour, a sense of perspective, an informal attitude’. In short, she had shown the ‘real charisma of someone who has found the proper measure of playing the part’.
For Havel and his countrymen, the Queen’s visit had been a genuinely historic moment in the modern story of a democratic nation born out of totalitarianism. And there has been the same sense of occasion – of a national turning point – in so many countries over the years. Take the Queen’s 1979 visit to the United Arab Emirates, where her host was Sheikh Zayed, founding father of the nation. That visit went on to become part of the school history syllabus, for ‘history’ is what it was – and is – to a proud young country. Trips like these were not mere diplomatic pleasantries, but landmarks. The fact that the Queen continues to reign long after these events only gives them added resonance and poignancy. So any attempt to pick out the Queen’s ‘greatest’ tours is an entirely subjective exercise. She would probably hope that they have all been ‘great’, in the eye of the beholder.
She has been the first reigning monarch to visit many countries, including Japan, Brazil and Tuvalu. She has visited countries that did not even exist when she came to the Throne – including Havel’s Czech Republic. She has visited countries that do not exist any more, from Yugoslavia to Northern Rhodesia. Until the Royal Archives yield the answer many years hence, we will not know which have been her favourite (and her least favourite) tours. As Britain’s Number One diplomat, she is far too diplomatic to say. What we can do, however, is listen to those who have travelled with her or have welcomed her. They will point to a handful of her more than 260 visits to more than 125 nations and territories and single out some of those which have not just been historic in the eyes of the Queen or her hosts but in the eyes of the whole world.
GERMANY, 1965
To this day, many Germans look back on two moments that have come to define Germany’s post-war readmission to the international fold. The first was the visit of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963, just after the erection of the Berlin Wall, and his famous ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech.* The second was the arrival of the Queen in 1965. Thomas Kielinger, doyen of the German media in London a
nd the Queen’s German-language biographer, keeps an album of commemorative stamps from the period. The presence of the President and the monarch were the stand-out moments of the age, he says. If Kennedy provided morale-boosting political reassurance at the height of Cold War tensions, the Queen conveyed the same message, but with added glamour and mystique.
‘There was a frenzy,’ says Kielinger. ‘The Queen and her sister were beautiful and charming and the tabloids had always had a field day with them. As Princesses, they boosted circulation for a long time. There was all this Anglophilia. Britain’s soft power was huge.’
Germany had been eager for a royal visit for years. The stumbling block had been British nervousness. It was a reluctance that had baffled the German people, given that other old wartime foes had been ready to build new friendships. In his post-mortem of the visit, Sir Frank Roberts, the British Ambassador to Bonn (then the German capital), explained the dilemma: ‘In Germany, there was a widespread feeling that Britain was reserved towards Europe and especially towards Germany and it was not understood why British memories should be longer than in other European countries which had suffered even more from Hitler’s Reich.’
Sir Frank noted that the political relationship between the two countries was sound and sensible. Britain and Germany both agreed on the need for European unity, on the importance of transatlantic collaboration and on the significance of free trade. Both nations had been drawn further together by their mutual exasperation with the egotistical posturing of the French President, General de Gaulle. In 1963, de Gaulle had vetoed Britain’s application to join the new EEC, on the grounds that the UK was ‘insular’ and ‘maritime’ (he would, of course, veto it again in 1967). In short, he was driving both London and Bonn up the wall in equal measure.
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