Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  ** ‘Keep Buggering On.’

  Chapter 13

  THE FAMILY

  THE DUKE

  The Queen has always relied on members of her family to act, as David Cameron puts it, ‘in loco reginae’. As she herself has often said, ‘I can’t be everywhere and I can’t do everything.’ Throughout her reign, members of the family have had to stand in for her, none more so than the Duke of Edinburgh. His supporting role at the monarch’s side has already been explored. For more than six decades, however, he would play a very important international role in his own right. During the early part of the reign, it was the Duke who undertook much of the heavy lifting on her behalf. In those initial years, when travelling took much longer and the priority was the Commonwealth, he would visit many of the remotest parts of the English-speaking world. Although the online royal drama The Crown might portray these trips as a glorified cruise, they had a groundbreaking diplomatic and scientific purpose, which is hard to convey to a twenty-first-century audience. Television viewers in 1957, however, were glued to his illustrated talks on the flora and fauna of the South Seas and the Indian Ocean.

  The Duke would become the regular royal face at the Commonwealth Games when the Queen was unable to attend herself. It was he who pushed through the gradual change from the ‘British Empire and Commonwealth Games’ to the ‘British Commonwealth Games’ (as they became in 1970) to the ‘Commonwealth Games’ (from 1978).

  As royal and Foreign Office priorities began to shift during the Sixties, the Duke would perform a similar sort of pathfinding role to that performed by the Prince of Wales a generation later. In 1960, the Queen was invited to tour Argentina and Chile, but declined, due to Commonwealth commitments and the arrival of Prince Andrew. Instead, she proposed sending the Duke of Edinburgh a little later, in 1962. The Foreign Office was in favour, for both commercial and political reasons. This was the height of the Cold War and no one wanted another Fidel Castro. An internal Foreign Office memo in 1961 notes that such a trip might deter ‘further defections on the Cuban model’. In March 1961, the Duke’s Private Secretary, Jim Orr, wrote to all the embassies in South America with a briefing that offers a useful insight into his approach to royal tours. Formal functions, he said, ‘should be kept to a minimum’ and ‘return hospitality should not be encouraged’. All industrial visits ‘should have a particular connection with Britain’, and ‘HRH would like to play polo whenever there is an opportunity’. Military events were extremely unwelcome. ‘It is very much hoped that Service engagements are not included,’ Orr added. ‘In fact, HRH does not expect to take any uniforms with him.’

  The Duke could always be usefully despatched to represent the Queen at events that might not be entirely appropriate for the monarch but which required a royal presence none the less. In 1971, after she was unable to attend the Commonwealth summit in Singapore, it would have been impossible for the Queen to attend the Shah of Iran’s absurdly extravagant celebrations to mark 2,500 years of the Persian Empire. Nor would she have wanted to attend this eye-poppingly over-the-top four-day exercise in conspicuous consumption, staged in a purpose-built 160-acre tented city near the ancient capital of Persepolis. The Shah flew in Parisian caterers from Maxim’s and a fake forest – plus genuine exotic birds to sit in its fake trees. A car-sized lump of ice would be delivered by helicopter each day, just to chill the champagne. The highlight was a five-hour banquet including quails’ eggs stuffed with caviar, champagne sorbet and fifty roast peacocks. The whole event cost £275 million and triggered worldwide condemnation, not least from the exiled revolutionaries, who would use it as ammunition to foment revolution seven years later. The Shah was a British ally, however, and the House of Windsor needed to be properly represented at an event where all the world’s other monarchies would be present. So the Queen sent the Duke and Princess Anne. The British photographer Reg Davis was there as the Shah’s personal photographer. He recalls that the Duke was not best pleased to see him. ‘What’s he doing here?’ he asked the Shah. ‘He’s working for me,’ came the reply.

  Over the years, the Duke’s primary international role has been to accompany the Queen on her visits to most of the nations on Earth. Wearing his other hats – notably as international President of the World Wildlife Fund and President of the International Equestrian Federation – he would also be able to travel to places far off the beaten track, as far as official visits were concerned. His greatest global achievement, however, is surely the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, now in its seventh decade.

  Yet all around the world, there have been thousands of people in positions of great authority – some have ended up running their countries – who have benefited from another of the Duke’s bright ideas. At the end of the First World War, a pioneering clergyman called the Reverend Robert Hyde set up the Boys’ Welfare Society ‘to save young boys from degeneration’. It was his idea to bring together teenagers from poor backgrounds and from public schools at a series of summer camps. His work had the active support of the Duke of York before he became George VI. Hyde’s movement evolved into the Industrial Society and, by 1952, it invited the Duke of Edinburgh to become its patron. He agreed as long as he could be ‘of use’. He was particularly interested in the effect of modern post-war industry on the people it employed. The Duke decided to set up a conference of youngish leaders of the future – be they aspiring executives, union leaders or politicians. Together with the Industrial Society’s rising star, a dynamic alumnus of Oxford and Harvard called Peter Parker,* he formed a board of eminent thinkers and, in 1956, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences (CSC) were born. The Duke deliberately chose the word ‘study’ so that no one felt compelled to reach a conclusion. Nearly 300 young leaders – one-third British, two-thirds Commonwealth – were invited to Oxford University to hear the Duke kick it all off with a televised speech in which he urged them not to ‘decide’ anything, but to be ‘more aware of what industry does to people’.

  By royal standards, this was radical stuff. The delegates were split into mixed groups and taken all over Britain for a fortnight. It was an illuminating experience. One group found that workers’ morale was ten times higher among London sewage workers than at the Savoy Hotel, purely because of different management styles. It worked so well that a second conference was organised in Canada in 1962. One team leader would later recall that his group included a rather cocky Australian union official who ‘was always late, sauntering in five minutes after everybody else’. The union rep, a certain Bob Hawke, would go on to become Prime Minister of Australia, while the team leader ended up as the Defence Minister of Canada. The CSC would continue to attract a similar calibre of applicant. Alan Johnson, later MP and Home Secretary, has called it ‘One of the most memorable events of my life . . . It’s not an exaggeration to say that the 1992 CSC enriched my life.’

  Over time, the Duke would hand on much of his life’s work to the next generation. The Princess Royal has followed him as patron of the Commonwealth Study Conferences and admits that no one, least of all the Duke, thought they would be going this long. ‘The original concept was reconnecting the Commonwealth post-war in business, political and union terms,’ says the Princess. ‘I think he thought it was only going to be a couple of cycles and then it would probably not be necessary.’ Like so many of the Duke’s ideas, it would go on to exceed all expectation.

  THE PRINCESS ROYAL, THE DUKE OF YORK AND THE EARL AND COUNTESS OF WESSEX

  The Princess Royal has only the haziest memory of that first overseas tour, accompanying her elder brother in the Royal Yacht in 1954 towards the end of the Queen’s round-the-world tour. She would start to learn the rudiments of royal diplomacy after her schooldays were over. She was with her parents and the Prince of Wales when the Queen performed that first walkabout in New Zealand in 1970. The Princess says her own first attempt took place a few days later in Melbourne, Australia. At the age of nineteen, she was not exactly thrilled by the prospect. ‘What do you
say when you walk up to a complete stranger? You learn by experience!’ Her debut walkabout would have a bizarre twist, too. ‘Almost the first person I stopped to talk to looked of contemporary age. I asked her where she came from. She came from Malta and she said: ‘We’ve met before”. I said: “Well it’s first time I’ve been in Australia. How could that be?” And she said: “I was the floor maid in the hotel in Malta when you stayed in 1954”. I didn’t think she was much older than me! So even at that first attempt, you recognise how small that world is and how easily people move around the Commonwealth.’

  She soon learned to enjoy the experience of walkabouts and says the Queen did, too. ‘The people were so friendly and quite often came up with their own lines of communication. The chances were somebody would yell at you: ‘My cousin’s back in Perth!’ It was that kind of conversation – lots of links that would come out of the crowd.’

  Travelling with the Queen and Prince Philip, she also perfected another royal skill: waving: ‘I remember going to King Constantine’s wedding in Greece in Athens and being absolutely fascinated by Continental members of royal families and how they waved. It is completely different.’ She laughs as she remembers the Australian students who presented the Queen with an inspired invention: a waving machine. ‘They gave her a stuffed glove on a wooden lever so that you could tweak the end of the lever and this hand went to and fro. I think they thought it was rather cheeky but Her Majesty was thrilled.’

  The Princess undertook her first solo engagements overseas a year later when she travelled to Kenya. Although she went there with Prince Charles, he would disappear on safari while she had planned a programme that would shape her work for years to come. On leaving school at Benenden, the Princess had decided to focus her attentions on a handful of charities. ‘My father did suggest very strongly that you should only pick one or two that you really felt you could get involved with in the early stages,’ she says. ‘I think he felt that for both the Queen and himself, the expectation was that they take on all these things that had been done before. That way, you never really had the time to get under the skin of an organisation.’ One of those she would embrace was Save the Children. ‘I didn’t choose it. They asked me,’ she says.

  Her visit to Kenya would be a chance to see the charity in action and to promote it. She was accompanied by a team from the children’s television programme Blue Peter, and by presenter Valerie Singleton. This was a further piece of careful media management by the Palace press secretary, William Heseltine, the architect of the historic television documentary, Royal Family, the year before. If the public were to understand the nature of modern royal duties, they would need to see them being performed. The last thing the Princess wanted was yet another old-fashioned ribbon-cutting ceremony. During his days as Vice-Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, Sir Roger du Boulay remembers receiving a draft programme for a visit by the Princess to Scandinavia. ‘A perfectly respectable ambassador had sent a draft programme which consisted of babies. I tore it up and sent it back to him saying: “Take her anywhere cutting edge, technical and interesting. Take her to a car factory.” She had a whale of a time.’

  Heseltine’s plans for the Princess’s Kenyan tour had not gone down well with the Foreign Office, however. Sir Eric Norris, the British High Commissioner in Nairobi, regarded the presence of any media as a gross intrusion. He was of the FCO old school who seemed to regard his primary role as that of royal travel agent. The Prince and Princess, he informed his superiors in London, ‘wished for a private visit with the minimum of publicity’. Heseltine’s plan for the media, he warned, ‘is hardly consistent with our contention that the object of the visit is to provide peace and quiet for Their Royal Highnesses’.

  In the event, the Princess’s trip would generate vast amounts of media coverage for both her work and for Save the Children. Sir Eric remained unimpressed. ‘The gentlemen of the Press, more especially the photographers, were frequently importunate and not so well behaved as one would have wished,’ he wrote in his despatch afterwards. ‘A very difficult fortnight.’ He was also sniffy about the Blue Peter team that was following the Princess. ‘Most of the filming was with Miss Valerie Singleton, whose many accomplishments do not, I think, include the art of self-effacement.’ The Princess, however, looks back on it all with great affection. Reviewing film footage of her visit, she instantly recognises the first school on her itinerary, explaining how, from a modest start, it has gone on to become one of the best schools in East Africa. She has revisited it many times.

  On some tours with the Queen and the Duke, the host nation would arrange for the Princess to have a suitable ‘companion’ on tour. During the 1971 state visit to Turkey, she was entrusted to Belkis Versan, twenty-two, and the daughter of the director of protocol. The Foreign Office informed the Palace that she was ‘an attractive, lively and sophisticated girl . . . well at ease with foreigners’. Although good at waterskiing, she had ‘no particular knowledge of horses’.

  Following the Princess’s (first) marriage to Captain Mark Phillips in 1973, she would have no further need of companions. Her workmanlike approach to foreign visits has barely changed in years. She has long been one of the busiest royal travellers, often with a minimal entourage (or none at all, when touring outside the royal orbit as, for example, when she is travelling as a member of the International Olympic Committee). She has become the first member of the Royal Family to make an official royal visit to places like Mongolia, Vietnam and Madagascar. ‘The great thing about the Princess Royal is she’s very hardworking but she’s also very efficient and very low-maintenance,’ says Sir Simon Fraser, former head of the Diplomatic Service. ‘She just does it.’

  For ten years after leaving the Royal Navy in 2001, the Duke of York was an unpaid ‘special representative’ for British trade overseas. He relinquished the role in 2011 of his own volition, after headlines about some of his business contacts, notably a convicted American sex offender, became a distraction. Since then, he has focussed on promoting enterprise and new technology at home, while supporting the Queen in entertaining visiting world leaders. He has his critics inside the Foreign Office, where some remember being on the receiving end of his brisk manner, but the Duke has his fans, too.

  Tom Fletcher, former Number Ten Private Secretary and Ambassador-turned-academic, says that he consulted the Duke for a review of Foreign Office strategy. ‘He took a close interest in it. He has observed a lot of diplomats up close,’ says Fletcher. ‘He’s pretty forthright on the strengths and weaknesses of the FCO. He gave me some good feedback which I was able to deploy, particularly in dealing with a region like the Gulf. The family have longer-term perspectives than governments. You need to invest in relationships which can carry weight across generations. He was very thoughtful about how do we ensure Prince William and Prince Harry have those long-term, load-bearing relationships that will be with them in fifty years’ time.’

  Like the Princess Royal, her younger brother, Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, decided early on to focus on a number of core projects. On the day he married Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999, it was announced that he would, eventually, inherit the title of Duke of Edinburgh from his father. He has now taken on what will perhaps go down as the Duke’s greatest creation, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. In his youth, Prince Edward completed the bronze, silver and gold tiers of the award and now chairs its international operations as it continues to grow overseas. He also devotes a great deal of time to another international organisation that was once close to the Duke’s heart, as vice-patron of the Commonwealth Games Federation.

  The Countess of Wessex also places a strong emphasis on youth charities and young people. Internationally, one of her priorities has been the fight against avoidable blindness, the primary aim of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Trust, of which the Countess is the vice-patron. She has followed its work all over the Commonwealth, but will never forget what happened during her 2017 visit to a remote part of Bangladesh, where she dropped in
on a local health clinic. ‘A lady sitting very close to me had a little baby sitting on her lap who was terribly sweet and I waved at him,’ says the Countess. ‘She immediately plonked him in my lap so I was playing with him. I turned him round to look at him and I noticed that he had a squint.’ The Countess’s own daughter, Lady Louise, had a similar eye condition as a baby. She recognised the symptoms in seven-month-old Junayed right away, being well aware of the importance of early intervention in strengthening eye muscles to prevent a ‘lazy’ eye. ‘I could see that this baby definitely had a squint. So I asked the other professionals there if they would look at this child.’ She was very conscious that this had to be done carefully. ‘I probably put the fear of God into this poor mother. However, there were some very kind people there who made sure that the family were able to get the right kind of treatment. He’s now being well cared for and he will be absolutely fine.’

  DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

  No royal ambassador would ever be quite like Diana, Princess of Wales. Her separation from the Prince in 1992 and her tragically short life as a divorcee, following the decree absolute in 1996, may have caused conniptions among the protocol departments both at home and abroad. Her post-marital modus operandi was never entirely clear. What exactly was Diana’s royal status, as a semidetached member of the family? Indeed, what was she trying to achieve on her occasional visits overseas, if they were not in the name of the Crown?

  In the year following her separation, the Princess made her first solo visit overseas, with a trip to one of the poorest countries on Earth, Nepal. Only Diana could have attracted an international media entourage three times larger than the number of international phone lines out of Nepal. Even Vogue magazine despatched a team, complete with red ‘Vogue’ baseball caps, in the (vain) hope that the Princess would look at their lens before anyone else’s. The government of the mountain kingdom was confused about how to welcome her. At the suggestion of the Foreign Office, there was no national anthem or formal welcome at the airport, prompting one British report of ‘threadbare red-carpet treatment’. The Nepalese formally complained, pointing out that there was nothing threadbare about the length of red carpet that had been rolled out for the Princess.