Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  In the following months, Britain publicly pursued various diplomatic options for international supervision of the canal while secretly plotting military action against Egypt with France and Israel. The plan called for Israel to invade Egypt through the Sinai Peninsula on October 29, 1956, which would then prompt several thousand British and French troops to intervene in a so-called effort to save the canal from the battling Israeli and Egyptian forces. The entire misbegotten operation was a ruse to ensure that Britain and France could recapture the canal by force.

  The invasion succeeded after a week of hostilities. But Eden made a terrible miscalculation by keeping the United States in the dark, infuriating Dwight Eisenhower, who had been working with the British government in the spirit of the “special relationship.” Not only did the newly reelected American president oppose the Suez military adventure for destabilizing the Middle East, he worried that the Soviet Union’s offer to assist Egypt could trigger a wider war. The United States joined other countries, including many of Britain’s Commonwealth allies, in the United Nations to condemn the Suez action and demand a cease-fire. The crisis caused a run on the pound—the sale of millions from sterling accounts, especially in the United States—which enabled Eisenhower to exert further leverage by refusing to back an international loan to Britain unless the invading forces were withdrawn. The U.N. cease-fire took effect at midnight on November 6, and by the end of December the French and British troops had completed a humiliating retreat.

  Through her daily boxes, the Queen had access to the Foreign Office documents about the Suez strategy. “Nothing was kept from her. She knew about the secret deals beforehand,” said one Palace adviser. In Eden’s view, “she understood what we were doing very well.” During the weeks before the invasion, she had two audiences with the prime minister, whose nerves were frayed from the tension. He began taking Benzedrine, which aggravated his insomnia and volatile moods. Martin Charteris later described him as “edgy” and “jumpy,” and unable to sit still when he came to Buckingham Palace. “I think the Queen believed Eden was mad,” recalled Charteris.

  Despite misgivings by some members, Eden’s cabinet backed the Suez operation with near unanimity. Michael Adeane supported the prime minister, but the Queen’s assistant private secretaries Martin Charteris and Edward Ford were adamantly opposed. Elizabeth II might have raised her signature question: “Are you sure you are being wise?” The most Eden would reveal two decades later to biographer Robert Lacey was that the Queen did not express her disapproval, “nor would I claim that she was pro-Suez.” She maintained scrupulous neutrality in keeping with her constitutional role. “I don’t think she was really for it,” recalled Gay Charteris. “That is the impression Martin got, and he was frightfully against it.”

  Mentally and physically shattered—by one account “in such a bad way that he didn’t make sense”—Eden flew to Jamaica in mid-November for a rest cure at Goldeneye, the home of writer Ian Fleming, leaving R. A. “Rab” Butler in charge during the interim. Churchill, who criticized Eden’s failure to consult Eisenhower, dispatched a letter to his old friend, emphasizing that the two countries needed to stop second-guessing Eden’s decisions and concentrate on having a united front against the Soviet Union. Replying on November 23, Eisenhower agreed that the Soviets were “the real enemy” and that the United States and Britain should focus on “achieving our legitimate objectives in the Middle East.”

  Churchill sent Eisenhower’s letter to the Queen, who observed that “it is most interesting to learn his appreciation of the situation, and I hope it means that the present feeling that this country and America are not seeing eye-to-eye will soon be speedily replaced by even stronger ties between us.” Britain would in fact work more harmoniously with America on the international stage in the following decades, even as its prestige as a world power faded and its colonies pushed for independence.

  Although the Queen bore no blame personally, the setback of Suez inevitably cast a shadow on her reign. The most immediate casualty was Eden himself. His health still fragile, he decided to resign on January 9, 1957, at age fifty-nine, after only twenty months in office. The Queen praised his “highly valued” leadership “in tempestuous times,” and Eden expressed gratitude for her “wise and impartial reaction to events.” But his reputation as a statesman was in tatters, never to be fully rehabilitated.

  Once again it fell to Elizabeth II to select the party leader, but this time she was caught up in political machinations that for the first time reflected badly on her reputation for impartiality. While the Labour Party elected its leaders by democratic vote, the more elitist Conservatives preferred an obscure process of private soundings they called “emergence.” The two leading candidates were sixty-two-year-old Harold Macmillan, the chancellor of the exchequer, and fifty-four-year-old Rab Butler, the leader of the House of Commons, who had been the prime minister’s deputy and expected to get the top job.

  It seemed reasonable to reward Butler for his decades of service in leadership roles. He had also objected to Suez, while Macmillan had been one of its architects, even as he managed to distance himself from the fiasco. Eden had no formal say in the selection of a successor, although he did tell the Queen he preferred Butler.

  At the retiring prime minister’s suggestion, her point men for the decision were the party’s top mandarins, sixty-three-year-old Lord Salisbury, and fifty-six-year-old David Maxwell Fyfe, Viscount Kilmuir, who served as Lord Chancellor, one of the senior officers of Parliament. Together they polled the cabinet, along with several former ministers and the leader of the backbenchers. Salisbury reported to the Queen that Macmillan came out ahead by a wide margin. Churchill also weighed in, advising the Queen to “choose the older man.”

  But when she summoned Macmillan to the Palace on January 10 and asked him to form a government, her choice surprised the Tory rank and file, many of whom supported Butler. Rather than making a well-considered decision, Elizabeth II seemed to have ceded her judgment to a pair of hidebound aristocrats whose soundings were too narrow. In fairness to the Queen, she was only following the improvisational rules of the Conservative Party. If she had made an independent choice—a highly unlikely outcome, given her cautious temperament—she would have been accused of overreaching her role. Even so, the lingering impression was of a young woman out of touch, and too beholden to the wishes of an Establishment coterie. The new Elizabethan Age, so buoyant five years before, was losing altitude in the cool air of criticism.

  “Wheeeee!” the Queen exclaimed as she

  caught her first glimpse of the lower

  Manhattan skyline. It reminded her

  of “a row of great jewels.”

  The royal couple approaching New York City on a ferryboat, October 1957. Associated Press

  SIX

  Made for Television

  THE ONE MISSING VOICE IN THE TENSE DAYS OF SUEZ CONFLICT AND leadership change was Prince Philip’s. It was a time when the Queen could have used his moral support. But on October 15 the thirty-five-year-old duke had set out, with his wife’s encouragement, on a four-month solo tour of Commonwealth countries on Britannia covering nearly forty thousand miles.

  His primary destination was Melbourne, where he was to open the 1956 Olympic Games and, as Philip later explained, “it would have been much simpler to have flown out and back.” But he and the Queen decided to expand the scope of the trip to include more stops in Australia and visits to New Zealand, Kenya, and Gambia, as well as a number of “remote communities who are loyal members of the Commonwealth” such as Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Ceylon, and Malaya. He also went to the Falklands in the South Atlantic, and British bases in the Antarctic.

  By his own description, Philip is “by profession a sailor” who owes his “allegiance to another of the world’s few really great fraternities, the fraternity of the sea.” So in the autumn of 1956 he relished reliving the camaraderie of the Officers’ Wardroom, but in considerably more luxurious circum
stances than his navy days, with formal dinners at a table for twenty set with silver and crystal, accompanied by the best vintages from the royal yacht’s wine cellar.

  The trip also allowed him to free himself from the strictures of Palace life and the suspicious gaze of courtiers. Unlike other men of his generation and class, he was dependent on and subordinate to his wife. Only when on his own could he claim the control that his contemporaries took for granted. He pursued his fascination with exploring by bringing along the famous veteran of Antarctic expeditions, Sir Raymond Priestley; grew a trim mustache and beard known in the Royal Navy as a “full set”; and practiced painting with a private tutor, Norfolk artist Edward Seago, who had been instructing him since the beginning of the year. In a nostalgic touch, Philip signed his paintings with the Greek “Phi”—a circle bisected by a vertical line.

  Back home, critics began calling his protracted journey “Philip’s Folly,” noting his conspicuous absence during the aborted Middle East invasion, not to mention his ninth wedding anniversary (although he did send the Queen white roses and a photo of two iguanas embracing), and Christmas, when he broadcast a brief radio address from halfway between New Zealand and Cape Horn, referring to men and women in the Commonwealth “willing to serve others rather than themselves.”

  By the fifth year of his wife’s reign, Philip had firmly established a range of causes and passions that he would expand in the years to come. “He has one of those minds where you may be sure the door that is closed is the one he wants to look behind,” said one Buckingham Palace adviser. “He wants to know what is going on. That is the nature of the man.”

  From his years as a naval officer, he had been absorbed by science and technology, and he spoke frequently on improving education in those fields. But he equally emphasized the development of the “whole man” by building character along with intellect. He was passionate about the links between mental, moral, and physical health, and the need to give young people opportunities for physical fitness to prevent the spread of what he called “sub-health.” He was an early promoter of Outward Bound, the wilderness schools launched by Gordonstoun founder Kurt Hahn to develop leadership skills and self-confidence by meeting rigorous physical challenges. In 1956 Philip began the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, a worldwide program to recognize teenagers and young adults for completing courses of community service and physical endurance.

  Toward the end of Philip’s trip, his longtime friend and loyal private secretary, Mike Parker, suddenly left for London when his wife, Eileen, filed for divorce, accusing her husband of adultery. The news splashed across the British tabloids, and Fleet Street conflated Parker’s prominent position in the royal household with Philip’s months overseas to raise questions about the stability of the royal marriage. The press focused on the duke’s attendance for several years at a stag luncheon group in Soho called the Thursday Club that included Parker as well as actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov. While nothing untoward was said to have occurred at these gatherings except drinking, smoking, and telling racy tales, one of the participants, celebrity photographer Stirling Henry Nahum, popularly known as “Baron,” was alleged to have provided his apartment for assignations between the duke and an unnamed “party girl,” causing a “rift” in his marriage.

  Given Philip’s matinee idol looks and eye for feminine beauty, he had been linked in the rumor mill for some time to various actresses and society beauties such as Pat Kirkwood, Helene Cordet, and Katie Boyle—all of whom denied anything more than friendship or a glancing acquaintance. The story of the “party girl” had no basis in fact, and Philip was “very hurt, terribly hurt, very angry” about the allegation. The Queen took the unusual step of authorizing her usually tight-lipped press secretary, Commander Richard Colville, to issue an explicit denial, saying, “It is quite untrue that there is any rift between the Queen and the Duke.” There the matter rested, although rumors of Philip’s supposed dalliances would continue to surface whenever he was spotted on the dance floor or in lively conversation with a pretty woman.

  Parker resigned his position to quell the publicity while his case wound through the courts. Elizabeth II and Philip were reunited on February 16, 1957, in Portugal, a moment she used in her own sly fashion to dispel questions about the state of her marriage. When her tanned and freshly shaven consort boarded the Queen’s plane, he found her and the members of her household all wearing false beards. The royal couple spent two days alone before they resumed their public roles on a three-day state visit in Portugal. Reporting on his tour at a luncheon in London on the 26th, the duke took pains to note that in his younger days being away for four months would have meant “nothing at all,” while now for the “obvious reasons” of his wife and family, the prolonged absence “meant much more to me.” But he went on to say that “making some personal sacrifice” was worthwhile to advance the well-being of the Commonwealth “even a small degree.”

  Just four days earlier, the Queen had rewarded that sacrifice and Philip’s work generally as her consort by officially making him a Prince of the United Kingdom—a more elevated title than the royal duke designation he had held since their marriage. The idea had come from Harold Macmillan, the new prime minister, who shrewdly saw it as a way to further reinforce Philip’s standing with his wife, as well as in the eyes of Britain and the Commonwealth.

  Despite a naturally gloomy cast of mind, Macmillan took charge with a burst of optimism, moving smartly away from the Suez shame and reaffirming Britain’s status as a great country filled with industrious citizens. “Most of our people have never had it so good,” he famously said on July 20, 1957. Under his watch, Britain did indeed grow more prosperous. Shortly after moving into 10 Downing Street, Macmillan also worked deftly to mend the special relationship frayed by Suez, quietly orchestrating an invitation from Eisenhower to the Queen for a state visit to the United States in the fall of 1957.

  Macmillan had an easier relationship with Elizabeth II than his jittery predecessor, not as cozy as Churchill’s but sympathetic, notably on her part, although she sometimes became irritated by his antique affectations and tendency to pontificate. Like Churchill, Macmillan had an American mother (invariably described as pushy or dominating) and what his biographer Alistair Horne characterized as an “instinctive reverence towards the monarchy.” The prime minister was astute, witty, and urbane, capable of the sort of penetrating character assessments that intrigued the Queen, who savored political gossip.

  Macmillan was a complicated character, a combination of cunning and vulnerability, deeply religious as well as ruthless. The grandson of an impoverished Scottish farmer who built a fortune as a book publisher, Harold had received all the advantages of an education at Eton and Oxford. In World War I, he was wounded five times, an experience that gave him unusual affinity with the working-class men who had served with him in the trenches, along with a measure of survivor’s guilt.

  He vaulted into the aristocracy when he married the third daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire, Lady Dorothy Cavendish, who tormented him by conducting a decades-long affair with Robert Boothby, a flamboyant and amusing bisexual politician. The relationship was an open secret (“We all knew about it,” the Queen Mother years later told her friend Woodrow Wyatt, a conservative columnist for The Times and News of the World) that made Macmillan’s humiliation even more agonizing. At the beginning, he suffered a nervous breakdown, and over time he coped by developing “a mask of impenetrable calm.” Yet behind what U.S. ambassador David Bruce called a “Victorian languor,” Macmillan was capable of “force” and “determination,” as well as “swift action.”

  More at ease in the like-minded company around the bar at White’s, the men’s club on St. James’s Street, he nevertheless quickly warmed to the Queen, a different sort of woman from his social acquaintances, with an intelligence and detailed mastery of domestic and foreign policy issues that astonished him from the outset. He readily took advantage of her total discretion and mater
nal kindness, describing her as “a great support, because she is the one person you can talk to.”

  Butler, the veteran lieutenant who made the Tuesday evening trip to Buckingham Palace when Macmillan was traveling abroad, held a similar view of her gifts as an interlocutor. “She never reacted excessively,” he later said. “She never used a phrase carelessly. She would never give away an opinion early on in the conversation.” Rather, she would solicit an opinion and “listen to it right through.”

  In his nearly seven years in office, Macmillan and Elizabeth II had a genuine working partnership. He frequently sent her long letters filled with appraisals of world leaders and confessions about his setbacks, as well as droll vignettes and grim prognostications. The Queen dispatched handwritten replies that were unfailingly encouraging and appreciative. Macmillan was taken with her informality and her sense of fun. Like many others, he wished she could “be made to smile more” in public. On learning of his reaction, she remarked that she “had always assumed people wanted her to look solemn most of the time.”

  AFTER A HIATUS of six years, the thirty-one-year-old sovereign was now keen to have more children, as was her husband. Dickie Mountbatten blamed the delay on Philip’s anger over the Queen’s rejection of his family name after the accession. But by her own account, she had postponed her dream of having a large family primarily because she wanted to concentrate on establishing herself as an effective monarch.