Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  The principal apprehension before the trip was the precarious health of the Queen’s uncle, the seventy-seven-year-old Duke of Windsor, who was suffering from terminal throat cancer. After excluding him from her wedding and her coronation, the Queen had extended an olive branch seven years earlier when the duke came to London for eye surgery. She cheered him considerably by visiting him twice during his convalescence, and, for the first time since the Windsors went into exile, she met with the duchess. Two years later the duke and duchess joined the rest of the family to unveil a plaque in honor of his mother, although the couple were not invited to the Queen’s luncheon afterward, just as he had been excluded from the family dinner following Queen Mary’s funeral. But in 1968 the Queen complied graciously when the duke asked for permission to be buried with the duchess in the royal family’s cemetery at Frogmore in Windsor Home Park and pay a modest allowance for his wife if she were to survive him.

  When doctors diagnosed his cancer in November 1971 and unsuccessfully treated him with radiation, the Queen alerted the Foreign Office that she wished to see him during her five-day state visit. In a confidential memo, British ambassador to France Sir Christopher Soames starkly laid out the high-stakes connection between the duke’s health and Anglo-French relations. “If the Duke of Windsor were to die on 12, 13 or 14 May or on the morning of 15 May before the Queen leaves for Paris, the visit would have to be cancelled,” Soames wrote. “I must emphasize that Pompidou clearly attaches the greatest importance to at least this part of the visit taking place, and I fear that a total cancellation though rationally understood would be taken amiss and would rankle him.”

  The duke survived, and after touring Provence and attending the races at Longchamp on the afternoon of May 18, the Queen, Philip, and Prince Charles, along with Martin Charteris and Fortune Grafton, arrived at the Windsors’ home in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The duchess nervously served them tea in the drawing room before taking Elizabeth II upstairs to her uncle David’s sitting room. The old duke did his courtly best, rising from his wheelchair with great difficulty to bow to his niece and kiss her on both cheeks, despite being attached to an intravenous tube. He had shrunk to eighty-five pounds, yet, always the fashion plate, wore a smart blue blazer. They talked for about fifteen minutes, and as the Queen left, the duke’s physician, Jean Thin, saw tears in her eyes.

  Accompanied by an entourage of thirty-six, the Queen followed a full program in France, traveling in an open car with Pompidou, and in the evenings appearing at the banquets at Versailles and the British embassy in one dazzling tiara after another. “We may drive on different sides of the road, but we are going the same way,” Elizabeth II declared at her banquet for the French president, with a nod toward an era of closer cooperation between Britain and Western Europe.

  She left the country with a spectacular flourish, driving to Rouen at the mouth of the Seine to sail off on Britannia. It was a romantic setting, not least because Rouen is the capital of Normandy, home of William the Conqueror. “She went on board Britannia in the early evening,” recalled Mary Soames, the wife of the British ambassador. “The rooftops were crowded with people. Almost to the mouth of the Seine people had driven their cars to the riverbank with their headlights on. The Queen stood for hours while people were waving her off.”

  The trip was a diplomatic success, and Pompidou was well pleased. Britain’s Observer described “a conspicuous demonstration of political goodwill after a decade of coolness.” The Queen “had seduced and conquered by her simplicity and charm,” said Le Figaro, which proclaimed the visit “a consecration—of the beginning of a new era of Franco-British cooperation.” “With the Queen’s visit Britain seemed all but signed, sealed and delivered into the Common Market,” declared Time.

  On May 28, just ten days after the Queen’s visit, the Duke of Windsor died. Back in England, Elizabeth II directed Patrick Plunket to arrange a dignified but muted funeral on Monday, June 5. Her one conundrum was how to handle Trooping the Colour two days earlier. Rather than cancel her annual birthday parade, she had bagpipers and drummers of the Scots Guards play a lament in memory of the former King, a compromise devised by Charteris. The duke’s body lay in state for two days at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, where the half hour service took place, followed by his burial at Frogmore. Four senior clergymen—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, and the Dean of Windsor—officiated, and all the adult members of the royal family attended except the duke’s only surviving sibling, the Duke of Gloucester, who was ailing.

  The seventy-five-year-old duchess stayed at Buckingham Palace, and during dinner the first night with the Queen and Prince Charles she oddly “prattled away,” seemingly oblivious to her husband’s death. The following evening she visited St. George’s Chapel, where she repeated, “He gave up so much for so little,” and pointed at herself “with a strange grin,” Charles recalled. She was heavily sedated on the day of the funeral, and conspicuously disoriented as she sat in the choir with the Queen, who “showed a motherly and nanny-like tenderness and kept putting her hand on the Duchess’s arm and glove,” Clarissa Eden reported.

  Elizabeth II’s Christmas broadcast that year took note of the silver wedding anniversary she and Philip had celebrated the previous month, connecting the tolerance and understanding necessary for a successful marriage to the need for such values in achieving harmony among nations. Her main message was meant to reassure the countries of the Commonwealth on the eve of Britain’s official entry into the European Economic Community, as the Common Market was now called, in January 1973. “The new links with Europe will not replace those with the Commonwealth,” she said. “Old friends will not be lost; Britain will take her Commonwealth links into Europe with her.” The goal, she added, was “to create a wider family of Nations.”

  The Christmas message now had an updated format that she had adopted following the success of the Royal Family documentary. In 1969 she had issued a written statement instead of her usual broadcast, while she and her advisers, as Philip put it, paused to “scratch our heads and see whether we can do something better.” Instead of a static image of the Queen reading from a TelePrompTer, Richard Cawston injected a contemporary feel by juxtaposing her words with film footage from events of the previous year. There were images from royal tours overseas, of the Queen and her children, and scenes from the silver wedding anniversary festivities. As with the 1969 documentary, these revitalized year-end productions emphasized the wholesome happiness of the Queen and her family.

  At the same time, the British tabloid press was beginning to take a more aggressive and sensational approach to the royal family. In the lead were The Sun and News of the World, which had been acquired in 1969 by Australian publisher Rupert Murdoch, an avowed republican who saw the monarchy as the apex of a “pyramid of snobbery.” The Queen was his country’s head of state; those who shared Murdoch’s wish for a republic numbered around a quarter of the Australian population, including the Labour government that took power in December 1972, with Gough Whitlam as prime minister. In Britain, Murdoch saw an opportunity to scrutinize the behavior of the royal family and expose them if they misbehaved, a formula designed to drive up his newsstand sales while chipping away at the monarchy’s standing.

  PERHAPS INEVITABLY, THE British media turned its attention in the 1970s to the younger generation of the royal family, Charles and Anne in particular. After his graduation from Cambridge in 1970, Charles had faithfully followed his family’s plan and entered the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth a year later. In the eyes of the press he became an adventuresome figure called “Action Man.” As he began his naval career, he met Camilla Shand, a pretty and sporty debutante one year his senior. She had a “slightly sexy, ginny voice,” and above all she knew how to make the Prince of Wales relax and laugh. Their quiet romance lasted some six months before he left for a long tour at sea. While he was away, Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles, a Household Cavalry
officer, news that gave Charles a “feeling of emptiness.”

  Andrew Parker Bowles had also briefly dated Princess Anne, but as a Roman Catholic he was unsuitable for marriage to a member of the royal family. To her older brother’s “shock and amazement,” twenty-two-year-old Anne announced her engagement in May 1973 to twenty-four-year-old Mark Phillips, a handsome army captain and accomplished equestrian who had won a gold medal at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. They had met at a party for the British team after the games, although they conceded it hadn’t been love at first sight. “We had to be told that we’d met in 1968 before we remembered,” Anne recalled. Charles initially dismissed Mark as dull and dim, but quickly sympathized with his future brother-in-law’s abrupt introduction to the “interest, fascination (plus boorishness) shown by the press.” The Queen and Philip considered Mark suitable enough. Like Tony Snowdon, he was a commoner. Although unprepossessing, Mark shared Anne’s passion for horses and eventing.

  They were married on Wednesday, November 14, Charles’s twenty-fifth birthday, at Westminster Abbey before 1,500 guests in a ceremony presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Queen, in a bright blue coat and dress, smiled as Anne and her husband climbed into the famous Glass Coach for the trip back to Buckingham Palace for the wedding breakfast with family members. When they made the ritual appearance on the Palace balcony, a crowd of fifteen thousand cheered.

  The day had been declared a national holiday, allowing tens of thousands of spectators to line the route of the procession. Hundreds of millions more in sixteen countries watched on television. As at the wedding of the Queen and Philip a quarter century earlier, the pageantry of their daughter’s celebration—the coaches, the military bands, the sixteen trumpeters playing the fanfares, the guard of honor—struck a bright spark at a particularly bleak moment for Britain.

  Since Heath took office, the economy had been ravaged by inflation and high unemployment. His attempt to restrain wage demands by the powerful miners’ union had foundered after a crippling strike, and his efforts to freeze pay, prices, rents, and dividends late in 1972 proved ineffective as well. A perfect storm of crises in the autumn of 1973 nearly brought the country to a standstill. OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, had raised the price of oil by 12 percent early in 1973, and the Yom Kippur War in October after Egypt and Syria invaded Israel led to an outright oil embargo against the United States and Western Europe. Fuel supplies dwindled and costs quadrupled, even as the coal miners threatened yet another strike. On December 13, Heath announced he would impose a three-day workweek and mandatory power cuts to conserve energy.

  The Queen felt it would be appropriate to inject a note of sympathy about her country’s plight into her Christmas broadcast that year. Although her message was purely personal, and not written on advice from the government, she asked Martin Charteris to notify Heath that she wished to conclude her remarks with a “few sentences” about the crisis: “I cannot let Christmas pass without speaking to you directly of these difficulties because they are of deep concern to all of us as individuals and as a nation. Different people have different views, deeply and sincerely felt, about our problems and how they should be solved. Let us remember, however, that what we have in common is more important than what divides us.”

  The next day in their audience, Heath informed the Queen that she could not mention the crisis. Undaunted by his censorship—which was not revealed to the press—she tried again. Charteris wrote Heath to propose a shortened but no less anodyne single sentence, this time for the beginning of the broadcast: “I cannot let Christmas pass without speaking to you directly of the hardship and difficulties with which so many are faced because they are of deep concern to all of us as individuals and as a nation.” But again Heath rebuffed the Queen’s efforts, instructing his private secretary to tell her she had to omit any reference because of the country’s “altogether exceptional circumstances.” She had no choice but to comply.

  In the new year, the miners went on strike, and the three-day week conjured up images of the dire postwar period of rationing and economic stagnation. Power was cut, candles illuminated offices, and workers bundled in overcoats at their desks. While Elizabeth II and Philip were on a Commonwealth tour of the Pacific, Heath suddenly called an election for February 28. The Queen flew back from Australia to receive Heath or kiss hands again with Harold Wilson.

  Labour won 301 seats, the Conservatives 297, the Liberal Party 14, and a grab bag of minor parties held 23 seats. Neither of the major parties had enough votes in Parliament to allow them to easily put through legislation. Rather than tendering his resignation on Friday, March 1, Heath went to Buckingham Palace to tell the Queen he wanted to try to form a coalition with Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe.

  Elizabeth II was dealing with a hung Parliament for the first time in her reign, and she trod cautiously. “The Queen could only await events,” wrote Robert Armstong. “She would not be called upon to take action unless and until Mr. Heath tendered his resignation.” So she waited for four days while Heath negotiated, until he gave up on Monday, March 4, and submitted his resignation. Wilson arrived at Buckingham Palace to become prime minister for the second time at age fifty-eight, and, he recalled, “our relaxed intimacy was immediately restored.”

  With its tiny majority, Labour could have put Elizabeth II in a problematic position if Wilson had asked her to dissolve Parliament so he could call a quick second election in hopes of increasing his party’s seats. She had the power to refuse such a request if she thought it would be bad for the nation at a time of economic instability, but she was loath to exercise that little used constitutional prerogative. Wilson never forced the issue, however. Martin Charteris said that when the prime minister had talked about an immediate election, “the Queen … let it be known she did not approve.” Instead, Labour waited until October, when a second election gave them a decent working majority of three more seats.

  Wilson yielded to the miners and disbanded the three-day week, but the malaise persisted—stagnating industrial production along with 15 percent inflation. By the mid-1970s, fully half of British adults were on government benefits. Yet Wilson charged ahead with increases in a host of social security programs. He also acquiesced when rapidly rising costs forced the Queen to request a further increase in the Civil List payment to £1.4 million annually.

  While the Queen and Prince Philip were on a state visit to Indonesia on March 20, 1974, Princess Anne and her husband were the victims of a shocking kidnap attempt. An armed assailant named Ian Ball blocked their Rolls-Royce with his car on the Mall as the royal couple were returning to Buckingham Palace after a charity event. Ball opened fire and wounded Jim Beaton, Anne’s lone bodyguard (who took three bullets in his efforts to protect her and was later rewarded with the George Cross, Britain’s highest honor for bravery by civilians), as well as her chauffeur, a passer-by, and a policeman. But when Ball ordered Anne to leave the car she shouted, “Not bloody likely!” She continued to resist as Ball tried to drag her out while her husband held her other arm, until Ball was overpowered by police and arrested. Anne recounted the incident to Charles on the telephone “as if it were a perfectly normal occurrence. Her bravery and superb obstinacy were unbelievable.” The Queen and Philip were immediately notified of the incident, but they kept to their schedule and returned to London on the 22nd.

  By then Anne and Mark had already left for his home village of Great Somerford in Wiltshire to plant a commemorative tree as scheduled, both brushing off their violent encounter. “It wouldn’t have been much good sitting and brooding about it,” Anne said to the villagers. “We got back to life so quickly, we’ve practically forgotten it.” The couple returned to Oak Grove, their five-bedroom house on the grounds of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where Mark worked as an instructor. Horses remained the center of their lives as they trained together and competed in cross-country jumping events, to all appearances a contented couple.

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nbsp; THE QUEEN’S OWN equine pursuits took a fortunate turn in 1974, although she mourned the death of her treasured stallion, Aureole, whose grave she marked with a copper beech in the paddock where he died. By then she had some fifty horses in training, and more than a score old enough to race. After middling success with her breeding and racing in the 1960s, she had applied a more systematic approach to the business in 1970 when she officially appointed Henry Porchester (later Carnarvon) as her first racing manager, and Sir Michael Oswald as her stud manager. “Henry was the Queen’s closest personal friend, and a very influential adviser,” said her longtime trainer Ian Balding. “One day he said to her, ‘You don’t have enough winners. Your horses are not well enough managed.’ She said, ‘You can be my manager. You can bloody well do it!’ ”

  Her breeding operation at Sandringham became more complicated as she expanded it to include stallions owned by syndicates in which she had purchased shares. They would cover not only her own horses, but as many as one hundred visiting mares each year. Oswald, who lived nearby, became the on-site manager of the stallions and mares. At the same time, Porchester worked with her trainers, helped decide which races to run, advised her on buying and selling her thoroughbreds, consulted on mating, and represented her at the many races she was unable to attend because of her obligations as Queen.

  Elizabeth II stayed in constant contact with her top advisers, talking to Oswald two or three times a week and Porchey nearly every day. Porchester made a strategic decision to send more of Elizabeth II’s mares to the United States for breeding “to bring in new blood,” said Michael Oswald. During the 1960s, she had sent some of her horses to France and several to the United States, but by 1970 it was clear that the best stallions were in Kentucky. Porchester advised the Queen to ship at least a half dozen mares across the Atlantic to several stud farms where they could be covered by such champions as Nijinsky. After weaning, the foals would then be transported back to England for training.