Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  The Queen couldn’t avoid Diana’s disquieting behavior, but she preferred to blame it on the stresses of her new life rather than more deep-seated problems. She didn’t understand Diana—how for example she could be simultaneously empathetic and egocentric—in part because “the Queen is the least self-absorbed person you could ever meet,” said one of her former top advisers. “She doesn’t tend to talk about herself, and she is not interested in other people’s efforts to dwell too much on themselves.” Nor was she inclined to interfere in the lives of her family. “Regardless of how rude Princess Margaret is to her, she never says anything,” said one of the Queen Mother’s closest friends. “That is her policy. She never says anything to her children. She is a very decent person, but she won’t intervene with anyone.”

  Underlying the Queen’s aversion to confrontation is a high degree of tolerance. Back in London, Elizabeth II let her daughter-in-law know that she could call upon her any time. In the beginning, Diana, who called her “mama,” visited her when she went to Buckingham Palace for a swim in the pool. “The Queen was always kind to Diana,” said Lúcia Flecha de Lima, a confidante of the princess. “The Queen always received her.” But even after she had spent time in her mother-in-law’s company, Diana remained “terrified” of her, according to Robert Runcie.

  The Queen also assigned forty-two-year-old Lady Susan Hussey, her youngest lady-in-waiting, to guide Diana in royal ways. Hussey was somewhat formidable, and she was conscientious in carrying out the Queen’s instructions. Known for her sharp sense of humor and for having “the briskest, deepest, most correct curtsy,” she had helped Charles and Anne learn the ropes during their adolescence. But as a stickler for protocol, she may have been too exacting for Diana’s haphazard temperament and insufficiently sympathetic to Diana’s obvious frailties. Although Diana wrote letters of gratitude at the time, telling her she was like a wonderful older sister, the princess later said she mistrusted the lady-in-waiting’s longtime friendship with Charles. One woman close to the royal family thought the Queen should have delegated her American Lady of the Bedchamber, Virginia Airlie, instead. Although six years older, she could have established better rapport. “She is pretty, soft and amusing,” said the friend. “She would have given Diana honest advice and jollied her along.” Perhaps inevitably, Diana had a major falling-out with Susan Hussey, telling friends she felt “betrayed” by her unquestioning loyalty to Charles.

  Diana became pregnant during the honeymoon, but her condition put her even more on edge. Harassment by the tabloids so unnerved her that the Queen took the extraordinary step of meeting with twenty-one editors in Buckingham Palace in December 1981. Her press secretary, Michael Shea, told the group from Fleet Street that their intrusiveness was making Diana so “despondent” that she feared leaving home. When Barry Askew, editor of the sensational News of the World, wondered why the princess went out to buy candy at a shop rather than sending a servant, the Queen couldn’t resist saying, “That’s the most pompous thing I have ever heard.”

  The president described the Queen

  as “charming” and “down-to-earth,”

  and observed that “she was in

  charge of that animal!”

  The Queen and President Ronald Reagan taking a carefully orchestrated ride in the Windsor Home Park, June 1982. © Kent Gavin Associates

  FOURTEEN

  A Very Special Relationship

  WHEN THE NEW YEAR BEGAN, THE FOCUS ON DIANA DIMINISHED AS the public and the royal family faced the prospect of war in the South Atlantic between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. On Friday, April 2, 1982, Argentine forces invaded the islands, which had been a British colony since the eighteenth century, claiming that what they called the Malvinas really belonged to them. On the grounds that British sovereign territory had been violated, Margaret Thatcher immediately ordered a military expedition to retake the islands. The Queen wholeheartedly supported her prime minister’s action, not only in her role as monarch of the invaded country, but as head of the Commonwealth.

  She was also in the unusual position of considering whether her twenty-two-year-old son, Andrew, second in line to the throne, should be deployed into the war zone. In his brusque manner Andrew resembled his father, whose path he had followed to Gordonstoun. Unlike Charles, Andrew’s more macho personality adapted easily to the rigors of the school. He spent six months in an exchange program at Lakefield College in Ontario, Canada, but on his graduation from Gordonstoun in 1979 he skipped university and went directly into the Royal Navy after training at Dartmouth like his father. By the time of the Falklands War, Andrew was a fully accredited helicopter pilot.

  The government expressed concern about the dangers of combat, but when Andrew insisted he go with his squadron on the HMS Invincible aircraft carrier, Elizabeth II backed him up. Her decision “brought into stark focus the responsibilities of being a mother and also being the sovereign,” Andrew recalled. “The Queen and the Duke for that matter were entirely happy with me going. It was a straightforward decision.” His participation “gave the country the feeling that actually the Queen was sharing in this whole dramatic expedition. [She] was going through the same thing that other parents were going through.”

  The war resulted in 255 British and 650 Argentine deaths before Argentina surrendered on June 14. Andrew was never involved in direct combat, although he flew a Sea King helicopter in a number of diversionary actions, transported troops, and conducted search and rescue operations—any of which could have put him in harm’s way. He lost friends and colleagues, and once was on deck when Exocet missiles were fired at the ship. “I definitely went there a boy and came back a man,” he said.

  Margaret Thatcher’s decisiveness in prosecuting the Falklands War greatly enhanced her image as “the Iron Lady” and Britain’s reputation as a muscular and effective military power a quarter century after the Suez debacle. “We have ceased to be a nation in retreat,” she said. Her staunch ally in the fight was Ronald Reagan, whose administration imposed economic sanctions on Argentina and supplied intelligence and key military equipment to the British forces, at the risk of alienating allies in South America. The bond between the two leaders, who had strong personal and ideological affinities, brought the British-American “special relationship” to its highest point since Churchill’s time as prime minister. The Queen later rewarded Reagan and his secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, by investing them as honorary Knights Commander of the British Empire.

  As it happened, President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were scheduled to stay with the Queen and Prince Philip that June, an invitation that had come the previous July when the first lady was in London for the royal wedding. It was not a state visit arranged by the government. Rather, the Reagans were personal guests of the Queen for a “quiet two days between summit meetings” in France and Germany, and they were the first American presidential couple to stay overnight at Windsor Castle. The most anticipated element of the trip was a ride on horseback by the Queen and the president, the result of numerous meetings in Washington and London that began early in the year. British ambassador Nicholas Henderson noted that Reagan’s key image maker, deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver, “invariably lit up at the prospect” of the ride. “Carter couldn’t have done a thing like that,” said Deaver. “Think of the photo opportunity.”

  Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had met the Queen only twice, during her stop in Washington for the Bicentennial, and on his inaugural foreign trip as president to “the first country that I have visited outside my own” on May 5, 1977. He was in England for economic and foreign policy meetings, followed by a black-tie dinner for NATO leaders at Buckingham Palace. When Carter (wearing a bow tie three times the size of Philip’s) greeted the Queen’s seventy-six-year-old mother, he tried to flatter her by comparing her to his own beloved mother, “Miz Lillian,” and in a burst of enthusiasm kissed her on the lips. “I took a sharp step backwards,” the Queen Mother recalled,
“not quite far enough.” She commented afterward that she hadn’t been kissed that way since the death of her husband twenty-five years earlier.

  Ronald and Nancy Reagan arrived at Windsor Castle by helicopter on Monday, June 7, 1982. They were assigned the seven-room suite 240 in the Lancaster Tower—two bedrooms, two dressing rooms, two bathrooms, and a main sitting room with portraits of the Queen’s ancestors by Hans Holbein—all with the sweeping view of the Long Walk. The Queen had arranged for a dedicated White House telephone line, as well as the installation of the first shower in Windsor Castle because her advisers were told “that was what he needed.”

  In the afternoon the royal couple took the Reagans on a tour of the gardens, and in the evening, the president and first lady, along with top officials and their spouses staying at the castle—Michael Deaver, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Chief of Staff James Baker, and National Security Adviser William Clark—joined the royal family for a private black-tie dinner in the Crimson Room, the small dining room in the private apartments, preceded by drinks in the Green Drawing Room.

  “We had the feeling we had come into a family dinner,” said Carolyn Deaver. “They banter effortlessly in front of a stranger. They sort of make you feel a part, but you never are.” Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were on hand, along with Charles and Diana, eight months pregnant and visibly miserable. “She was wearing a red dress and she had her head down,” said Carolyn Deaver. “She was seated toward the end of the table and talked only a little to the people on either side.”

  The next morning Elizabeth II and Philip invited the Reagans to breakfast on a small terrace outside their bedroom. “It was surprisingly informal,” Nancy Reagan recalled. “We had to walk through their bedroom, and lined up on a table were boxes of cereal. I said to Prince Charles, ‘What do I do?’ He said, ‘Just help yourself.’ It wasn’t anything like what I had imagined.”

  At 9:30 it was time for the much heralded ride. The fifty-six-year-old Queen rode Burmese and wore tan jodhpurs, a checked woolen jacket, beige gloves, and a head scarf. The seventy-one-year-old president sported an open-collared shirt and light tweed jacket. He rode an eight-year-old stallion named Centennial and used an English saddle, “bobbing when he should have remained still.” Neither of them wore a hard hat, which caused predictable criticism.

  Before they headed into the mist of the 655-acre Home Park, Reagan joked with the swarm of 150 reporters shouting questions from behind a barrier. “Does it ride well?” yelled one. “Yes,” replied Reagan with a grin. “If you stand still I’ll take it over the top.” The Queen, who never responds to such queries, glared, pulled at her reins, and trotted off, prompting Reagan to hastily catch up. They were followed by two of the Queen’s equerries, two security men on horseback, and a Range Rover filled with Secret Service agents and British protection officers. Nancy Reagan rode in a four-in-hand carriage driven by Philip, who took her on her own tour around the park. Philip, who had given up polo in 1971 because of arthritis, had become a champion in competitive carriage driving marathons, and offered the first lady a running commentary on the finer points of the sport as well as the surrounding scenery.

  For an hour, Elizabeth II and Reagan walked, trotted, and cantered on their eight-mile ride, stopping once to greet farmers in the middle of a field of cattle. As they followed a canal adjacent to the Thames, Reagan was waving so much to onlookers that the Queen worried he might ride straight into the water, and at one point took his reins and led his horse in the right direction. They finished at the top of Long Walk in Windsor Great Park, where protection agents lurked behind nearly every tree and bush, and reporters again shouted questions, prompting another flash of displeasure from the Queen when the president stopped to chat. He described her as “charming” and “down-to-earth,” and observed that “she was in charge of that animal!”

  Several hours later, Reagan praised Britain’s Falklands campaign during a televised speech before both houses of Parliament, the first American president given that privilege. The Queen busied herself at Windsor with her boxes in her private sitting room. Carolyn Deaver spent the afternoon touring the castle, wandering along the Grand Corridor and marveling at the Canalettos. “Are you enjoying yourself?” piped a familiar voice from one of the doorways. “These paintings are just beautiful,” the wide-eyed guest replied. “Take your time,” said the Queen. “I’m glad you are enjoying it.”

  Carolyn Deaver was equally transfixed by the exacting day-long preparations in St. George’s Hall for the evening’s white-tie banquet. The 175-foot-long mahogany table was so wide (eight feet) that under-butlers strapped pillowlike dusters to their feet as they walked down the middle to set up the silver gilt candelabra and put flower arrangements in gold bowls.

  At the banquet for 158 guests, the Queen told Reagan she was “much impressed by the way in which you coped so professionally with a strange horse and a saddle that must have seemed even stranger,” adding in a more serious vein, “the conflict on the Falkland islands was thrust on us by naked aggression.… Throughout the crisis we have drawn comfort from the understanding of our position shown by the American people. We have admired the honesty, patience and skill with which you have performed your dual roles as ally and intermediary.”

  After dinner the Reagans and the royal couple walked down an aisle between the table and the chairs that footmen had pulled away, led by the sixty-six-year-old Lord Chamberlain, Lord Charles “Chips” Maclean, 27th chief of Clan Maclean, who walked backward. With growing alarm, Reagan glanced toward the Queen for reassurance about one of the monarchy’s time-honored rituals. “I suddenly saw this tiny figure beside me walking along waving her hand,” the president recalled. The Queen was steering Maclean, as she explained to Reagan, because “you know, we don’t get those chairs even, and he could fall over one and hurt himself.”

  Diana had felt too ill to attend the banquet, but two weeks later she did her duty in providing a male heir, giving birth on June 21 to William Arthur Philip Louis. “It was a great relief because it was all peaceful again,” she later recalled. “And I was well for a time.” The Queen was among the first to visit St. Mary’s Hospital and see the newborn prince, now second in line to the throne.

  SCARCELY A YEAR after she had been targeted by Marcus Sarjeant, Elizabeth II had an even more unnerving jolt when she was awakened at 7:15 on the morning of Friday, July 9, by the slam of a door, something her staff never did. She knew Philip had left the Palace at 6 A.M. for an engagement outside the city. When she looked up, she saw a barefoot stranger in a T-shirt and jeans opening her curtains, then sitting at the foot of her bed with a shard of glass from a shattered ashtray, blood dripping from his right thumb onto her bedclothes.

  In an egregious breach of security, thirty-one-year-old Michael Fagan had climbed over a fourteen-foot wall, entered the Palace through an open window, and walked freely along the corridors until he slipped undetected into the Queen’s bedroom suite. It turned out he was an experienced Palace intruder, having broken in previously on June 7, when he amused himself by consuming a half bottle of wine.

  “Get out of here at once!” the Queen said, but Fagan ignored her and started to pour out his personal troubles. Once she realized he meant no harm, she shifted gears quickly. For ten minutes, she listened patiently, finding common ground in talking about their children and interjecting sympathetic comments even as she tried several times to summon help by pushing her emergency button and twice calling the Palace switchboard. Fagan later commented that she had shown no sign of nerves. The situation uncannily recalled an incident at Windsor Castle in February 1941 when a mentally disturbed man emerged from behind the curtains of her mother’s bedroom and grabbed her ankles. The Queen Mother refrained from screaming, saying instead, “Tell me about it,” which he did as she eased across the room to sound the alarm bell.

  Elizabeth II reacted similarly to Fagan, in part, she told friends, because “I am used to talking to people on street corners.”
But her preternaturally calm demeanor came into play as well, along with her physical courage and common sense. She seized an opening when he asked for a cigarette, and she directed him to a nearby pantry, which had a supply.

  Out in the corridor they encountered chambermaid Elizabeth Andrew, who exclaimed, “Bloody ’ell, Ma’am, what’s ’e doing ’ere?” (a reaction the Queen later recounted to friends with perfect mimicry of the girl’s Yorkshire accent). Paul Whybrew, a six-foot-four-inch senior footman, arrived with the Queen’s pack of corgis that he had been walking in the garden. As the dogs barked furiously, the footman gave Fagan a drink to steady him. Moments later, a contingent of police finally arrived. “Oh come on, get a bloody move on,” said the Queen as one officer paused to straighten his tie.

  “I wasn’t scared,” she later told her mother’s equerry, Colin Burgess. “The whole thing was so surreal. He just came in, we chatted and then he went without incident, and that was that.” Her response, according to one of her relatives, was “mostly shock and disbelief.” The Queen appeared as scheduled at an 11 A.M. investiture and asked her advisers to keep the incident quiet while the government investigated the security failure. But the Express broke the story the following Monday with the headline “INTRUDER AT THE QUEEN’S BEDSIDE.” That evening Margaret Thatcher came to her weekly audience a day early to apologize, and her home secretary, William Whitelaw, faced a barrage of questions in the House of Commons and offered to resign.