Rather than working in the ornate Yellow Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace looking out across the Mall, where artists over the decades had painted the Queen, Freud insisted they meet in the Friary Court Studio at St. James’s Palace, a room used for painting restoration. He sat the Queen in front of a stark beige wall and had her pose in the diamond and pearl diadem shown on postage stamps and bank notes, which made an odd juxtaposition with her tailored blue suit and usual triple strand of pearls. From May 2000 through December 2001 he painted her in fifteen sittings, a source of frustration for the artist, who was accustomed to many more. At age seventy-seven, Freud worked with a vigor matching that of his seventy-three-year-old sitter.
Because of the diadem’s value, several protection officers stood guard in the studio with them, but Freud found their presence distracting, so the Queen asked them to go outside. She told the artist that she had met one of them while on a shoot at a friend’s estate. She was picking up as she always did when a wounded cock pheasant flew out of a hedge straight at her, flapping and clawing, and knocked her down. There was blood on her clothing from the bird’s scratches, and the detective standing nearby feared she had been shot. He threw himself on top of her and began giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “I consider we got to know each other rather well,” she told Freud. Afterward, she hired the man for her protection force.
The Queen not only proved equal to Freud’s notoriously penetrating gaze, the artist shared with his sitter an enthusiasm for horses. He had been fascinated by the equine personality since his childhood, when he slept in the stables to be near the animals, and he had painted a number of arresting portraits of horses. “Lucian had a whale of a time with the Queen,” said his longtime friend Clarissa Eden. “They talked about racing and horses. She kept on saying, ‘We must stop talking. We must get on with this portrait.’ ”
MEMORIES OF THE unfortunate escapades of Elizabeth II’s children resurfaced in April 2001 when Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie Wessex, was entrapped in a sting by Mazher Mahmood, a reporter for News of the World impersonating an Arab sheikh interested in signing on as a client of her public relations firm. Mahmood secretly taped their conversation, and his newspaper ran the transcript in a sensational “World Exclusive.” The other tabloids reported incorrectly that Sophie called the Queen “an old dear,” the Queen Mother “the old lady,” Conservative leader William Hague “deformed,” and Cherie Blair “horrid.” She said none of those things, but she was indiscreet, telling the fake sheikh that the royal family referred to the prime minister as “President Blair because he thinks he is,” that Hague has “got this awful kind of way he talks.… He sounds like a puppet unfortunately,” and that John Major was “completely wooden.” She called the Labour budget “a load of pap,” and said its “increase in everybody’s taxes is something frightening.”
In an effort to prevent the publication of the transcripts, Sophie gave an interview to the newspaper, with the approval of the Buckingham Palace press office. That was when she denied Edward was gay, and she spoke as well of the pressures created by comparisons to Diana, usually unfavorable. “I have been reduced to tears,” she said. “I don’t deny that we do look alike, and it’s a huge compliment for me when people say that. But I couldn’t ever compete with Diana’s public image. I’m not Diana.” It was an excruciating experience for the novice member of the royal family, and she sent apologies to those she had insulted. But she not only remained in royal favor, she and her husband grew even closer to the Queen. “Sophie first of all respects her as the Queen, then as a mother-in-law, but she also understands that she is a human being and treats her that way,” said the Queen’s cousin Elizabeth Anson.
A few months later, the Queen entertained her tenth American president on July 19 when recently elected George W. Bush arrived at Buckingham Palace with his wife, Laura, for lunch before traveling to Genoa for the G-8 conference. Accompanying them was the Queen’s good friend Will Farish, the new U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. They alighted under the portico of the Grand Entrance, where they stood at attention for “The Star-Spangled Banner” expertly played by the band of the Coldstream Guards. As the forty-third president and the Duke of Edinburgh walked out into the quadrangle to inspect the guard of honor, it began to pour, soaking Bush’s trousers and shoes. Philip got a good laugh, but Elizabeth II tactfully refrained from comment. Ten years after their first meeting in his father’s White House, Bush felt a “natural connection” with the Queen, who created a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere.
The Anglo-American alliance deepened less than two months later when al Qaeda Islamist terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks. The Queen was at Balmoral, and unlike the reaction to Diana’s death four years earlier, her reflexes were sure and swift. She issued a statement of condolence to President Bush expressing her “growing disbelief and total shock,” and she prepared to return to London for a special service at St. Paul’s Cathedral to honor the nearly three thousand victims, sixty-seven British citizens among them.
Malcolm Ross called Balmoral from London to ask that the Union Jack at Buckingham Palace be lowered to half-staff for the second time since Diana’s death (the Queen had authorized the same gesture of respect the previous October after the death of Donald Dewar, the first minister of Scotland). Ross also made the novel suggestion that at the next Changing of the Guard the American as well as British national anthem be played, with a two-minute silence between. The Queen instantly approved both proposals, and Robin Janvrin asked the American embassy to participate. That Thursday, two days after the attack, Will Farish and Prince Andrew stood at attention in the Palace forecourt as the Coldstream Guards band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and a large crowd of spectators wept outside the railings.
The Queen suffered yet another loss on September 11 when her friend of many years, Henry Carnarvon, was stricken with a fatal heart attack at age seventy-seven. Like Elizabeth II and millions around the world, Carnarvon and his wife, Jean, had been watching television as the horrors unfolded in the United States. Just after the second hijacked airplane hit the World Trade Center, he collapsed. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he turned to his wife and said, “Would you call the Queen?” He died shortly afterward in the operating room, and his daughter, Lady Carolyn Warren, phoned Balmoral with the news. “The Queen was devastated,” said Jean Carnarvon. “It was so unexpected. It caught us all.”
On Friday, September 14, the Queen joined a congregation of 2,700, most of them Americans, at St. Paul’s Cathedral for a memorial service honoring the September 11 victims. Prince Philip read the lesson, and everyone sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which hadn’t been heard there since the 1960s when it was played for John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill. “When our National Anthem was played, I watched the Queen as she sang all the words,” recalled Jackie Davis, the wife of an official at the American embassy. “I thought to myself, ‘If she can do that, then I can learn the words to “God Save the Queen.’ ”
On September 20, Tony and Cherie Blair traveled to New York to participate in another memorial for the victims at St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue. The prime minister did a reading from Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge at San Luis Rey, but “A Message from Her Majesty the Queen,” read by British ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer, most eloquently caught the intense sadness of the moment. Written by Robin Janvrin, it ended with what Bill Clinton called a “stunning sentence”: “Grief is the price we pay for love.” Those words were so evocative, and so true, that they were carved in stone not only at St. Thomas’s, but at a memorial in Grosvenor Square near the American embassy in London.
Tony Blair kept the Queen up to date on developments over the following weeks that led to the October invasion of Afghanistan by the United States, Britain, and other NATO forces. Their mission was to unseat the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban forces and root out the al Qaeda terrorists who had trained there for the devastating attacks. It was the fi
rst step in the global war on terrorism that escalated two years later with the invasion of Iraq and ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein, who was suspected of illegally making weapons of mass destruction intended for use against the United States and its allies.
From time to time during this period, Blair relied on the Queen for guidance. “Obviously there was a huge focus on the Arab world,” he recalled, “and that is something she has immense experience of. She has dealt with many of the royal families, with many of the ruling families, over a long, long period of time, and she has a lot of real insight into how they work, how they operate, how they think, the best way of trying to make sure that we reach out to them.”
LUCIAN FREUD UNVEILED Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace on December 20 and donated it to the Royal Collection in honor of the Golden Jubilee. Much of the reaction from the press was negative: “extremely unflattering,” said the Daily Telegraph; “a travesty,” pronounced The Sun.
The painting is shocking in several respects, starting with its size: only nine inches by six inches. Because it is so small, it is peculiarly concentrated, showing only the Queen’s head and a small part of her shoulders. Without the diadem, she would be barely recognizable. “You gaze at it for half a minute,” said Clarissa Eden, who was also painted by Freud. “Suddenly you realize it is the Queen.” Her face is harsh, the expression a scowl, the eyes hooded, the skin a rough patchwork of white and orange streaks, the heavy chin with a masculine five-o’clock shadow.
Yet despite Freud’s failure to show such attributes as her expressive eyes and luminous skin, he does capture in a mesmerizing way the essence of her dutiful and determined nature, as well as her strength and stoicism. “This is a painting of experience,” said Adrian Searle, art critic for The Guardian. So too is it an artwork of its time. “It could not have been painted ten years earlier,” said Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery since 2002.
Freud said the Queen looked at the portrait while she was being painted but she did not tell him what she thought. Sir Hugh Roberts, director of the Royal Collection, reflected the official Palace view when he called the portrait a “remarkable work.” Even more telling was a commentary by Jennifer Scott, the assistant curator of paintings for the collection, who wrote that it “feels real and earthy, almost as if Freud peeled away the layers of deportment that come so naturally to a monarch and painted the person underneath.”
CHRISTMAS AT SANDRINGHAM was unsettled that year. Margaret, now seventy-one, had suffered two more strokes in the beginning of 2001, leaving her partially paralyzed and bedridden as well as blind. When she made a brief appearance at the one hundredth birthday party for her aunt Princess Alice, the Dowager Duchess of Gloucester, on December 12 at Kensington Palace, Margaret wore sunglasses, and her face was swollen from steroid medications. Anne Glenconner, Margaret’s longtime friend and Norfolk neighbor, came to Sandringham and arranged to have a television installed in the princess’s room, along with a hot plate so her nurse could make scrambled eggs. “What a good idea!” the Queen said. Prince Charles was especially solicitous, sharing with Anne Glenconner the task of reading aloud to his aunt, who by then could barely speak. “Her quality of life was not good,” said Glenconner.
Four months past her 101st birthday, the indomitable Queen Mother was fading as well. She came down with a respiratory infection that kept her confined mainly to her room at Sandringham. In early February, Margaret was driven back to Kensington Palace, while her mother remained in Norfolk to recuperate. As the princess was wheeled to the car, the Queen Mother “carried out the family tradition of waving a white handkerchief in farewell.”
Accession Day, on February 6, was usually observed privately by the Queen. But to mark the fiftieth anniversary of taking the throne, she not only appeared publicly, she sent out a message of thanks with a modern twist—on the Internet through her official jubilee website. She started the day at Sandringham with an early morning ride, then traveled by car to nearby King’s Lynn to open a new cancer unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where she talked to patients and toured the facility. Her visit was intended in part as a tribute to her late father’s struggle with lung cancer.
Two days later, Margaret had another stroke. After she showed signs of heart problems, she was rushed to King Edward VII Hospital late that night. With her son and daughter at her bedside, the princess died at 6:30 A.M. on Saturday, February 9. The Queen was at Windsor Castle, while Philip had stayed on at Sandringham for a shooting weekend. Charles immediately drove to Norfolk to console his grandmother. Resolutely positive as always, she told her grandson that her daughter’s death “had probably been a merciful release.”
Margaret’s funeral took place at 3 P.M. in St. George’s Chapel on Friday the 15th—fifty years to the day since her father, King George VI, was laid to rest. She had been eligible for a “royal ceremonial funeral,” but her wish was to “depart without a fuss,” so she requested a “royal private funeral,” by definition a less public ceremony. Unusually for a member of the royal family, she also requested cremation, with instructions that her ashes be placed with her father’s remains in his vault at the chapel.
The princess had selected the readings and the music for the service, which showed not only what her good friend George Carey called her “rooted and firm” adherence to the Church of England, but her love of ballet. As the 450 mourners entered the chapel, the organist played Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The congregation included thirty-seven members of the royal family, and friends from show business such as actresses Judi Dench and Felicity Kendal. Roddy Llewellyn and Tony Snowdon were there as well.
The Queen Mother had fallen at Sandringham and cut her arm two days earlier. But she had insisted on attending the funeral, and the previous day had been flown to Windsor by helicopter. She arrived at the chapel by wheelchair after the Queen and was seated near her daughter’s coffin, which was covered with Margaret’s personal Royal Standard and arrangements of white roses and pink tulips.
Following the service, eight Royal Highland Fusiliers in tartan trousers and dark jackets carried out the coffin as trumpeters sounded “The Last Post” and “Reveille.” A bagpiper played “The Desperate Struggle of the Bird,” which seemed a suitably melancholy lament for a princess who had seen so much unhappiness. The Queen Mother managed to stand briefly as Margaret’s coffin passed, and she kept her emotions in check, but as the Queen stood outside the chapel watching the coffin being placed in the hearse, she lowered her head to wipe away tears. “It was the saddest I have ever seen the Queen,” said Reinaldo Herrera, Margaret’s good friend.
By the time family members joined Elizabeth II at the castle for tea afterward, she had regained her composure. She was already turning her attention to her departure in three days for Jamaica, the first stop on a two-week Golden Jubilee Commonwealth tour that would also take her to New Zealand and Australia.
“She went as scheduled,” said a member of the royal household. “You never would have known. She was doing her duty, smiling, laughing, engaged in everything. Maybe privately she showed her grief, but we didn’t see it.” The Jamaicans gave a flag-waving welcome to the woman known in the local patois as “Missis Queen” and “The Queen Lady.”
The crowds in New Zealand and Australia surpassed expectations as well. Sir Edmund Hillary, whose conquest of Mount Everest had coincided with Elizabeth II’s coronation, attended a garden party for her in Auckland and said, “Most people much prefer to have a Queen as head of state rather than a broken-down old prime minister.” In Queensland thirty thousand people stood in the rain to hear her remarks at the “people’s day” fair. When Queenslander Ted Smout told her he was 104 years old, she said, “Oh, my mother is only 101!” In private she talked “constantly” of Margaret, and she called every day to check in with her mother. On her return to England on Sunday, March 3, she went immediately to Royal Lodge for a visit.
NEARLY A MONTH later, she was back at Windsor for Easter we
ekend. The Queen Mother had become noticeably weaker, but she had been lucid enough in the previous week to call friends and relatives with various instructions that were meant to be final wishes. On the morning of March 30, 2002—Easter Saturday—the Queen was out for her customary ride when she received a message from the doctors attending her mother that the end was approaching. When Elizabeth II arrived in her riding clothes, the Queen Mother was in a chair by the fireside in her dressing gown. The two women exchanged a few private words, and the Queen Mother did not speak again. Shortly afterward she closed her eyes and fell unconscious as Canon John Ovendon, chaplain of the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park, held her hand and prayed.
Elizabeth II went back to the castle to change and returned to Royal Lodge with Margaret’s children, David Linley and Sarah Chatto. The Queen Mother’s niece and close friend Margaret Rhodes was there as well. She lived nearby in the Great Park and had been faithfully visiting her aunt every day. At 3:15 in the afternoon the Queen Mother died peacefully at age 101, surrounded by her surviving daughter, her two grandchildren, and her niece, all of whom were crying. Tony Blair spoke to the Queen that evening and found her “very sad but dignified.” Prince Charles, who was in Klosters, Switzerland, on a skiing holiday with his sons, rushed to Windsor the next day to pay his respects to the grandmother he called “the original life enhancer.”
The Queen Mother’s “Tay Bridge” funeral plan unfolded as she had meticulously planned. By custom, it was not called a state funeral—reserved for reigning monarchs, with rare exceptions such as Winston Churchill—but a royal ceremonial funeral that was identical in its trappings. The Queen and her advisers were concerned at first whether there would be sufficient public interest to justify the nine days of official mourning, including three days of lying in state. These misgivings were prompted in part by modest-sized crowds outside Buckingham Palace and lines for the condolence books at St. James’s Palace, and by coverage in admittedly pro-republican newspapers such as The Guardian, which ran a headline on the day after the Queen Mother’s death: “UNCERTAIN FAREWELL REVEALS A NATION DIVIDED.”
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