* Shaw Farm, in Windsor Home Park. Adrian Pelly was the farm manager and his sister Andrea kept house for him.
† M’As Tu Vu, a bay gelding foaled in 1946, won six races between 1953 and 1956.
* Fergus Bowes Lyon (1928–87), Queen Elizabeth’s nephew. He became the seventeenth Earl of Strathmore in 1972; in 1956 he married Mary McCorquodale (1932– ).
† William Euan Wallace (1927–77), a debonair man about town and friend of Princess Margaret.
* Princess Marina of Kent, her children Prince Edward, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael; Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, his wife Princess Olga and their daughter Princess Elizabeth.
* General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, VC, GCMG, KCB, KBE, DSO and three bars (1889–1963), first Baron Freyberg, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of New Zealand 1946–52, Deputy Constable and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle 1952–63.
† On Christmas Eve 1953, shortly after the Queen and Prince Philip arrived for their official tour of New Zealand, the overnight express from Wellington to Auckland fell off a bridge, killing 151 of the 285 people on board. This was the worst rail accident in New Zealand history.
* Hugh Grafton, eleventh Duke of Grafton, KG DL (1919–2011), Chairman and later President of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and member of other bodies devoted to Britain’s heritage. Married 1946 Anne Fortune Smith, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Elizabeth II since 1967. Close friends of Queen Elizabeth, who later accompanied her on happy private trips to France and Italy.
† Captain Charles Moore, CVO, MC, Croix de Guerre (1880–1965), Irish Guards Officer and horse trainer to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, 1937–63. The Queen’s early successes as a racehorse owner – between 1954 and 1960 she twice headed the list of winning owners – were attributed to his skilful management.
* The best colt that ever carried the Queen’s colours, he came second in the Derby in 1953, and in 1954 won the Coronation Cup at Epsom and the Hardwicke Stakes and the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot.
* Richard (‘Dick’) Francis CBE FRSL (1920–2010), successful jockey and crime writer.
* Lord Adam Granville Gordon KCVO MBE (1909–84), a major in the Royal Artillery and mentioned in dispatches during the Second World War. He succeeded Group Captain Peter Townsend as Comptroller and Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen Mother and stayed in the post until 1974.
* Sir Terence Rattigan (1911–77), successful British playwright. Eclipsed at the end of the 1950s by the rise of younger and less conventional playwrights such as John Osborne and Harold Pinter, he came back into fashion. He was knighted by the Queen Mother in 1971 and wrote to congratulate her on the way she conducted such ceremonies, remarking that for almost everyone receiving honours ‘those few proud but nerve-wracking seconds of confrontation represent the high pinnacle of their lives.’ He realized she was well aware of this. (5 December 1971, RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL)
* 25 November 1954, RA QEQMH/PS/VIS/1954/USA
* Patrick Plunket, seventh Baron Plunket KCVO (1923–75), equerry to King George VI 1948–52 and to Queen Elizabeth II 1952–75. Deputy Master of the Household 1954–75. His early death from cancer deprived the Queen of one of her most trusted and responsive aides.
† Popular Broadway musical which had opened on 13 May 1954 and ran for over 1,000 performances. It has since become popular among local and amateur groups around the world.
* Lewis Douglas (1894–1974), distinguished Democrat politician from Arizona, and his wife Margaret ‘Peggy’ Zinsser. US Ambassador to Britain 1947–50; he played an important part in the Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe and in the management of the 1948 Berlin airlift. Queen Elizabeth dined with the Douglases in New York.
* Sir John Randolph Leslie, third Baronet (1885–1972), Anglo-Irish diplomat and writer, first cousin of Winston Churchill. His son, Desmond, was a Spitfire pilot during the Second World War and co-authored one of the first books on UFOs, Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953).
* In August 1955 Princess Margaret had her twenty-fifth birthday, the age at which, in theory, she could marry without the consent of the sovereign. The press once again became frantic, if not aggressive, speculating over her intentions, demanding that she make up her mind. She replied to this letter saying: ‘Darling Mummie, Your letter did help so much. Thank you for writing it – as you said it’s easier to write than say – but please don’t think that because I have blown up at intervals when we’ve discussed the situation, that I didn’t know how you felt.’ She said that Peter Townsend was coming over from Brussels (where he was Air Attaché at the Embassy) soon so that they could discuss everything. (RA QEQM/PRIV/RF)
* For the Princess, the crisis deepened week by week. Anthony Eden, Winston Churchill’s successor as Prime Minister, although himself divorced, refused to support her marriage to Townsend. It became clear that if she went ahead, she would have to renounce her royal status. The Times denounced the very idea of the marriage. For Princess Margaret, the choice was hard – between her love for Townsend and her devotion to her God, to her sister and to the institution to which her whole family had dedicated itself. She said later that when she met Townsend at Clarence House they had both decided at exactly the same moment that ‘It’s not possible. It won’t do.’ (Princess Margaret to Toni Untermeyer, 23 November 1955, Bellaigue Papers) On 31 October 1955 she and Peter Townsend issued a joint statement saying that they had decided against the marriage.
* The Queen made an official tour of Nigeria, 28 January to 16 February 1956.
* In the 1956 Grand National, Queen Elizabeth’s horse Devon Loch, ridden by Dick Francis, was leading and seemed certain to win until he ‘pancaked’ in the approach to the finishing line. It was a terrible moment for owner, trainer and jockey – and for the crowds who had been cheering the horse on. Queen Elizabeth did not show her disappointment as she comforted Francis and Cazalet in the enclosure. ‘That’s racing,’ she said. (The Queen Mother Remembered, ed. Hogg and Mortimer, p. 194; Elizabeth Longford, The Queen Mother, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981, p. 149) With this letter she enclosed a silver-gilt box with her crest, inscribed: ‘PETER CAZALET IN MEMORY OF DEVON LOCH’S GRAND NATIONAL from Elizabeth R 1956’.
* Invercauld Castle, near Balmoral, lent to Queen Elizabeth by the Farquharson family for six weeks while building works were going on at Birkhall.
* Anthony Eden succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister in 1955 and was engulfed in the Suez crisis the following year. President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal; the British and French governments deemed this to be an illegal seizure of a crucial asset and they secretly conspired with Israel to occupy the Canal Zone. President Eisenhower condemned this action and Eden was compelled to withdraw British forces; he resigned in early January 1957. Harold Macmillan succeeded him as Conservative Prime Minister.
* Queen Elizabeth had made a day trip to Dunkirk to unveil a memorial to the British troops who had been evacuated or killed there in 1940. In order to make an early start across the Channel, she had stayed with Sir Kenneth and Lady Clark at Saltwood Castle, their home near the Kent coast. The stay had been arranged by Arthur Penn, who had written with his customary courtesy to Sir Kenneth on 28 March 1957: ‘Her Majesty, as I have said, readily recognizes the domestic difficulties which beset us all nowadays, and that is why she is anxious to make this proposal with diffidence … If it would be of the slightest assistance to you it would be quite easy to supplement your staff by sending down a manservant to help with the luggage and meals, and, I have no doubt, a kitchen maid if this would be welcome to Lady Clark, though from what I have heard of your hospitalities I think this may well prove unnecessary … Yours sincerely, Arthur Penn’. (Clark Papers)
* Bali H’ai, a black gelding, turned out to be an excellent horse, winning several races before becoming lame. He was Queen Elizabeth’s first flat runner.
* Group Captain (later Air Commodore Sir) Dennis Mitchell (1918–2001). During t
his tour he took the place of Mouse Fielden, Captain of the Queen’s Flight. He succeeded Fielden in that post in 1962.
* Herbert Vere Evatt QC KStJ (1894–1965), Australian politician and lawyer, President of the United Nations General Assembly, 1948–9.
† Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, KT, AK, CH, QC (1894–1978) Australian politician, Prime Minister, passionate Anglophile and monarchist. He first became Prime Minister in 1939, and ensured that Australia was a close wartime ally of Britain. By the time he retired in 1966 he had served 18 years in the post, longer than anyone else.
* Princess Margaret was sitting to the sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein for a portrait bust and wrote enthusiastically to her mother: ‘he is so nice […] and has old, strong workman hands with very thick fingers with which he delicately places tiny worms of clay on the head. It was fascinating seeing him build it up from nothing. I don’t care if it’s awful, it’s such fun going.’ (12 February 1958, RA QEQM/PRIV/RF) Although Epstein was approached about the King’s tomb, in the end Queen Elizabeth chose to have a chantry chapel built at St George’s Chapel instead of a traditional tomb with an effigy.
* Queen Elizabeth’s flight back to London was eventful. The Qantas Super Constellation developed engine trouble in Mauritius and again in both Uganda and Malta. She arrived home sixty-eight hours late. When the Qantas manager in London apologized, she reassured him, ‘It could have happened to anyone. I feel very sorry for the crew; they all worked so hard.’ (Laird, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, p. 337)
* Queen Elizabeth had loved France since childhood and had admired de Gaulle ever since meeting him when he led the Free French Forces in England during the German occupation of France. In April 1960 de Gaulle made a state visit to London and the Queen Mother stood on the balcony of Clarence House to watch his carriage drive up the Mall to Buckingham Palace. As the carriage drew opposite the house, it paused and the General rose to salute her.
When, in January 1963, de Gaulle magisterially said ‘Non!’ to Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community (as it then was), Queen Elizabeth was not outraged. Her sympathies were with the Commonwealth and with individual European countries, not with a bureaucratic institution.
* Harry Guggenheim (1890–1971), American businessman, philanthropist and fellow racing enthusiast.
* Queen Elizabeth received 112 letters from members of the public concerned that she was to visit the Pope during her trip to Rome. This unofficial visit took place, with Princess Margaret, in April 1959; she did have an audience with Pope John XXIII and she unveiled a monument to Lord Byron in the Borghese Gardens.
* Princess Margaret had fallen in love with Antony Armstrong-Jones, a young, attractive and rather Bohemian society photographer. In August 1959 the Princess wrote to him from Balmoral, ‘You’ve made me happy. Are you pleased? I am … I left London tremendously NOT in turmoil’ (14 August 1959, Snowdon Papers). On her birthday, 21 August 1959, she waited in her room at Balmoral to take his call and wrote to tell him how happy she now was. ‘Dare one say that word … I’m afraid of stating it’ (22 August 1959, Snowdon Papers). Their engagement was announced, to widespread astonishment, in February 1960 and their marriage took place in Westminster Abbey on 6 May that year. They became the Earl and Countess of Snowdon. From honeymoon in the Royal Yacht Britannia, Princess Margaret wrote to her mother to thank her ‘for being so absolutely heavenly all the time we were engaged, you were so encouraging and angelic and it is something that is difficult to express on paper because it is really thanking you for being you’ (16 May 1960, RA QEQM/PRIV/RF).
The Snowdons had two children, David and Sarah. Sadly, the marriage, which began in great happiness, ended in divorce in 1978.
* Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward, the Queen’s third child, was born on 19 February 1960.
* The Queen was on an official tour in India.
* Christina, Princess of Hesse (1933–2011), daughter of Prince Christoph of Hesse and Sophie, Princess of Greece and Denmark (the youngest of the Duke of Edinburgh’s four sisters). She married Prince Andrej of Yugoslavia in 1956 and they had two children, Maria Tatiana (b.1957) and Christopher (b.1960), the little girl and the baby mentioned in this letter.
* The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was formed in 1958 with Bertrand Russell, third Earl Russell (1872–1970), philosopher, historian and activist, as its President. In 1960 he created a splinter group, the Committee of 100, which favoured more direct action. In 1961 he was arrested while leading a sit-down demonstration.
† In fact, the Queen did continue to race, but only on the flat. Queen Elizabeth always concentrated on steeplechasing.
‡ A Sheraton bracket clock, c. 1780, from the collection of H. H. Mulliner.
* Arthur Penn, Queen Elizabeth’s friend since her early years, adviser since her marriage, and Treasurer until he died on 31 December 1960. This letter was to his sister Marjorie Penn.
† Lieutenant Colonel Sir Eric Penn (1916–93), Comptroller Lord Chamberlain’s Office, 1960–82, and his wife Prue, née Stewart-Wilson (1926– ), later an extra lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth.
* Prince Philip believed that Eton was too close to Windsor and to London and that Prince Charles would be harassed by the media there. (The age of the paparazzi had just begun.) Knowing also how much Prince Charles loved Scotland, Prince Philip argued that he should attend his old school, Gordonstoun in Morayshire. Prince Philip’s view won the day.
* In the diary kept by the lady in waiting on duty, Lady Jean Rankin recorded that after dinner at Windsor, following the Garter celebrations, Queen Elizabeth fell and hurt her foot on the way to bed. An X-ray the next day showed that the big toe on the left foot was broken. (RA QEQMH/DIARY/1961:12,13 June)
* Pat Smythe (1928–96), one of Britain’s top female show jumpers and a popular figure.
† David Bowes Lyon, the Queen Mother’s youngest and closest brother, the other of their mother’s ‘Two Benjamins’, died of a heart attack while staying with his sister at Birkhall, on 13 September 1961. The Queen knew how much her mother would miss him and did everything she could to cherish her in the days that followed. His widow Rachel continued to live at St Paul’s Walden and it was then taken on by their son Simon and his wife Caroline. The Queen Mother stayed with the family there at least once a year.
* Graham Sutherland OM (1903–80), British artist of many talents, was commissioned by London University to paint a portrait of its Chancellor, the Queen Mother. He suggested she wear a feathered hat and they had seven sittings in early 1961. He produced a lively, sympathetic sketch which she liked and hung in Clarence House. But he then decided that he would not be able to produce a portrait that the University approved and so withdrew from the project. In 1961 he was completing a massive tapestry, Christ in Glory, for the new Coventry Cathedral, which replaced the original church bombed in the war. In place of Sutherland, London University commissioned a portrait of Queen Elizabeth by Pietro Annigoni. Her letter to Sutherland is an unfinished draft found among her papers and may not have been sent.
* In November 1961, the Queen visited Ghana. The British government and the United States were concerned lest its first President, Kwame Nkrumah (1909–72), tilt too far towards the Soviet Union; the Queen’s visit was to be a gesture of British and thus Western goodwill. There had been unrest in the country before her departure and consideration was given to cancelling her trip. She insisted on going and the visit was a great success.
* D’Arcy Osborne unexpectedly became Duke of Leeds in 1963. A bachelor, he had no heir and the title died with him on 20 March 1964. Queen Elizabeth’s letters to him were returned to her after his death by his cousin Robin Campbell, who told her that Osborne had had a stroke on 16 November 1963 and never fully recovered consciousness. In his final months, he was cherished by devoted friends, including his housekeeper Giuseppina, who had been with him some twenty years. (QEQMH/GEN/1964/LEEDS)
* Woburn Abbey, the ancestral home of the Russ
ell family and the Dukes of Bedford. Heavy death duties were imposed after the death of the twelfth Duke in 1953, and his son decided that in order to restore and keep the house he would have to open it to the public. Woburn was one of the first great houses to become a popular tourist attraction.
* Prince Charles had been created Prince of Wales, the title traditionally conferred on the monarch’s eldest son, in July 1958.
† The Queen Mother had been admitted to King Edward VII’s Hospital for Officers, commonly called ‘Sister Agnes’ after its founder and first matron Agnes Keyser, for an emergency appendectomy. This meant that, to her disappointment, she had to cancel a long-arranged trip to Australia and New Zealand.
‡ Hattie Jacques (1922–80), popular English comedy actress who starred in ITMA, Hancock’s Half Hour and fourteen Carry On films.
§ David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley (1961– ), son of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon.
* The baby that the Queen was expecting was her fourth and last child, Prince Edward Antony Richard Louis, born on 10 March 1964.
* After her operation, the Queen Mother took a two-week cruise in Britannia in the Caribbean to convalesce.
* The christening in Buckingham Palace of Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, later Chatto (1964– ), daughter of Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon.
† The Hon. Mrs John Mulholland DCVO (1902–84), daughter of first Viscount Harcourt. Lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth 1950–84.
Counting One's Blessings Page 65
