by A. N. Wilson
The governess ran to the nursery and said through the door, ‘Alah, it’s Crawfie. Lord Wigram [Deputy Constable and Lieutenant Governor of the Castle] and Sir Hill Child and everybody else is waiting in the shelter and you must come down. This is not a dress rehearsal. What are you doing?’
It was Lilibet’s voice which came back through the door.
‘We’re dressing, Crawfie. We must dress.’31
The heir to the throne was not to be seen in her pyjamas. It is a moment which recalls the life of the first Queen Elizabeth, when the Earl of Essex precipitated his fall from grace by bursting in upon her first thing in the morning in her déshabillé.
The war against Hitler united Great Britain in a way that nothing had done before, and nothing has done since. There was a common enemy, and an enemy moreover who was obviously hateful, and who, equally obviously, had to be destroyed. At the key moment in the historical drama, 1940, it did not merely look as if Britain and its Empire stood alone against Hitler: it really was the case, and this had provided a heady sense of national pride, almost euphoria. The brave chain-smoking King, who had served as a naval officer, and spoke with such an appalling speech impediment, and his calm, radiant Queen were the perfect opposites to Hitler: the King, who seemed so ill, so pious and so modest, the polar opposite to Hitler’s power mania; the Queen, who seemed like one of the jollier aunts in P.G. Wodehouse, being the opposite to Hitler’s humourlessness. Hensley Henson, the Bishop of Durham, wrote in his diary, having heard the Christmas broadcast for 1944, ‘I doubt if any of his predecessors, hardly excepting Queen Victoria, drew to the Throne so great a volume of affection and respect… and he owes much to the sweetness and steady persistence of Queen Elizabeth.’32 Hensley Henson was not noted for his kind view of human nature. Nearly all his richly entertaining diary entries about public figures are magnificently phrased insults. The combination of the war and the peculiar charms of both King and Queen did indeed create a feeling of undiluted admiration. It was an admiration which brushed off on Lilibet, for whom there was also high love; and it was also an admiration which she shared. In 1945, aged nineteen, she volunteered to ‘do her bit’ and joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service as Number 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. She learnt a lot about the internal combustion engine, and she perfected her driving skills. It was the first time a member of the Royal Family had ever attended a course also attended by ‘other people’, and, although she was surrounded by minders, and she did not sleep in barracks at Camberley with the other women but was driven back each night to Windsor Castle, it was a taste of ‘ordinary life’. On 27 July 1945, she was given the rank of junior commander. ‘I’ve never worked so hard in my life,’ she told a friend. ‘Everything I learnt was brand new to me – all the oddities of the insides of a car, and all the intricacies of map-reading. But I enjoyed it all very much and found it a great experience.’33
Two years after the war, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose accompanied the King and Queen on a tour of South Africa. The journey had a number of purposes. One was Imperial. It was hoped that the King’s arrival would strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Jan Smuts against the Nationalists in the forthcoming elections. In fact, the royal visit was powerless to stop the march of Boer Nationalism, and shortly after the King came back to England, the Apartheid system began.
From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, it is obvious that the British Empire was, in effect, finished by the time of the ending of the war. It was not obvious to many of the British ruling class, and it certainly was not obvious to the Royal Family. Mountbatten was being dispatched by the Labour Government, in 1947, as the last Viceroy of India, with the task of winding up the show without too great mishap. As we know, he bungled it spectacularly, with over a million killed after Partition. (One reason for his haste was his desire to be back in Britain to witness his nephew’s wedding to Princess Elizabeth.)
Princess Elizabeth’s preoccupation with Prince Philip was another reason for the royal party going to South Africa – George VI wanted his daughter to be quite sure that she wanted to marry him. She had met him first when she was just thirteen. He was a naval cadet, five years her senior. The King liked a fellow naval officer in the making. It would seem as if Lilibet had genuinely fallen for him, though, as Prince Philip himself was to put it, with his usual lack of tact, there were not many obvious suitors. ‘After all, if you spend ten minutes thinking about it… how many obviously eligible young men, other than people living in this country, were available?’34 Some months away from Philip, in the company of her parents, would give the Princess time to make up her mind.
Another, and more ominous, reason for the visit was that it was hoped that the winter sunshine of South Africa would soothe the King’s very poor health.
It was while they were in South Africa that the Princess celebrated her twenty-first birthday, and made her broadcast to the Empire. It was written for her by Alan Lascelles – always known as ‘Tommy’ – the King’s Private Secretary, and it was, as has been said many times, in effect a political broadcast on behalf of British Imperialists. It was intended to persuade the South Africans to retain their links with the Empire, and it was also meant to persuade the Indians, even after they had achieved independence, to maintain friendly relations with the British. In neither was it completely successful. As the inauguration of young Elizabeth on to the public stage, however, it achieved immortality. ‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong…’
They returned home that spring, 1947. It was clear to Elizabeth that as she began her life of public service, she would do so accompanied by Philip of Greece. The wedding was fixed for 20 November, in Westminster Abbey.
3
‘CHEER UP, SAUSAGE’
‘Where did you get that hat?’
PRINCE PHILIP TO THE QUEEN, AFTER THE CORONATION35
The Diamond Jubilee Celebrations in June 2012 were marked by a spectacular water procession. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, in a splendid launch, were followed and accompanied down the Thames by a flotilla of vessels, which included some of the ‘little boats’ that had rescued servicemen from the beaches of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940, gondolas, cutters of the City Livery Companies – in short, symbols of various aspects of the Queen’s realm and reign. The imaginative organizers, chaired by the Marquess of Salisbury, said that they had been inspired by the canvases of Canaletto, whose views, both of the Thames and of the Venetian lagoon, always present a calm scene of sunlit, blue water on which the boats glide like little toys.
The Queen, whose coronation was accompanied by torrential rainfall, is a rain goddess; so, it was no surprise that what had been conceived as a picture by Canaletto became something different. On one level, the pageant was all but ruined by the modern requirements of Security. Those of us who tried to watch from the bank were confronted by barriers and police and ‘volunteers’, blocking off almost every street. Even in wide open spaces, such as Battersea Park, people found it difficult to reach the water’s edge. It was not only a wet day: it was very cold. Yet wherever you tried to evade the officious barricades and actually witness the water-spectacular, the same phenomenon was observable: a crowd which was almost desperate in its desire to cheer the monarch. Sodden Union Jacks were waved aloft with that ironical combination of humours – mockery, self-mockery, banter – which ‘come over’ British crowds when they are trying to hide from themselves a collective excitement, a palpable fervour. Nothing could be more different from the crowds at a North Korean or Nuremberg-style celebration of the Great Leader. The mood swooped between attempts not to ‘well up’ with grumbling about the weather and the police.
And there they were on the water – the Queen and Prince Philip: ‘my husband and I’. For the two hours or so which it took the Royal Barge to make its journey, the monarch and her husband stood. Muc
h was made of this at the time – as if they were being especially heroic. On one level, they were. On another level, they had little alternative, since the gales had swept over the launch for the few hours before the Queen took her place in it, and the seats provided for the royal party were sodden. They were faced with a choice of a dignified but exhausting few hours standing upright or the same length of time seated in deep, cold puddles. Not long afterwards, Prince Philip was taken off to hospital. Those of us who are sometimes invited by newspapers or the broadcast media to make comments on royal deaths were put on alert. We stood beside our laptops with black armbands to the ready. In fact, as so often before, and as several times since, it was a false alarm, and after a week in hospital, the seemingly indefatigable old man was soon back in action.
Few who saw it, however, will forget the sight of the Queen and Prince Philip standing for hours upon that rain-assaulted ceremonial vessel. On the one hand, there was near-absurdity in the sight. What had been planned so lovingly as a sun-blessed picture of eighteenth-century tranquillity had become an episode of the late Queen Mother’s favourite television comedy show, Dad’s Army – where such events as pageants and parades so often descended into farce. On the other hand, the unscheduled and unchoreographed need to make this pair of very old people stand for such a dangerously long time spoke more vividly than if they had drifted past us sitting comfortably on crimson velvet. There they stood. Short of death itself – which looked, towards the end of the day, as if it was on the point of carrying at least one of them away – nothing could apparently dislodge their dogged willingness to stand, and stand, and stand, as the cold wind blew, and the rains fell.
Prince Philip’s ramrod uprightness as a supporter of the contemporary monarchy is not in question, any more than is his very distinctive character. During the celebrations for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Britain, in July 2015, he found himself being made to pose for a photograph with a group of distinguished airmen, old and young. Most of them were in uniform. He was on this occasion in a blue lounge suit, his chest adorned with medals. He shares with his father-in-law and grandfather-in-law an obsession with decorations, medals, ceremonial uniforms and correct court rituals. By now, he had come to resemble the most distinguished old member of a seaside bowls club, with slightly alarming eyes starting furiously from his angular, though still handsome, skull. The photographer was dithering. Everyone was bored. At last came one of those moments which Prince Philip-watchers always treasure. ‘Just take the fucking picture!’ came his barking voice.
At a luncheon given to celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1997, the Queen said, ‘He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, in this and in many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim or we shall ever know.’36
At the time of Philip and Elizabeth’s betrothal, there had been misgivings. Tommy Lascelles probably spoke for the rest of the court when he said they all considered him to be ‘rough, ill-mannered, uneducated, and would probably not be faithful’.37 Both points of view were held with equal vigour throughout the long marriage. Both points of view were plausible. Probably, by now, some people are beginning to realize that one of the things which has enabled him to be the Queen’s strength and stay for so long is that he has been at least some of the things which Tommy Lascelles and colleagues deplored. What the courtiers had viewed as defects were in fact assets in a marriage to a shy woman who, despite her clear goodness of heart, has seldom been able to convey interest in or affection for the people she meets.
On their very first major Commonwealth tour, in 1953, the Queen and Prince Philip found themselves in a little town in South Australia. The mayor, very nervous, and dressed in what were described as ‘dreadful homemade robes of bunny rabbit fur’, presented his monarch with a box. ‘Your Royal Highness,’ he blunderingly said, rather than ‘Your Majesty’, ‘at this very moment, our High Commissioner in London is presenting a similar box to your representative at the Palace.’ ‘Oh, my God, man!’ roared Prince Philip. ‘Don’t you realize the ten-and-a-half-hour time difference between here and England? The High Commissioner is probably sound asleep at this minute!’38
Of course, it was cruel. Nonetheless, it is also funny. And there were several occasions during that tour when the Queen, going through the motions and doing her duty, could not rise to do any more than her duty, whereas he remained a recognizably human being. When the temperatures in Australia soared to 110°F and the Queen, pining for the cold air and damp heather of Balmoral, could not remove the scowl from her face, he said, ‘Cheer up, sausage, it’s not so bad as all that.’ Later, in New Zealand, when they were greeted by a crowd of Maori children jumping up and down on a riverbank, the Queen did not even cast them a glance. It was Philip who called out, ‘Look, Bet, aren’t they lovely?’39 (‘Bet’ is short for Lilibet; this is what he calls her.)
Journalists, and many of their readers, so enjoy Prince Philip’s ‘gaffes’ that they sometimes make them up, as when, during the 1990s, he attended a pop concert in Wales with some deaf children, and was supposed to have said, ‘No wonder you’re deaf, having to listen to this racket!’ (That was one of the few occasions when he was pompous enough to write a correction, pointing out that his own mother had suffered acutely from her deafness, and he would never have mocked the affliction.) The parodist who invented the comment had, however, caught the tone of the remarks which genuinely are authentic. To a group of women at a community centre in London’s East End a few years ago, ‘Who do you sponge off?’ To the President of Nigeria who was wearing his national costume, ‘You look like you’re ready for bed.’ To a tourist in Budapest, ‘You can’t have been here long, you haven’t got a pot belly.’ To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, ‘You managed not to get eaten, then?’ To a civil servant in the 1970s, ‘You’re just a silly little Whitehall twit. You don’t like me and I don’t like you.’ To a female naval rating in 2015, ‘Do you work in a strip club?’
To a man who told him that he worked at the Samaritans, ‘Ah, the Samaritans. You didn’t try to commit suicide, did you?’
The Queen was bending over a man injured by an IRA bomb, who had lost much of his sight. ‘How much can you see?’ she inquired. ‘Not a lot,’ said the Duke, ‘judging by that tie he’s wearing.’40
To the matron of a Caribbean hospital, ‘You have mosquitos. I have the press.’ Seeing a press photographer fall out of a tree in Pakistan, ‘I hope to God he breaks his bloody neck.’41
Prince Philip’s relationship with the press has been abrasive, but humorous. During the first world tour he made with the Queen in 1953, he threw peanuts at the journalists awaiting them at Gibraltar near the ape enclosure. ‘Which ones are the monkeys?’ he asked them.42
At the same time, as he must have come to realize as he moved from the ripeness of old age to his tenth decade, he had enjoyed a remarkably easy ride with the press, compared with any of his children. From the 1950s onwards there were rumours about the marriage. He took risks. For many years, he drove himself round London in a black taxi-cab. Sometimes he would use this conveyance to take chums to bars or nightspots in Soho. They were never photographed, and their visits to such haunts were never reported. The rumours about his close relationships with a string of women were never substantiated, and there were those, such as Gyles Brandreth who wrote a broadly sympathetic book entitled Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage, who evidently came to believe that the relationships, however close, were all Platonic. Brandreth concluded his book (which is much the best I have read on the subject, partly because he does actually know Prince Philip), ‘And how about the Queen? How does she feel about all this in the dark watches of the night? She cannot say, fully, freely, as Robert Browning says in his poem, “By the Fireside”, “We stood there with never a third”. But Robert Browning was a sentimentalist, which the Queen is not. She knows h
er man, loves him, admires him and accepts him as he is. She is also Sovereign of the Order of the Garter. Honi soit qui mal y pense.’43
Prince Philip has certainly been part of the success story of the twentieth-century British monarchy. No doubt there could have been other ways of making it a success, but his combination of abrasiveness and constancy has worked. He has been a dutiful servant of the state, both as a young naval officer, and as a friend and encourager of serving members of the armed forces. When he was eighty-five, two days after a whirlwind tour of the Baltic states with the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh flew out to Basra to make a surprise visit to the Queen’s Royal Hussars (of which he is Colonel in Chief). He was dressed in combat gear, and the visit could not have been better-judged. He was a man among men – a role which he can always fulfil cheerfully. Lance Corporal Dean Munn, aged twenty-two from Redditch, remarked, ‘it’s good to see him here in these hard conditions, taking the time to see us and how we’re doing’.44 Eight years later, when he was ninety-three, this time wearing a bowler hat and ‘civvies’, the Prince flew to Sennelager, in Germany, to welcome back a hundred men of the tank regiment of the Queen’s Royal Hussars and to pin Afghanistan medals on their chests. By now skeletally thin, with eyes which sparkled from the depths of his skull in the way that lights up the faces of those in the last stages of life, he was in jovial form. The offcolour jokes and laddish behaviour with women which had supposedly clouded earlier decades of his life would only have enhanced his standing with these men.
