The Queen
Page 12
That would definitely be true, were it an accurate picture of what constitutional monarchs, as pioneered and developed by King Leopold and Queen Victoria, and Prince Albert, actually were. They are more than simply figureheads, more than simply pieces of artificially constructed ‘magic’, to render elected governments more poetic. They are symbols, it is true, and the symbolism is deep. They are symbols of an unchanging presence in a changing world; symbols of the continuing past; symbols of a power which is not entirely invested in the politicians who so ardently desire it; symbols, indeed, of a power which no human being is entitled to exercise, and which will always elude them in the end.
The ceremonies which surround the State Opening of Parliament make this abundantly clear. At first, the doors of the Commons are shut against the intrusion of their sovereign, as they were shut against Charles I at the beginnings of the Civil War. Then, the members of the Commons troop through to the Second Chamber to hear the ‘Queen’s Speech’. Yes, everyone knows that the words of this document have been penned by the elected Government of the day. But the ritual of the Crown coming to the Lords reminds everyone present that Power itself, that nebulous but recognizable thing, is not the possession of political parties or of individuals. If the Queen for some reason is unable or (as was so often the case with Queen Victoria) unwilling to attend the State Opening, the Crown is still carried in procession to the Lords. Power is Elsewhere. Power is not the Possession of one person or one party. That is surely a magnificent thing to enshrine into a constitutional ritual, and it is not possible to envisage how that would be enshrined in a republic.
Britain has changed more in the last seven decades than at any previous period in its history. Technology, and the arrival of the Internet; immigration, and the transformation of all large British cities, but most especially the Capital; the decline and change of British industry; the decline and change of British influence in the world; the increase of secularization; the change in the class system; the alteration in sexual mores; all these things make the Britain of 2016 a place which the British of 1952 would find scarcely recognizable. Since that time, one thing, and one thing only, has remained constant, and that is the monarchy.
Great movements, like the Labour Party or the Trade Union movement, no longer attract the huge following they used to; membership of organized religions is in steep decline; there are fewer and fewer things in British life which bind people together.
‘WHERE IS THE QUEEN WHEN THE COUNTRY NEEDS HER?’ asked The Sun on one very sad day in the autumn of 1997. The answer could be – at the State Opening of Parliament, every time it happens; at the Cenotaph every year remembering the nation’s dead; at the Trooping of the Colour every summer; at garden parties in Buckingham Palace and at Holyrood meeting a wider range of the public than any politician ever does. Over the last sixty years the Queen, when she was ‘needed’, has been to every corner of the globe, sometimes, as at Commonwealth Government Leaders’ Conferences at moments of crisis, assuring the governments of Africa and Asia that a benign interest is taken in their affairs, regardless of what the politicians may say; and in many non-Commonwealth countries, the Queen’s visits have supported British interests, commercial and political, while signalling that Britain and the British are more than the political parties they happen to vote into office. Where was the Queen when her country needed her? She was actually there – on the streets of London, staring with grief and wonder at the mounds of flowers for Diana, following the state funeral for the much-adored Queen Mother, receiving foreign Heads of State as various as American and European Presidents, African democrats and demagogues, Arab Kings and Communist Chinese dictators. When Bobby Moore, the England captain, collected the Football World Cup in 1966, he did so from the hands of the Queen; when the people of Aberfan wept for their dead children in 1968, they did so in the presence of the Queen, just as when the schoolchildren of Dunblane were massacred in 1996, the Queen wept with their parents. At dozens of excruciating Royal Variety Show Command performances at the London Palladium theatre, the Queen and her husband have sat patiently while comedians made supposedly cheeky jokes about them, and as crooners stretched the meaning of the phrase ‘easy listening’; when James Bond visited the London Olympic Games in 2012, he did so with a guest appearance by the Queen. Church Synods have been inaugurated, many a ship has been launched, foundation-stones have been laid for libraries, universities, schools, all by the Queen, just as she has visited factories, hospitals and broadcasting stations. As far as light can be shed on the matter, the only place she has refused to visit is Battersea Dogs’ Home – the pathos.
Had hers been an impossible act to follow, then all her tireless self-application, all her dutifulness, would have been double-edged. It is not impossible, though. She has been humble enough, for the most part, simply to go through the motions. Her absence of scintillating small talk has become a national joke – ‘Have you come far?’ ‘What is it you do?’ No one minds. No one wants her, or has ever wanted her, to be a comic turn, or an orator who kept dinner tables in fits of laughter. Not that she is humourless. As the years have passed, people have become more and more aware that the cold-seeming eye which she casts on events is often amused. An Edinburgh resident said to her that she must be relieved that they had demolished the brewery next to Holyrood Palace, so that when she stayed in the city she would no longer have to breathe in the smell. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but you realize that is where they have built the new Scottish Parliament, on the site of the brewery? We don’t get the smell, but we get a lot of hot air.’ In her Jubilee year, all those who had served as her page gave her luncheon at a gentlemen’s club. One of them had the daunting task of escorting her into the billiard room, playing the piano and singing what were supposed to be her favourite numbers from South Pacific. Some days later, she ran into Lord Airlie, her former Lord Chamberlain. ‘I gather my son was entertaining you the other day, ma’am.’ ‘Trying to,’ was the clipped reply.111
Si monumentum requires, circumspice. Sir Christopher Wren’s monument in St Paul’s suggests that those who would seek his monument should simply look about them. By a similar token, ask what a constitutional monarch should be like – and look at Elizabeth II. She is, and has been, the embodiment of what the position requires. Of course, not every constitutional monarch could have had her good fortune of being blessed with a sturdy temperament, good physical health and a long life. The longevity has undoubtedly made her even more successful at her task. So has the frequent stiffness of her manner, and the continued mysteriousness of what is going on behind her face.
She has demonstrated time and again, and in so many different areas, what a monarch can do. The ‘magic’ of which Bagehot spoke is not something tinselly and sentimental, nor is it simply a fake dressing-up of an Establishment puppet. It is palpable. The crowds who have appeared at her Jubilees have been bigger and more enthusiastic than anything seen in modern British history. Whatever love means, this woman is loved.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1 Humphrey Carpenter, Robert Runcie: The Reluctant Archbishop (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), p224.
2 Rodney Brazier, ‘The Monarchy’ in The British Constitution in the Twentieth Century, edited by Vernon Bogdanor (published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2003), p72.
3 Harold Nicolson, diary entry 17 August 1949, Diaries and Letters, 1907–1964, edited by Nigel Nicolson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), p367.
4 Kenneth Rose, George V (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983), p317.
5 Rose, p395.
6 British Pathé, http://www.britishpathe.com/video/king-george-v-jubilee-speech-aka-george-5th/query/george+v+silver+jubilee (accessed 11 March 2016).
7 G.R. Searle, A New England? Peace and war, 1886–1918 (Clarendon Press, 2004), p422.
8 Brazier in Bogdanor, p72.
9 Marion Crawford, The Little Princesses (Cassell, 1950; Duckworth, new edition 1993), p31.
10 Ibid.
11 The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, edited by Geoffrey Grigson (Oxford University Press, 1980), pp371–2.
12 Brazier in Bogdanor, p78.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 ‘Death of King George V’, Continual Dew (London, 1937).
CHAPTER 2
16 Sarah Bradford, Elizabeth: A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen (Heinemann, 1996; Penguin, revised edition 2002), p345.
17 Ben Pimlott, The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy (HarperCollins, Jubilee edition 2012), p407.
18 Interview with Kenneth Rose, quoted Pimlott, p407.
19 Nicolson, diary entry 21 March 1949, p366.
20 Pimlott, p238.
21 The royal spelling of ‘Mummie’, which most English-speakers spell ‘Mummy’, seems to be of a piece with the pre-1914 diction of the old Queen Elizabeth, which both her daughters inherited.
22 Hugo Vickers, Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece (Hamish Hamilton, 2000), pp124–5.
23 Nicolson, diary entry 21 March 1949, p365.
24 Vickers, p225.
25 Guardian, 22 December 2007.
26 Ibid.
27 National and English Review, August 1956.
28 Private information.
29 Crawford, p78.
30 ‘Crawfie’ spells her nickname ‘Alah’ and the Royal Website spells it – rather boldly these days – ‘Allah’.
31 Crawford, p71.
32 Hensley Henson, Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, vol. III (Oxford University Press, 1950), p281.
33 Bradford, p106.
34 Bradford, p71.
CHAPTER 3
35 Phil Dampier and Ashley Walton, Prince Philip: Wise Words and Golden Gaffes (Barzipan Publishing, 2012), p103.
36 Radio Times, 6 February 2012.
37 Bradford, p114.
38 Bradford, p248.
39 Kitty Kelley, The Royals, p134.
40 Dampier and Walton, p37.
41 Dampier and Walton, p73 and passim.
42 Pimlott, p269.
43 Gyles Brandreth, Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage (Century, 2004), p377.
44 Telegraph, 23 October 2006.
45 Brandreth, p349.
46 Vickers, p273.
47 Vickers, p397.
48 Vickers, p259.
49 Philip Eade, Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life (HarperPress, 2011), p21.
50 Bradford, p178.
51 Bradford quoting from Alistair Horne, Harold Macmillan, Volume II: 1957–1986 (Macmillan, 1989), p170.
CHAPTER 4
52 Carpenter, p71.
53 Vickers, p419.
54 Carpenter, pp221 ff.
55 Carpenter, p224.
56 Roy Strong, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (HarperCollins, 2005), p435.
57 Daily Telegraph, 18 November 2013.
58 National Secular Society website, 9 February 2105.
59 Strong, p486.
60 The Queen’s Christmas message, 2011.
CHAPTER 5
61 Brandreth, p205.
62 Bradford, p167.
63 BBC News Website, 22 February 2006.
64 Bradford, p444.
65 The Times, 12 February 2016.
66 Private information.
67 Pimlott, p381.
68 Bradford, p479.
69 Quoted in Bradford, p166.
70 Guardian, 12 July 1997.
71 Sue Townsend to author.
72 Andrew Marr, The Diamond Queen (Macmillan, 2011), p297.
73 Elizabeth Longford, Royal Throne: The Future of the Monarchy (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), p167.
CHAPTER 6
74 T.S. Eliot, For Lancelot Andrewes (Faber & Gwyer, 1928).
75 Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems (Faber & Faber, 2012), p116.
76 Pimlott, p446.
77 Pimlott, p445.
78 Tony Benn, diary entry 4 May 1977, Conflicts of Interest: 1977-80 (Arrow, 1991), p127.
79 Pimlott, p343.
80 ‘I Shall Vote Labour’, published in the New Statesman, 1966.
81 Elizabeth Longford, Elizabeth R: A Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983), p278.
82 Bradford, p413.
83 Pimlott, p416.
84 Pimlott, p399.
85 Bradford, p381.
86 Private information.
87 Pimlott, p465.
88 Pimlott, p117.
89 Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way: 1959–1961 (Macmillan, 1972), pp471–2.
90 Bradford, p123.
91 Peter Oborne, The Triumph of the Political Class (Simon & Schuster, 2007), pp192–3.
92 Bradford, p250.
CHAPTER 7
93 Dampier and Walton, p46.
94 Bradford, p175.
95 Bradford, p132.
CHAPTER 8
96 C.V. Wedgwood, The Trial of Charles I (Collins, 1964), p223.
97 Acceptance speech, Australian of the Year, 25 January 2016.
98 Ibid.
99 Quoted in Pimlott, p670.
100 Caroline Ellis and Minna Thornton, Women and Fashion: A New Look (Quartet, 1989), p152, quoted in Pimlott, p659.
101 Pimlott, p658.
102 Marr, p208.
103 Marr, p210.
104 Private information.
105 Private information.
106 Private information.
CHAPTER 9
107 Dampier and Walton, p67.
108 William M. Kuhn, Henry and Mary Ponsonby: Life at the Court of Queen Victoria (Duckworth, 2002), p205.
109 Wedgwood, p9.
110 Tony Benn, More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001–2007 (Hutchinson, 2007), p45.
111 Private information.
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