Her Majesty

by Robert Hardman

  Fortunately for the Prince, he is not on his own. This is a family excursion. In fact, apart from his own wedding some months later and traditional state occasions like the Queen’s Birthday Parade, few events will draw a bumper royal turnout to match this one. It’s the 350th birthday party of the world-leading British institution, the Royal Society, an organisation so grand that it does not need to say what it is the Royal Society of. It is so exalted that this is not a party but a ‘convocation’. The rarefied atmosphere is justified. It is a unique scientific institution. Founded by Charles II for ‘improving natural knowledge’, the society’s members have included Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin and 74 of the current 1,400 members are Nobel prizewinners. For most of its 350 years, the Royal Society has enjoyed a close and fruitful relationship with the monarchy. Today its members will underline that bond by welcoming three generations of the Royal Family and admitting Prince William as a Royal Fellow. It will be a proud day, too, for the society’s patron, the Queen.

  The Prince looks relaxed for one who is about to address a full house at the Royal Festival Hall. ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ he tells the welcoming committee modestly. ‘I’m left-handed as well so I could be the first person to smudge your 350th anniversary book.’ It’s a good ice-breaker. Everyone laughs. The Duke of Kent is already here. The Princess Royal dashes in at the last minute, breezily explaining that her train broke down at Swindon. Suddenly everyone stiffens. The Queen and Prince Philip have arrived. They are escorted by Lord Rees of Ludlow, Britain’s most decorated scientist and the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Aside from his peerage and knighthood, Lord Rees has held the ancient position of Astronomer Royal for fifteen years and holds the Order of Merit, an honour limited to just twenty-four of the most distinguished intellects in the land. His college boasts the Prince of Wales and thirty-two Nobel prizewinners among its alumni. Today, which happens to be his sixty-eighth birthday, Lord Rees wears another hat – President of the Royal Society. Even he looks a little nervous.

  First things first. The royal party and the society’s council line up for a photograph. It is an extremely distinguished line-up. Of the 27 people in the picture, 26 have a title – ranging from Queen to professor. Even the odd one out, Mr Philip Ruffles, has the letters CBE FREng FRS RDI after his name. The organisers have commissioned a special fanfare for the entry of the Queen into the auditorium. A Ben Hur-style crash of trumpets brings the world of science to its feet and the royal party proceeds to the stage. It’s a curious ambiance. Remote-controlled helium-filled penguins float around the auditorium. Laid out before the Queen is the mace, a gift from Charles II, and an inkstand, presented by George III. There is also a bell which was presented by the Queen herself on the society’s 300th birthday. She and Prince Philip are the only people in the room today who were also present back then. The secretary recites the Fellowship citation for Prince William. He is to be recognised for his ‘developing leadership role’ and his ‘ability to stimulate interest in science in young people’. The Prince dips a feather quill into his great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s inkwell, signs the 350-year-old book without smudging his entry and moves to the lectern. ‘My generation,’ he declares, ‘will have to engage with science more fully, perhaps, than any that has preceded it.’ He also observes that both his father and grandfather had to wait until the age of twenty-nine to receive this accolade, adding: ‘I am twenty-eight which just shows what a geography degree can do.’

  The applause is generous, but not out of mere politeness. Today ensures a timely renewal of an ancient bond between the scientific world and the Crown. This is important because there is one very obvious absentee today. The Prince of Wales is also, as Prince William observed, a Royal Fellow of the Royal Society. Officially, he is unable to watch his eldest son receive the initials ‘FRS’ because he is making a speech to the Consumer Goods Forum half a mile away. However, it is no secret that there has been a bit of a spat. The Prince and the Royal Society have very different positions on the subject of genetically modified foods. Prince Charles is firmly opposed; the society is cautiously supportive. That’s why the scientists are so pleased to see the heir to the heir to the throne here today. Even if the society is out of royal favour during the next reign, it should be back in the loop during the one after that.

  It is not the day for a scene, of course, although the point is made. In his wide-ranging speech of welcome to everyone, Lord Rees finds room to observe that ‘we must confront’ those who fear that genetic crops ‘may run away too fast’. Much is unsaid today. The occasion is the nearest thing to a public celebration of another milestone. It is also the 350th birthday of the constitutional monarchy – 350 years since the Restoration summer when the Roundheads were kicked out and Charles II returned from exile to take the throne. By any standards, it’s a big anniversary. But it has been almost entirely overlooked. Aside from a £5 collectors’ coin from the Royal Mint, there is to be no official recognition of the birthday of the modern monarchy. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee is approaching and she doesn’t want to overdo the royal anniversaries (this is a monarch who scrapped a set of stamps to mark her own seventieth birthday on the grounds that she didn’t want ‘a fuss’). Today’s event will be the nearest this monarch gets to acknowledging the Restoration.

  The scientists are delighted by all the royal attention. Royalty is sometimes dismissed as an irrational anachronism. But here are some of the most rational brains alive and they don’t agree with that sentiment. ‘I wouldn’t call the royals irrational, except perhaps one who I won’t mention,’ says Lord Rees impishly afterwards. ‘They are of great symbolic importance. The Duke of Edinburgh has been a very strong advocate of science. Prince William may not be a scientist but his interest in science makes his position here an important one – for him and us.’ Science Minister David Willetts ponders the historic parallels. ‘It’s very interesting – this rational, open-minded organisation sharing a date with the Restoration of the monarchy,’ he says. ‘It just shows that the monarchy is not associated with obscurantism and darkness but openness and light.’

  Prince William’s football match has long since finished by the time he leaves. As he walks to his car, the President of the Football Association receives his first match report courtesy of a well-refreshed man in the crowd who has spent the afternoon in a pub and shouts a summary of events across the throng. The next day’s papers are all dominated by football news. A few carry pictures of Prince William at the Royal Society although the words focus on the fact that he was not watching football. There will be few complaints at the Palace, though. This event neatly illustrates today’s royal landscape: three generations in the age-old royal business of saluting excellence. It’s dutiful, worthy, unshowy. And the absence of the Prince of Wales is not mentioned in any publication. A few years ago, there would have been sensational headlines about a ‘snub’ or a ‘royal rift’ above reports that the Prince was at odds with his family or the scientific establishment or the government or all three. These days, his views on GM crops are so well known that they are no longer news fodder. Similarly, no one would dispute his devotion as a father. His speech to the Consumer Goods Forum – on how the retail industry can help the environment – receives respectful notices in the retail media. But, crucially, his no-show is a non-story.

  The last few years have been a happy period in the British royal narrative, with a spectacular wedding to mark the end of one chapter and the start of another. By continuing to do what she has always done without any obvious concession to age, the Queen is no longer merely respected but almost revered. Her children seem content in well-established public roles. Her first wave of grandchildren are all safely through the assault course of adolescence and getting on with life. Prince William is happily married and, along with Prince Harry, thriving in the Forces. Another newly-wed, Zara Phillips, has fought her way to the top of international equestrianism and was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year in
2006. ‘The Queen’s standing is extremely high and the Prince of Wales is happy,’ says a retired senior aide. ‘A few people sound off about some of his pronouncements but it doesn’t shake the whole foundation. He’s a stable figure who’s been right on a lot of things. Now, the future is secure with William. He is a very traditional, conventional figure but he has got the Princess’s touch with people. They think: “This guy is cool.”’

  There was, though, a decade of storms and turmoil before the current spell of sunny weather. Some of the trouble was foreseeable, some of it not. That the monarchy is where it is today is largely down to the way it faced up to the challenges of its darkest period since the Second World War – the nineties.

  ‘This wasn’t a place where they wanted much change,’ says one of those who was in the thick of it during those years. ‘The two issues which were besetting the monarchy and distracting attention from the good job the Queen was doing were, as ever, sex and money. We had to get sex and money off the agenda.’

  As far as ‘sex’ goes, there was little the Queen and her advisers could do about her family’s private lives. The failed marriages of her three elder children (the Prince of Wales and Princess Royal have since remarried) are well chronicled. Psychologists and agony aunts will be debating the royal component to these events for years to come but, ultimately, these were personal misfortunes.

  The confluence of unhappiness which ran through 1992 – the separations, the scandals and the fire – may have led the Queen to describe it as an annus horribilis but much of it was beyond her control. She could, however, tackle the other crisis bedevilling the monarchy through the final years of the twentieth century – money. And she did. The result has been a restructuring of the royal finances on a scale not seen since George III. After sixty years on the throne, the Queen no longer depends on Parliament to provide public funds to keep the monarchy afloat. It is now supported by the property market.

  The mid-eighties had appeared to herald a royal golden age. First, the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. A kindergarten teacher thirteen years his junior, she was the shy, doe-eyed youngest daughter of the Queen’s former equerry Earl Spencer. Pretty, scandalfree and naturally child-minded, the new Princess of Wales had grown up on the fringes of the royal world and knew the royal form. Equally, she could deploy an easy informality with total strangers. Prince William was born a year later and Prince Harry arrived in 1984. Prince William was old enough to be a pageboy in 1986 when Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson, a boisterous girl about town with a job in fine art publishing. On his wedding day, the Queen created her second son Duke of York. The new Duchess had also grown up on the royal periphery – her father, Major Ronald Ferguson, was polo manager to the Prince of Wales. Like Lady Diana, she had endured the misery of divorcing parents as a child. And, like Lady Diana, she was heralded by the press as a ‘breath of fresh air’ upon the royal scene.

  Two daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, were born in 1988 and 1990. That ‘fresh air’ blew fast and strong. To nods of media approval, the young royal couples had interests and friends far beyond the traditional royal territory of country sports and country houses. A new culture of glamorous fundraising was evolving on the back of Britain’s economic revival. Charity was cool. And so was royalty. The Prince of Wales had already made a substantial impact on national life with his Prince’s Trust, providing grants for the young and disadvantaged so that they could learn a skill or get a project off the ground. In 1986, ten years after the original, he founded the Prince’s Youth Business Trust to lend start-up funding to young people who couldn’t get a loan. Its success rate soon surpassed that of any High Street bank. Across the charity sector, traditional tombolas and tin-rattling were all very well but fundraisers discovered that there were richer sources to be mined. This was the age of the Sloane Ranger, the yuppy and the television ‘personality’. And they came flocking when royalty was involved. A black-tie ball or a sponsored event with a royal endorsement – especially from ‘Lady Di’ or ‘Fergie’ – would reap huge dividends. The boundaries between royalty and celebrity soon became increasingly blurred. While the younger members of the Royal Family proved to be glamorous, happy and productive (in every sense), the nation was delighted to indulge them.

  Fortunately for the monarchy, all this taffeta triumphalism coincided with the arrival of another newcomer on the royal scene. He was not a glamorous trendsetter. He would turn few heads outside royal circles and yet he would have a greater impact on the mechanics of the monarchy than almost anyone since Prince Albert.

  When future historians compile their lists of eminent New Elizabethans, few will omit David George Coke Patrick Ogilvy, 13th Earl of Airlie. An exact contemporary of the Queen, Lord Airlie played with her as a child. It is even said that one of the Queen’s first words was ‘Airlie’ – her name for Queen Mary’s Lady-in-Waiting, Mabell, Countess of Airlie (the grandmother of the present Earl). Lord Airlie’s father ran the Queen Mother’s household for several years and his younger brother, Angus Ogilvy, married the Queen’s cousin, Princess Alexandra. His wife, Ginny, has been a very popular Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen since 1973. Few Palace-watchers were very surprised, in 1984, when Lord Airlie was appointed Lord Chamberlain. It’s a post often likened to that of royal non-executive chairman. The Private Secretary may be the all-important daily conduit between the Queen and her various governments around the world, but he still answers to the Lord Chamberlain. If there is a problem anywhere in the royal fold, it is the Lord Chamberlain’s duty to know about it. It is also his duty to offer what the last incumbent, Lord Luce, called ‘fearless advice’ to everyone, including the Queen. If anyone could do that, it was David Airlie. ‘I have known her all my life,’ he acknowledges shyly. ‘She knows me warts and all.’

  Flawlessly connected and with a pair of Scottish castles, Lord Airlie might, on paper, resemble the ‘tweedy courtier’ of years gone by. But there was nothing sentimental about the Queen’s choice of Lord Chamberlain. For twenty-three years he had been a dynamic figure in the City and commerce, spending the previous seven years as chairman of the investment house Schroders plc, before accepting the summons to the Palace. One of those pressing for Lord Airlie’s appointment was William Heseltine, soon to be the Queen’s Private Secretary. ‘It was because I knew of his very successful career in business and banking that I thought he would make a very good non-executive chairman,’ says Heseltine. Another member of the Royal Household still regards it as a watershed: ‘David Airlie came along and saw everything. He was just the person because he was a real insider.’

  Lord Airlie was not joining the Royal Household for a quiet life. ‘I left Schroders on 30 November and came to Buckingham Palace on 1 December,’ he recalls. ‘Getting to know the set-up took a bit of time. It’s quite a complicated organisation. I spent a lot of time listening because I began to form the view fairly early on that changes needed to be made.’

  A tall, genial man, he combines a donnish eye for detail with an assured military bearing (a former Scots Guards officer, he later became Captain-General of the Queen’s Body Guard for Scotland, the Royal Company of Archers). He rarely gives interviews. When he does, he speaks frankly. Having inspected every level of the Palace soon after his arrival, he had much to say. The Palace, he feared, was in danger of running out of money.

  ‘The Royal Household were not adopting what might be called best practices. Civil List expenditure was outrunning revenue. It was quite alarming. Something had to be done and it couldn’t wait. Those two factors led me to suggest to the Queen that we ought to do an internal review from top to bottom.’

  The Civil List was the annual fund to cover the Monarch’s duties as head of state. Most of it went on salaries and none of it went to the Queen herself. Nor did it include the Prince of Wales and his family who were funded by the Duchy of Cornwall, the ancient property portfolio which provides the heir to the throne with an independent income. What the new Lo
rd Chamberlain had in mind was radical stuff, particularly so since, on the outside, the royal picture looked so rosy.

  When Lord Airlie was appointed, the Prince and Princess of Wales were happily adjusting to life with two little boys while matrimony beckoned for the Duke of York. Today’s Lord Chamberlain, Earl Peel, remains in awe of what happened next. ‘Lord Airlie took it upon himself to call the heads of department together and read the riot act,’ says Lord Peel. ‘He said: “This is unacceptable. We’re not working to properly controlled budgets. There is not the proper level of cooperation between departments and I wish to see change.” And that didn’t half rattle a few cages, I can tell you.’

  If the courtiers of the day thought they could see off this boisterous new arrival, they were wrong. Nothing of any importance happens at the Palace without the Queen’s say-so. Not only did she approve the plan but she decided to give Lord Airlie special authority to bring it about. For a monarch who had diligently sought to emulate her father and grandfather for more than thirty years, it must have been a painful moment. Some sovereigns cannot wait to stamp their own mark on the throne. Edward VIII was hiring, firing and redecorating within days. Not so the Queen. Sensitive to the memory of her father and to her mother’s bracing views on all forms of change, she liked the status quo. But, on this occasion, wise monarch outweighed dutiful daughter. ‘The Queen is obviously a natural conservative but she is very canny and she thought about it very carefully,’ says a senior official of the era. ‘When you’re monarch, you live in an ivory tower. You’re the boss. But if you’re a decent, thoughtful monarch, you want to hear what other people say.’ Future historians may look back on this as one of the most astute decisions of the reign. Lord Peel calls it a ‘defining moment’ in the one-thousand-year history of his job: ‘David Airlie went to the Queen and he said: “Your Majesty, I really need your permission, in effect, to act in an executive capacity.” And the Queen approved that. And so we saw the Lord Chamberlain really beginning to form policy within the Household in a way which had probably never happened before.’