Her Majesty

by Robert Hardman

  The Queen is clearly delighted to be at an equestrian centre as she steps out of the State Bentley in a pink coat and dress by Stewart Parvin and a Philip Somerville hat. This greeting line has been restricted to three. The Queen walks straight up to a demonstration of equine physiotherapy. A teacher is pointing out the muscles on a mare called Mo who is so overwhelmed by all the attention that she relieves herself just as the Queen is alongside. Unperturbed, the Queen follows the lesson for a few minutes and moves on to a display of equine massage. A few stalls further along, a couple of elderly horses are half asleep as they undergo a course of equine reiki therapy. Mature student Kim McMuldrow explains that her charge, a twenty-year-old mare called Emma, has had cancer. ‘Reikí helps horses heal themselves,’ explains McMuldrow, her fingers hovering above Emma’s back. ‘Is it just your hand?’ asks the Queen. ‘It’s very good for making the horses feel very, very calm,’ McMuldrow whispers. The Queen is captivated. She stops, as planned, for a few words with Philip Warren as he holds open his gate and asks him how he is getting on. Just fine, he says. He’s still not sure if she recognises him from the old days.

  Inside the indoor arena, a display is under way with the captain of the British Olympic dressage team, Richard Davison, and his son, Joe, riding the Countess of Derby’s prize horse, Artemis. The students have been asked not to greet the Queen with a wall of mobile phones but to pretend to be glued to the display. Once it’s over, though, and the Queen is in the ring to unveil the chainsaw sculpture, everyone starts greedily snapping away. Meanwhile, the staff and students at the dairy unit are loyally pretending that Steven Broomhead, the chief executive of the Northwest Regional Development Agency, is the Duke of Edinburgh. But nobody bows.

  At the campus headquarters, star pupil Katherine Smith presents the Queen with a bouquet of cream roses, astrantias and hostas. She has been informed that they are the Monarch’s ‘favourite summer colours’. Meredydd David invites the Queen to unveil a plaque commemorating the opening of the building by the Sovereign ‘and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’. Some of the staff are a little worried that it’s wrong. But the Queen laughs and so everyone else laughs, too. David Briggs is looking at his watch. The Lord-Lieutenant has to escort the Queen to her next engagement. This day has had its nerve-wracking moments but he is enjoying himself. Even a sudden disaster like a missing Duke is not insurmountable when you have a visitor as experienced as the Queen. Anyway, as he himself admits, he is rather more nervous about another event a few weeks hence. He will not only be representing the Queen. He will be presenting the awards which bear her name.

  George V and George VI created their own brands of chivalry to reflect the ages in which they lived. The Queen has done the same. But the Elizabeth Cross is very different in tone. Whereas the primary purposes of George V’s Order of the British Empire and George VI’s George Cross are, respectively, to recognise excellence and gallantry, the Elizabeth Cross is to recognise sacrifice. Very simply, it is awarded to the families of members of the Armed Forces who die in the service of the country. Inevitably, it is widows and mothers who tend to wear it. And it is entirely in keeping with the style of the Monarch who has created it. The columnist and former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore has written that Britain is the most matriarchal society in the modern world, in that the four most famous public figures since the Second World War have been women the Queen, the Queen Mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, and Margaret Thatcher. It seems fitting that the Queen’s personal legacy to the way Britain salutes its own should strike a feminine – though not a feminist chord. It is not another hierarchy of medals for use only on formal occasions. There is a silver badge, along with a pin-on miniature for everyday use. It has no Class 1, 2 or 3; no Gold, Silver or Bronze. Just like every Commonwealth War Cemetery, it knows no rank. It comes with no protocols on where it is worn or how it sits in relation to other medals – though it is in no way an alternative to them. It is complementary. By definition, it can only be conferred on those who lived and died in uniform. It is both a brooch and an emblem, suitable for men and women; it is classless, different and, simply, very her. Just as the Victoria Cross captured the mood of the new imperial age, so the Elizabeth Cross is of its time.

  When presented, there is none of the pomp and suppressed party atmosphere of a normal investiture. It has to be done with solemnity and a degree of intimacy and flexibility. And because it is available to the families of every man or woman who has died in the Forces since 1948 all 16,000 of them – it is impossible for the Queen to present all the Crosses which bear her name. So this sombre task is another duty for the Lord-Lieutenants. ‘The fact it has the Queen’s name attached to it I can’t tell you what an effect that has,’ says Lord Shuttleworth. ‘It’s that thing of personal recognition. It’s not the Great British Cross or whatever. It has her name and the reaction is really touching.’ He has found that presentations need to be small affairs – never more than ten at once – and has learned not to be surprised by anything.

  ‘These are very emotional occasions. Every single Lord-Lieutenant will tell you of distressing moments during the presentation. There’s a lot of bursting into tears and a lot of people are still quite angry. But you want to bring the whole family together in a lovely setting and make sure there is tea and a slice of cake, too.’

  Traditional royal investitures are much larger affairs. The Queen has been doing them since she was a Princess and, when she cannot be present, the Prince of Wales or Princess Royal stands in for her. This is one of the great rewards of being royal. The Monarch is the ‘Fount of Honour’ and there can be few engagements more rewarding than recognising exceptional people on behalf of the whole nation. It’s pure Lady Bountiful. Here, too, things have changed a great deal. In the last twenty years, the number of investitures has shot up by 50 per cent to nearly thirty every year. This is not because there has been a rise in heroism or good deeds. It is partly because of a change of policy by John Major’s government. He decided that the British Empire Medal, previously the lowest rung on the honours ladder, was demeaning. Henceforth, everyone who would once have got a BEM now receives the MBE instead. The BEM had always been presented by Lord-Lieutenants whereas the MBE has always been presented by the Sovereign. This new MBE boom has added another six investitures to the Queen’s annual schedule.

  While it might sound laudably egalitarian, it has not pleased everybody. As Kenneth Rose points out: ‘The BEM was very useful to give to someone like the barman in the officers’ mess who’d been there for thirty years. Now he either gets nothing or an MBE which is what the Regimental Sergeant Major gets. So, all of a sudden, the Regimental Sergeant Major is diminished.’ The government is now looking at ways of resurrecting the BEM but creating the perfect honours system has always been impossible. Someone will always feel neglected or hard done by. Kenneth Rose is fond of quoting Winston Churchill on the subject: ‘A medal glistens. But it also casts a shadow.’

  Because so many troops are now on active service overseas, there has also been a rise in decorations for gallantry, adding another couple of ceremonies each year. Bumping up the numbers of investitures even more has been the Queen herself. At the start of the reign, she might present 250 medals and honours at a time. As the years have progressed, her capacity to stand in the same spot shaking hands and making fruitful conversation has, inevitably, reduced. She doesn’t want to spend any less time with recipients so it has simply been a case of shrinking the average investiture down to a hundred awards. ‘It’s the feet not the head which dictate it’s an hour,’ says Sir Malcolm Ross, the former Comptroller, who was involved with investitures for twenty years (he is now the Lord-Lieutenant of Kirkcudbrightshire). ‘And so it means a few more investitures each year. The Queen understands that.’ In any case, a smaller crowd means that there is room for the recipients to bring the family, too. At the start of the reign, they could bring just one guest to the Palace. Today, they can bring three. What’s more, the Queen has authorised an
other improvement which would have been unthinkable just twenty years ago. Every investiture is filmed – from arrival to departure – and the footage then edited to produce a customised DVD. Some find that as gratifying as the gong itself.

  Each investiture is a major production for the Royal Household but there is nothing like a table covered in metal and ribbons to give the place a buzz. ‘Looking at it from the worm’s eye view, I used to love investitures,’ says Ross, ‘because you are able to help people enjoy one of the great days of their lives. When someone gets a medal from the Queen, you come out thrilled, too. Here are all these happy people – and happy people are why you are in the Happy People Business.’

  This arm of the business is run jointly by the government and the Monarch. The government decides who gets which honours, via a network of civil servants and committees. Then the Queen delivers, assisted by the grandly named Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood. It is actually a small team based in the lower half of a Georgian house inside St James’s Palace. The atmosphere is part Dickensian, part National Lottery. Most people who come into contact with this place will have just received one of the most memorable surprises of their life – an invitation to receive an honour from the Queen. But they may also be confused by the fact that they are joining a club with old and complicated codes and privileges. A medal is not the same as a badge, a decoration is not the same as an honour, a ribbon is not the same as a collar. Everyone joining an Order of Chivalry, from MBE upwards, will receive both a badge and a signed Royal Warrant of Appointment – effectively a proof of ownership. Understandably, people have questions and Rachel Wells, the Central Chancery’s Assistant Secretary for more than thirty years, has heard most of them before. As ever, there are worries about what to wear for an investiture. This place may be the last link with the age of chivalry but it must still move with the times. So, ladies’ trouser suits have finally been accepted (without great enthusiasm, it must be said). Fancy dress, however, is actively discouraged. Palace staff did not conceal their dismay in 2010 when a Leicestershire milkman arrived to receive an MBE – for community services – dressed in a ‘cow suit’. Several gallantry decorations were being presented on the same morning, including a posthumous George Medal. It was a crass and insensitive stunt, but it could have been worse. ‘We did persuade him to remove his tail,’ says the Secretary of the Central Chancery, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Matheson. His staff have come to expect the unexpected, including people who fail to turn up at all. ‘We recently had a chap coming from Kent and his sat nav sent him to Croydon,’ says Rachel Wells. ‘He rang up in quite a state saying, “I’m lost in Croydon.” We got him another date.’

  Then there are those who accept an award only to send it back again. The Insignia Clerk, Jeremy Bagwell-Purefoy, has a strongroom full of every conceivable medal from across the royal spectrum. He has shelves of OBEs, Garter regalia worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, a handful of Imperial Service Orders (an old colonial honour which the Queen still awards in Papua New Guinea) and the last two examples of the longdormant Order of St Patrick. He also has an entire cabinet full of insignia returned to the Queen in protest throughout her reign. There are hundreds of medals from Second World War veterans who wanted to register their disgust at the 1971 state visit accorded to the wartime Emperor of Japan. Also here is the MBE given to the late John Lennon in 1965. The musician handed it back in 1969 in protest at British foreign policy. But he never stopped being John Lennon MBE. Similarly, the vault contains the MBE given to the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in 2001. Two years later, she made a very public show of sending it back in protest against both the Iraq War and the monarchy. She also remains an MBE. Once appointed, you enter the register and there you remain. ‘You can’t resign, I’m afraid,’ says Matheson. ‘But you can change your mind about the insignia and we always say: “If you want it back, just let us know.”’

  That is the last thing on anyone’s mind as four hundred people in their finest dresses, suits and uniforms ascend the Grand Staircase at Windsor Castle. There is an atmosphere of gleeful nervousness. It is a sign of the times that most of the men are in lounge suits rather than morning dress. Major Alan Denman, the Castle Superintendent, has a team of staff to steer people through the labyrinth that is the castle. Beneath the soaring displays of spotless armour, chambers full of ancient weaponry, medieval coats of arms and even the bullet which killed Lord Nelson, they feel part of a ritual stretching back down the centuries. It is not the moment to point out that this ceremony dates back as far as 2008 when the Queen finally decided to introduce investitures at Windsor. Before then, they had always been in London, with the occasional ceremony in Edinburgh and Cardiff. Here, once more, is an innovation which has just been introduced with so little fuss that everyone imagines it stretches back to the Normans. It is actually a subtle way of making life easier for the Queen without scaling back her duties. Now in her mideighties, the Queen is keen to spend a little longer ‘at home’ in Windsor, so the occasional investiture is shifted from Buckingham Palace to the castle. ‘The private secretaries are being very clever in lightening the workload without it becoming too apparent,’ explains Sir Malcolm Ross. ‘The Queen is still going to do as many investitures as she can – but why make her come to London on a Tuesday morning when she could be at Windsor? It’s just as much fun for the guests – more fun, perhaps – and it means that the Queen doesn’t have to slog up to London with everything that goes with it.’

  The Queen’s Gentlemen Ushers are out in force again, discreetly breaking up the arrivals into different groups. The guests are steered to the Waterloo Chamber to take their seats in front of the royal dais and look at the paintings for half an hour. The recipients are led off to the side for a rehearsal and a calming glass of Sandringham apple juice. The King’s Dining Room has some of the most famous pictures in the world on the wall, including Van Dyck’s triple-portrait of Charles I. But no one is admiring the art. They are all listening to Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Ford, the Comptroller – the Royal Household’s Master of Ceremonies. And they are rapidly discovering why the Queen employs ex-Forces people for this sort of job. A crack team of retired accountants would not be quite the same. It is all very warm and welcoming but it is also done with crisp military precision. Ford places his key staff around the room to replicate their positions in the Waterloo Chamber and runs through the process as if addressing his troops on the eve of battle: ‘Jonathan Spencer, here, will check your name. Ahead of him, at an angle, is Group Captain Hugh Rolfe, here, who is your last safe port of call… Jonathan will ask you to go forward and forward you go until you come alongside Hugh. Get nice and close in, your shoulder against his chest so that he can whisper words of encouragement…’ The banter produces a few smiles but most people are too busy paying attention. One man takes notes. Ford continues: ‘When you hear your surname announced, it is the trigger to move. And forward you go three or four paces and turn and face the Queen. Gentlemen, a neck bow, not from the waist, just the neck. Ladies, a little curtsey. It doesn’t matter which leg it comes off…’At which point, this six foot four bear of a man, a Guards officer for twenty-five years and fully dressed in ceremonial kit and spurs, proceeds to give a demonstration curtsey. By now, everyone is chuckling. ‘Forward you go to the point that your toes are almost at the edge of the platform on which the Queen is standing. Please do not climb on to the platform …’

  He offers specific instructions to today’s two new knights – ‘Down on your right knee, the Queen will touch your right shoulder, then your left shoulder; there’s no “Arise, Sir Hero” or anything like that’ – and explains how everyone knows when their time is up. ‘It comes to an end when the Queen offers you her hand. Take it, shake it, remember to give it back and then walk backwards three or four paces to where you started. Gentlemen, make a bow, ladies, give a curtsey. Turn right and Commodore Lawrie Hopkins, here, will be marking your exit route …’

  The Gentlemen Ushers are no
t just signposts. ‘We also try to stop runaways,’ explains Group Captain Rolfe. ‘You do get people who are so overcome that they go the wrong way or try to walk out before they have received their award.’ The recipients form a queue, divided up by decoration and sex. Men and women receive different versions of the same award; a man’s CBE, for example, goes over the neck on a ribbon while a lady’s comes as a badge. In the Waterloo Chamber, all stand as the Queen arrives, accompanied by two Gurkha orderlies, a tradition established by Queen Victoria. The band up in the balcony plays the National Anthem after which the Queen utters her only public pronouncement of the entire morning: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please be seated.’

  First up are the knights. Lieutenant General Sir William Rollo has no problems with the drill and has found the investiture far less stressful than the journey getting here – ‘stuck in traffic with bits falling off my uniform’. The orchestra – all from the Bands of the Household Cavalry – immediately start playing a selection of Handel and Schubert plus a spot of ‘Edelweiss’ to lighten the atmosphere. There will no clapping or cheering, though. The guests have been gently requested to desist. It’s fine clapping the first few recipients but how does Number 99 in the queue feel when the audience runs out of applause?