Her Majesty

by Robert Hardman

  While the Crown is never going to enjoy the almost hypnotic allure it enjoyed in places like Australia and New Zealand back then, its profile and popularity have certainly been boosted by the rise of the younger generation. The start of 2011 saw terrible floods in Australia followed by the greatest post-war disaster in New Zealand’s history. On 22 February, an earthquake destroyed much of central Christchurch and killed more than 180 people. Just two weeks later, it was announced that Prince William would tour the region within days. He inspected the devastation in the Australian states of Queensland and Victoria. He saw the carnage in Christchurch and the ruins of George Gilbert Scott’s cathedral in a city so quintessentially British that it has a River Avon with punts on it. He also visited the site of New Zealand’s 2010 Pike River mining disaster which killed twenty-nine. Along the way, he met and consoled many distraught, bereaved people with great sensitivity and passed on messages to and from the Queen. His visit was high profile, of course; quite apart from his position, he was just weeks away from his wedding. But the style was deliberately low-key with a minimum of protocol. ‘I felt so strongly about going down there,’ says the Prince. ‘Because if it was someone you knew or people you cared about, which I do, you’d want to be down there consoling them. They’re a good bunch and they’ve had a horrendous time. Christchurch got destroyed.’ It was backed up by the Prince of Wales, who attended various disaster-related engagements and services back in Britain – and made a memorable speech at the Australian High Commission saluting the fortitude of Australian ladies fighting off a flood-borne invasion of crocodiles and snakes. There was nothing laboured about any of this. The monarchy’s response was born of deep, familial affection and received as such, by royalists and republicans alike. ‘The country was visibly moved when Prince William, as the Queen’s representative, visited New Zealand,’ says Prime Minister John Key, adding that the Queen continues to receive many letters from people in Christchurch. They still want to tell her how the city and its people are recovering. These are enduring bonds. They will take some breaking.

  What is perhaps most surprising about the continued strength of the Queen’s various thrones and her role as Head of the Commonwealth is that the relationships have survived the vagaries of British foreign policy. Obviously, she must answer to, say, her New Zealand Prime Minister on anything to do with New Zealand. And when she is acting as Head of the Commonwealth, she must transcend all national boundaries. Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda remembers talking to the Queen at a Commonwealth gathering in 1986 at the height of the quarrels about sanctions against South Africa: ‘And then she said: “My friend, you and I should be careful. We are under the scrutiny of the British Prime Minister.” I looked up and I saw Mrs Thatcher had her eyes fixed on us.’

  But for most of the time, the Queen’s dealings with the wider world are at the behest of her British Prime Minister and his government. And British foreign policy has not necessarily been in the best interests of the old imperial cousinhood. The days of the Commonwealth as the larder of Britain died with British entry into the future European Union in 1973. However much the Queen has used her Christmas message to the Commonwealth to convey the idea of a united Commonwealth family, many feel that Britain has turned its back. Gillian Raini of the London-based Afromedia Network likens Europe to a second wife: ‘As a young person, I feel terribly neglected because of this second marriage which has overruled our first marriage – the Commonwealth.’

  When it comes to the Queen’s loyalties, there are, inevitably, grey areas. As she herself has admitted, she finds it hard to know whom to support when England’s cricketers are playing, say, Australia or the West Indies (like Australia, half of the West Indies still have her as Queen). No single realm may lay a greater claim to her affections than another. If Barbados were to have a great schism with Belize – or Britain for that matter – then she could not take sides. Indeed, she has been fortunate that she has never had a serious constitutional conflict of interest involving two of her realms, although Kenneth Rose points out that it came close in the run-up to the 1964 tour of Canada: ‘They were letting off bombs in Quebec. The Canadian government said: “It’s OK, do come” and the British Government said, “Don’t go.” And she went.’ But that was an issue involving her personal safety.

  In the early part of the reign, most of the Queen’s overseas visits were to realms rather than foreign nations. Latterly, the balance has shifted. All British prime ministers quickly come to realise the benefits of having the most famous woman in the world to promote their own policies and prestige all over the globe. As David Cameron explains: ‘In terms of our diplomatic heft, she gives an extra string to the bow – a massive extra string. In fact, she’s a whole extra orchestra.’

  And no monarch has ever played on the world stage quite like this one. From the First World War to his death eighteen years later, George V spent just eight weeks abroad. George VI travelled widely as Duke of York but for much of his reign his capacity for travel was curtailed by war and ill health. The Queen, who had never left the country until shortly before her twenty-first birthday, has visited 135 separate nations, some of them several times. And yet she had to wait until she was eighty-five to visit the nearest of the lot – the Republic of Ireland – in May 2011.

  There have also been some notable non-visits. As Sir Malcolm Rifkind points out, the Queen’s absence has often been as important as her presence. During the nineties, he accompanied her on the first state visits ever made to the former Eastern Bloc nations of Poland and the Czech Republic. As he recalls: ‘One of the consistent speeches made by her hosts was gratitude not for coming but for not having come while they were under communist rule. “We will never forget that you did not give respectability to the communists …” and so on. To be fair, that was down to the government and to my predecessors’ advice but the Queen was the beneficiary of that. And they came out in their thousands.’ Rifkind vividly recalls an episode on that first state visit to the Czech Republic. ‘The Queen was being driven through a town packed with people. We were going past the local hospital and suddenly we noticed the surgeons on the balcony in their smocks. Some poor chap on the operating table had been abandoned for a couple of minutes so the surgeon could see the Queen!’

  His predecessor, Lord Hurd, was worried about the reception the Queen would receive in the black townships during her historic 1995 return to South Africa at the invitation of Nelson Mandela. The Commonwealth and Margaret Thatcher’s government had been at odds over South Africa during the apartheid era. Would the Queen suffer collateral damage? The first test came in Port Elizabeth. ‘Here were all these children, absolutely spotless in their uniforms as they always are, and they ran cheering after the royal car and that was a great relief because it was all about the Queen and they knew all about the Queen. There wasn’t any hostility. It was quite different from going with Margaret [Thatcher] because, for all her blessings, she was a divisive character and there were always people around who didn’t approve of her. The Queen was quite different.’

  Few royal tours have commanded more diplomatic nervousness and obsessive pre-planning than that state visit to Ireland in May 2011. No monarch had set foot in Ireland since its bloody struggle for independence during the reign of George V. His last visit had been in 1911. A century on, there were some who argued that the Queen should test the waters with a private excursion before a full-scale state visit. But both governments saw the need for an emphatic statement, as did the Royal Family. ‘It was a great time to say: “Let’s move on. Some horrendous things have been done over the years but let’s look to the future,”’ says Prince William. His own appointment as Colonel of the Irish Guards just a few weeks earlier was part of the diplomatic mood music. He describes his appointment as ‘a tiny speck’ in the scheme of things, although he points out that the Irish Guards recruit many soldiers from the Republic of Ireland. ‘The massive deal was the Queen going and cementing the fact that everyone should look for
better things.’

  That ‘cementing’ process was almost instantaneous as the trip surpassed almost all expectations. The Queen’s sense of excitement was luminous from the start, despite the largest security operation in Irish history. A combined force of 10,000 military and police ensured that the Sovereign and the public barely met each other. Yet, there was pan-Irish applause for the Queen’s state banquet speech (garnished with a little Gaelic) expressing ‘deep sympathy’ for the ‘heartache, turbulence and loss’ over all those years. There was even greater appreciation of the Queen’s silent gestures – her judicious selection of green dresses, her journey to the spiritual home of Gaelic culture and, above all, her bow at Dublin’s nationalist memorial to those killed in the fight for independence. That moment, said Gaelic Affairs Minister Dinny McGinley, was when ‘the whole nation lost a heartbeat’. There could be no doubt whatsoever that, in her ninth decade, here was a monarch at the very height of her powers. ‘She’s had so many people congratulating her on it,’ says a proud Prince William. ‘And rightly so.’

  Every tour demands appreciation and respect for local customs. But the Royal Family must always weigh up the risk of offending the hosts versus the danger of upsetting the public at home. In 1961, the Queen and Prince Philip were paying a state visit to Nepal where King Mahendra had laid on a lavish hunting expedition by elephant. The Queen was not expected to fire a gun but Prince Philip definitely was. Miraculously, the newly appointed patron of the World Wildlife Fund had a ‘boil’ on his trigger finger that day and could not shoot a thing. It was an ingenious affliction. But diplomacy dictated that someone had to take a potshot at the tigress which crossed the royal path. The task fell to the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Home, who missed three times before the Queen’s Private Secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, helped finish the task. Lord Home was clearly more worried about diplomatic rather than public relations. To make amends for missing the tigress, he went on to shoot a female rhino, inadvertently making an orphan of her calf. As if the British media did not have enough of a story already, the Foreign Secretary turned a public relations disaster into a catastrophe. Asked what he would do with his trophy, he replied that the feet might be useful as waste-paper baskets.

  It is another indicator of how far things have changed during this reign. Lord Home – like the tigress, the rhino and, indeed, the Nepalese monarchy – is no longer with us. But the Queen keeps on circling the globe – always with a copy of the Racing Post, a full-length mirror and a St Christopher’s medallion stowed on board her chartered plane.

  One of the first foreign policy decisions by David Cameron’s new Coalition Government was to revivify Britain’s relations with the Arab nations of the Persian Gulf The decision was taken well before the 2011 risings in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere, events which have only served to concentrate political minds further on the Middle East.

  British diplomats felt that links with the Gulf States had been neglected in recent years. But Britain has a unique advantage over most of its European rivals in the sector: the monarchy. ‘Frankly, the previous government rather forgot about these countries except when it wanted favours,’ says an old Gulf hand. David Cameron agrees. ‘Most of them have got royal heads of state, they feel a great affinity with Britain and they feel they haven’t had enough attention in recent years,’ says the Prime Minister.

  The region matters on many levels. The Gulf States are vitally placed for the fights against terrorism and piracy and Britain would be crippled without their oil and gas. The 200,000 British citizens in the region are by far the largest expatriate Western population and two-way trade is in the tens of billions. Gulf nations now own everything from British football clubs to prime parts of London. Tiny Qatar alone has bought Harrods and the London Stock Exchange and has been the first Middle Eastern nation chosen to host football’s World Cup. In the Gulf States, it is the royal families who run everything. They are sophisticated financiers, too. No one is naive enough to believe that an Emir is going to hand a billion-dollar contract to a British company ahead of, say, a French one on the back of a cup of tea with the Prince of Wales. But the connection can certainly give bilateral relations a special warmth, not to mention ease of access. Nor will the British Royal Family talk money or deliver lectures on human rights as politicians tend to do.

  Hence, the sight of the Emir of Qatar drawing into the Windsor Castle Quadrangle alongside the Queen on a rainswept October morning in the Australian State Coach (the one with the heating). The Emir is being given the full state-visit treatment, the ultimate sign of a thriving relationship.

  Sheikha Mozah, his tall and striking wife (he has three), follows alongside the Duke of Edinburgh in the Scottish State Coach. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall come next, accompanying other members of the Qatari royal family. Bringing up the rear is a man with the splendidly practical title of ‘Secretary for Follow-Up Affairs’.

  The Emir and his wife chose Windsor over Buckingham Palace as their base for their state visit. Every visitor is given a choice and many would argue that this was the right one. Few sights can match a full state banquet in the medieval grandeur of the magnificently restored St George’s Hall with 136 guests seated around the 175-foot table. Nor, for that matter, are there many views to match those from their room, Suite 240 – all the way down the Long Walk to the distant statue of George III. The Queen gives the Emir a sixteenth-century engraving of Windsor (he has a home nearby). He gives her a gold box set with amethysts, diamonds and coral. The Queen has also produced some souvenirs of her 1979 state visit to Qatar. The Duke shows Sheikha Mozah the Britannia logbook entry for the trip. ‘It’s quite a long time ago. You weren’t born then!’ Much laughter. ‘No, I wasn’t born then,’ chuckles Sheikha Mozah (date of birth: 1959). But it is another reminder of the span of this reign.

  And it is why, just a month later, there is such a sense of history as the royal charm offensive continues in the Gulf with a tour of Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The Queen was last here in 1979 when a visit by a female head of state was pioneering stuff. Back then, she arrived by Concorde and stayed aboard the Royal Yacht. Those are both museum pieces now, such is the passage of time. On this trip, she is staying in a hotel which has a gold bullion vending machine in reception. Back in 1979, she visited the tallest building in the Middle East, Dubai’s thirty-nine-storey World Trade Centre. Today, it is a bungalow compared to the 2,716-foot Burj Khalifa Tower. Everyone knows about her visit back then because it is still in the school textbooks. In the short history of this hyperactive nation, 1979 is like the Middle Ages. And yet, here is that same monarch with that same handbag returning for another visit. It is a substantial landmark. But, as ever, the Queen is keen not to dwell on the past too much, beyond remarking to Dubai’s Sheikh Mohamed: ‘It’s extraordinary how it’s all changed.’

  It’s a short state visit – less than twenty-four hours – but the Queen manages to meet all seven royal families and do two walkabouts, a state luncheon and an investiture. Maurice Flanagan, the ex-RAF pilot who built the Emirates airline empire, becomes Sir Maurice. Most importantly, perhaps, the Queen pays a solemn visit, head covered, to Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Mosque, one of the world’s largest. It is the burial place of the man who built this nation. He was her host last time. Now his tomb is a national shrine. It’s another poignant reminder of how far she goes back in the memory of this young country.

  In Oman, the Queen’s visit has caused the rearrangement of the biggest party in the state’s history. It is the fortieth anniversary of the accession of Sultan Qaboos. He had been planning his Ruby Jubilee celebrations for earlier in the year but rearranged them when he learned that the Queen would come in November. The Sultan is an old friend of Britain after a slightly unusual British education – a Suffolk tutorial college, Sandhurst and an internship at Suffolk County Council. He deposed his father in a reasonably civilised coup in 1970 and began modernising a country which then had ten miles of road, three school
s and a medieval justice system. Today, Oman is one of the most progressive states in the region with an increasingly vocal democracy movement pressing for reforms, although the Sultan remains an absolute ruler.

  When in London, he always likes to see the Queen. And, in Oman, the seventy-year-old bachelor has twinned his Palace with the Tower of London. He is also the proud owner of the world’s only camel-mounted bagpipe band.

  His immaculate Royal Cavalry – much like Britain’s Household Cavalry – escorts the Queen into the capital, Muscat, past thousands of cheering onlookers. It is spectacular but a little sterile, an unspoken tension in the air. The onlookers have all been vetted and divided into male and female sections wearing colour-coordinated robes. They stand at specific points. Elsewhere, the streets are empty. The Sultan seems wary of his general public.

  The Queen is staying at the Al-Alam Palace, newly decorated with half a dozen landscapes from London’s Tate Gallery which have been lent to Oman to mark the Sultan’s jubilee. Someone has included a landscape by Gainsborough. By happy coincidence, it is of the Sultan’s adoptive British county. ‘Ah, I know Suffolk very well,’ he declares as the two monarchs inspect the pictures together. ‘I lived near Bury St Edmunds.’ The Queen is more taken by the Stubbs – Mares and Foals – and discusses the artist’s pioneering technique in animal portraiture. ‘He was the first to paint the legs properly,’ she says. Horses will be a recurring topic of conversation. Both the Sultan and the Queen adore them. He has arranged an equestrian spectacular for the Queen at the Royal Cavalry’s showground where 840 horses and 3,340 riders, singers and musicians are on parade. It is a stunning production with dancing horses, bowing horses – and even bowing goats. Acrobatic riders, some of them straddling two or three horses, jump fences at the same time. One horse gallops past with its rider doing a handstand in the saddle. ‘The Queen will be loving this,’ whispers one of the entourage. ‘The Royal Mews will be getting a long memo as soon as she’s home.’ The event concludes with a colossal carriage being pulled by a record-breaking team of twenty-nine horses. The Duke of Edinburgh, a veteran carriage driver who is more used to four-in-hand, is glued to his binoculars.