The most spectacular approach to Windsor Castle is from the Long Walk, to the south, as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is discovering.
Toasting the President of Mexico;
finger bowls and Queen Victoria’s Minton dessert service awaiting the fruit course;
words of welcome for the Sarkozys at St George’s Hall, Windsor. The table is the longest in Britain.
A souvenir from staff at Aldgate Tube station during a tour of the City of London.
En route to a Palace investiture. The Queen is accompanied by her Lord Chamberlain, Earl Peel.
Familiar faces at the opening of the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel at Pangbourne.
A Palace reception during the 2009 G20 Summit in London.
Formal and informal moments for the G20 leaders and their host, Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
May 2010. Mr Brown’s successor, David Cameron, becomes the Queen’s 12th British Prime Minister. Across her realms, there have been more than 150.
The Royal Family’s Highland retreat, Balmoral.
End of an era. The Royal Yacht (1953-97), enters Hong Kong harbour ahead of the colony’s return to China. It was Britannia’s last voyage.
The Sovereign’s Parade, Sandhurst, December 2006. Officer Cadet Wales becomes a 2nd Lieutenant.
The Grenadier Guards with their Colonel-in-Chief.
Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph.
Welcoming home the Royal Welsh Regiment. Fusilier Shaun Stocker, 19, receives his campaign medal.
Flight Lieutenant Wales of the RAF welcomes his ‘incredible grandmother’ to Anglesey. The most sacred date in the royal calendar,
80th birthday greetings outside Windsor Castle.
David Beckham and Kristy Howard, six, present the Commonwealth Baton to the Queen as she opens the Manchester Commonwealth Games during her 2002 Golden Jubilee.
Garden party crowds are not easily deterred. Those waiting to be introduced forgo their umbrellas.
The new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Three generations of the Royal Family gather at Sandhurst for Prince Harry’s passing out parade.
Family farewells after a Hebridean cruise.
Derby Day 2008.
A face in the crowd at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
St Paul’s Cathedral, 2006.
3-D glasses are required at Sheffield University’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.
No need for introductions. The Queen meets the Queen on board Cunard’s new Queen Elizabeth. She has sat for more than 140 portraits during her reign.
Acknowledgements
In producing a comprehensive portrait of the most enduring international public figure of the last sixty years, it has been essential to have a good view. From the outset, I have enjoyed privileged access not only to events, royal engagements and some of the daily routines of Palace life but also to every level of every department of the Royal Household. For that, I am most grateful to Her Majesty The Queen.
I would particularly like to thank His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge for granting me his first author’s interview and His Royal Highness The Duke of York for his thoughts and insights.
Despite this extraordinary opportunity, this is not an authorised publication. I have had an entirely free hand with my research. I have asked my own questions, made my own observations and drawn my own conclusions. But I am particularly indebted to Samantha Cohen, Assistant Private Secretary to The Queen, and Ailsa Anderson, her successor as Press Secretary, for their help and forbearance in response to my persistent requests for interviews and access during the last two years. This book would be much thinner without them, if indeed it had been written at all.
All the departments of the Royal Household and their staff have been generous with their time. My thanks go to the Earl Peel, Sir Christopher Geidt, Edward Young, Doug King, Sir Alan Reid, Air Vice-Marshal Sir David Walker, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Ford and Jonathan Marsden and their respective teams at Buckingham Palace, along with Sir Michael Peat and his staff at Clarence House.
Those who work for the Sovereign are, understandably, wary of discussing their jobs and experiences with strangers bearing notebooks. Some of those to whom I have spoken had never previously given any sort of interview about their work. Some had been grilled by me before but were good enough to talk to me all over again. They are all named in these pages and I am very grateful to them all.
Arranging all this has been a substantial logistical undertaking. My thanks go to Dr Ed Perkins, Colette Saunders, David Pogson, Meryl Keeling, Jen Stebbing, Zaki Cooper and Marnie Gaffney at Buckingham Palace; to Dame Anne Griffiths in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Office; to Paddy Harverson and Patrick Harrison at Clarence House; to Miguel Head and Nick Loughran at St James’s Palace; to Frances Dunkels and Emma Shaw at the Royal Collection; to Dr Lucy Worsley at Historic Royal Palaces; to Marcus O’Lone and Helen Walch at the Sandringham Estate.
I am also very grateful to so many former members of the Royal Household who have helped me in so many ways, in some cases over many years. They include the Earl of Airlie, Lord Fellowes, Lord Janvrin, Sir William Heseltine, Sir Malcom Ross, Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, Dr Mary Francis, Elizabeth Buchanan, Ron Allison, Charles Anson and Stuart Neil.
No study of any constitutional monarch would be complete without recourse to that monarch’s Prime Ministers. I wish to thank David Cameron, Tony Blair and Sir John Major for their insights and their time. The Queen has been served by more than 150 Prime Ministers across all her realms during her reign. I have met several of them during my twenty years of reporting on royalty. But I would like to thank, in particular, John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia, for their time in relation to this book.
I am also indebted to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and his predecessors, Jack Straw, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Lord Hurd for the accumulated wisdom of their many years in the royal orbit, whether in one of the Great Offices of State or other ministerial positions.
Among the Queen’s many representatives, I am particularly grateful to Lord Shuttleworth, Chairman of the Association of Lord-Lieutenants, William Tucker, Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire and David Briggs, Lord-Lieutenant of Cheshire, along with their respective staff. Overseas, I am grateful to Eric Jenkinson, High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Noël Guckian, Ambassador to Oman, Dominic Jermey, Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Julian King, Ambassador to Ireland, and all their respective teams. The Queen’s many roles have taken me in many directions. For their help in studying the Head of the Commonwealth, I thank His Excellency Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, and Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
My thanks go to Dr Rowan Willams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester and Lord High Almoner, for talking to me about the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
Men and women of every rank and age from across the Services have helped me to understand that crucial bond which they all share with the Head of the Armed Forces and the Royal Family. It is always a pleasure to talk to them.
There are many people who have helped this book to take shape in all sorts of ways. What they all have in common is that they have seen some merit in my endeavours and have gone out of their way to help. I am grateful to them all. Some prefer to remain anonymous. Others include Alastair Bruce of Crionaich, Edward Llewellyn, Catherine Fall, Ciaran Ward, Arabella Warburton, Vanessa Burgess, Sir Sydney Chapman, Sir Michael Willcocks, Alexander Galloway, William Chapman, James North, Elizabeth Scudder, Sir Antony Jay, Edward Mirzoeff, Marie Papworth, Sir Simon Dawbarn, Wesley Kerr, Peter Wilkinson, Daniel Sleat, Harriet Hewitson, Sophie Douglas-Bate, Didy Grahame, Sir Michael and Lady Parker, Lesley Hamilton, John Phillips, Dr Stephen Spurr, Duncan Jeffery, Alan Duncan MP, Kate Hoey MP, Bob Honey, Robin Roberts, Don and Cathryn Kelshall, and James Dolan.
I have been extremely fortunate to draw on the advice, support and expertise of some our most eminent historians and biographers. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Andrew Roberts, William Shawcross and Kenneth Rose have all been kind and wise in equal measure. I am also grateful to Dr Amanda Foreman, Dr Jane Connors and Derek Ingram for their help. Wherever I have drawn on the scholarship of others, I hope that the credit is clear and unambiguous. And to my Fleet Street colleagues, to the photographic fraternity and the television crews, I say thank you for your camaraderie along the way.
At Hutchinson, I owe a very great deal to my editor, Paul Sidey, for his unfailing enthusiasm and wisdom, and I also thank Paulette Hearn, Charlotte Bush, Emma Mitchell and Amelia Harvell. From the very start of this project, I have been indebted to my unflappable agent Charles Walker, at United Agents, and to his assistant Katy Jones. A considerable part of this book, of course, owes nothing to my words and everything to the superb photography of my old friend and former Fleet Street colleague Ian Jones. Bravo to him.
These pages have been written in many places and many countries. But I am particularly grateful to my mother-in-law, Marion Cowley, my parents, Richard and Dinah Hardman, and Santa Sebag Montefiore for providing somewhere quiet to concentrate as the deadlines have loomed. No one, though, has been more supportive, despite all the lost weekends and truncated holidays, than my darling wife, Diana. This book is dedicated to her.
Sources and Bibliography
Sources have been quoted directly when possible, anonymously when not. In addition to all the research for this book, I have drawn on my coverage of royal matters – in newspaper, book and television form – over the last twenty years.
I have gathered fresh material from internal Buckingham Palace records and the London Metropolitan Archives. I have consulted many publications and official records (Hansard, the London Gazette, etc.) but I commend the following list of selected works, all of which make an important contribution to our understanding of the modern monarchy.
Allison, Ronald and Riddell, Sarah, The Royal Encyclopaedia (Macmillan, 1991)
Blair, Tony, A Journey (Hutchinson, 2010)
Boothroyd, Basil, Philip: An Informal Biography (Longman, 1971)
Bradford, Sarah, Elizabeth: A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen (William Heinemann, 1996)
Brandreth, Gyles, Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage (Century, 2004)
Connors, Jane Holley, The Glittering Thread (University of Technology, Sydney, 1996)
Dimbleby, Jonathan, The Prince of Wales: a Biography (Little, Brown, 1994)
Heald, Tim, The Duke: A Portrait of Prince Philip (Hodder & Stoughton, 1991)
Hoey, Brian, At Home With the Queen (HarperCollins, 2002)
Jay, Antony, Elizabeth R (BBC Books, 1992)
Jebb, Miles, The Lord-Lieutenants and Their Deputies (Phillimore, 2007)
Lacey, Robert, Royal (Little, Brown, 2002)
Longford, Elizabeth, Elizabeth R (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1983)
Paxman, Jeremy, On Royalty (Viking, 2006)
Prochaska, Dr Frank, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (Yale, 1995)
Roberts, Andrew, The Royal House of Windsor (Kindle, 2011)
Roberts, Andrew, The House of Windsor (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2000)
Rose, Kenneth, Kings, Queens and Courtiers (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1985)
Shawcross, William, Queen and Country (BBC Books, 2002)
Shawcross, William, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother (Macmillan, 2009)
Turner, Graham, Elizabeth – The Woman and the Queen (Macmillan, 2002)
Vickers, Hugo – Elizabeth, The Queen Mother (Hutchinson, 2005)
Index
Abdication crisis (1936) 14, 40, 46, 85
Aberdeen, Marquess of 244
Aberfan disaster (1966) 45
Abu Dhabi, UAE 318
Académie Culinaire 127
Act of Settlement 187, 324
Acts of Union 187
Adams, Gerry 57n
Adeane, Sir Michael 190–91, 209, 215–16, 316
Adu, Regina 165
Afghanistan 149, 155, 242, 320, 329, 330
African National Congress 115
Agnew, Sir Godfrey 163, 169
Airlie, David, 13th Earl of 138, 192; appointed Lord Chamberlain 191; and death of Diana 100, 102, 106; on Duke of Edinburgh 285; Palace reforms 34, 75–81, 111, 112–13, 192; and tax issue 87, 89, 93, 94, 95; on Windsor fire 91, 92
Airlie, Ginny, Countess of 75
Airlie, Mabell, Countess of 75, 207
Albert, Matthew 306–07
Albert, Prince 77, 271, 272, 281, 288, 296
Alexander, Danny 159
Alexander, Hilary 200
Alexander, King of Greece 278
Alexandra, Princess 75, 84, 289
Alexandra, Queen 148, 297
Alfred, Prince, Duke of Edinburgh 59
Algeria 66
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin 255
Alice of Battenburg, Princess 275n, 278, 279, 280, 294–4
All Saints, Windsor Great Park 323, 325
Allison, Ronald 59; as BBC royal correspondent 215; on Canadian republicanism 311; on Colville 209–10; on Heath 171; on Mobutu visit 137; as Press Secretary 215, 170, 191; on Queen 57, 63; on royal diary 32; on Royal Yacht 65–6
Almond, Paul 161
Althorp, Northamptonshire 105, 234
Althorp, Viscount 86
Altrincham, Lord (John Grigg) 21, 39, 208, 237
ambassadors: British 137, 175; foreign 133–4, 156, 193, 211, 233
Amies, Hardy 41
Anderson, Ailsa 197
Anderson, Douglas and Deirdre 200
Anderson, Sir Eric 98, 200
Andrew, Prince, see York, Duke of
Andrew of Greece, Prince 278, 279, 291
Andrew of Greece, Princess, see Alice of Battenburg
Andrews, Marion 258
Anglesey 110
Anne, Princess, see Princess Royal
Annenberg, Walter 211–12
Anson, Charles: on junior royals 97, 99; on modernisation 25; as Press Secretary 217, 221; on Queen 35, 45, 322; on royal finances 87, 88; on Thatcher 171, 172; and TV documentaries 219; on Windsor fire 91
Anstee, Nick, Lord Mayor of London 9, 10
Antarctica 290, 309
Archer, Jeffrey, Baron Archer 180
Argyll, Duke of 239
Armstrong-Jones, Antony, see Snowdon, Lord
Arsenal Football Club 141
Ascot Racecourse 37–8, 79, 123
Ashbrook, Viscount 249, 250
Asprey, Helen 110
Association of British Car Manufacturers 134
Association of Lord-Lieutenants 242, 243
Astronomer Royal 71
Attenborough, David 213
Attlee, Clement 177
Australia 29, 31, 248, 311, 336; art 290; cancelled tour (1949) 206; floods (2011) 312, 313; republicanism 59, 309–311, 312; royal tours 6, 22, 32, 46, 54, 194–6, 207–08, 293, 312, 321
Australian Daily Mirror 196
Automobile Association 284 awaydays 241, 244–52, 269
Bagehot, Walter 16, 17, 18, 45; The English Constitution 15, 160
Bagnall, Frank 195
Bagwell-Purefoy, Jeremy 255, 257
Bailey, David 199
Baker, James 218
Balmoral Castle 95, 99, 102, 220; family life at 16, 64, 154, 155, 173, 211, 212; Ghillies’ Ball 37, 130; Prime Ministerial visits 154–5, 173; Prince Philip and 265, 266; Princess Royal’s wedding 96; staff facilities 122, 124
Barbour, Margaret 200
Bartley, Derek 259
Bateman, H.M. 37
Bayliss, Mary, Lord-Lieutenant of Berkshire 239
BBC 195, 209, 324; Coronation coverage 207; Diana’s Panorama interview 98, 196, 221–2; Events Department 224–5; News 198, 224; Queen’s Christmas broadcast 221; Radio Five Live 152; relationship with monarchy 208, 221, 222–4; royal charter 157; royal correspondents 152, 215, 221; royal
documentaries 212, 218–20, 226; Sports Personality of the Year 73; TV satire 209
Beaton, Inspector Jim 59n
Beatrice, Princess 74, 84
Beavis, Alan 258
Beckham, David 109
Bedford, Dowager Duchess of 289
Belfast, Northern Ireland 60
Bellisario, Ray 208
Benn, Tony 212
Bercow, Sally 168
Betfair 38
Bhumibol, King of Thailand 99
Bigge, Sir Arthur 189
Birdwood, Lt-Colonel Gordon 228, 229, 231, 232, 233
Birkenhead, Lord 167
Birthday Parade 59, 70, 84, 133n, 298, 331
Biyase, Nduna 115
Black Wednesday (1992) 173
Blahnik, Manolo 200
Blair, Cherie 152, 153, 277
Blair, Tony 108–09, 200; audiences with Queen 153, 188; Balmoral visits 154; Cabinet reshuffle (2003) 184; on Charles 332–3, 337; and class system 238; constitutional reforms 181–5; and Diana’s funeral 101, 103, 179; memoirs (A Journey) 101, 104, 152, 154n, 174, 277, 300; on monarchy 15, 30; on Princess Royal 277; on Queen 34, 37, 322; relations with Palace 168, 173; and Royal Yacht 177–8, 179
Blount, Air Commodore John 62
Blumenthal, Heston 287
Blunt, Anthony 39, 190–91
Bodley-Scott, Sir Ronald 59
Bogdanor, Professor Vernon 164, 188
Bolland, Mark 225
Bombay, India 175–6
Bond, Jennie 221
Bonici, Sonia 39, 202–4
Boothroyd, Basil 190, 279
Bowater, Sir Noel, Lord Mayor of London 5, 6, 7
Brabourne, Lady Doreen 53n
Brabourne, Lord John 211, 282
Her Majesty Page 50
