On Duty With the Queen: My Time as a Buckingham Palace Press Secretary

by Dickie Arbiter

  As the gun carriage came abreast of the walking male members of the family, the four royal princes bowed their heads. Diana’s brother looked straight ahead and crossed himself. They then joined the cortege, lining up behind the gun carriage, the five of them now principal mourners ahead of the 500 representing the Princess’s charities.

  Watching the men and boys take their place, there was no question in my mind that the Duke of Edinburgh was central to their standing there. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the love and support of both their grandparents, I wonder if the young Princes would have been able to find the strength to take part in such a public – and some might argue – intrusive part of the ceremony. Yet they did, with the eyes and ears of the world following their every move. At times, it was almost too difficult to watch, but I know their mother would have been extremely proud.

  There has never been a funeral like that of Diana, Princess of Wales. There were in excess of a million people lining the cortege route from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey, and then on to Althorp. The giant screen in Hyde Park allowed for more than 100,000 people to watch the events unfold, and loudspeakers placed along the route offered spectators the opportunity to hear – and participate with – the service.

  The proceedings went out live, and were beamed worldwide to an audience estimated at 2.5 billion people speaking 44 languages in 200 countries. In the UK alone, the television audience numbered an unprecedented 33 million.

  Depending on your viewpoint, there were also tensions that day. At the time of her death, the Princess’s relationship with her brother had noticeably cooled. It wasn’t for us to speculate about the details, but it was later widely reported that there were disagreements about the Althorp Estate between the Princess and her brother, and with nowhere to go other than her apartment at Kensington Palace, the Princess was very aggrieved by this.

  No reference to this was evident on this day, however. On the contrary, Earl Spencer made a scathing – and now famous – verbal attack on both the media and, very pointedly, the Royal Family, in his address during the funeral service.

  Paying tribute to the sister with whom he had so recently been at odds in life, he now called Diana ‘a symbol of selfless humanity’ and a ‘standard bearer of the rights of the downtrodden.’ He went on to add that, ‘she needed no royal title to generate her brand of magic’ – a clear reference to the withdrawal of her title ‘Her Royal Highness’ at the time of her divorce from the Prince of Wales the previous year.

  The impassioned speech elicited a ripple of applause among the crowds listening outside the Abbey, which soon increased in volume and intensity. Before long it could be heard far and wide, not least by the congregation inside the Abbey. The majority of us watching and listening in the press office were appalled. Personally, I felt the speech had been outrageous. Yes, by all means grieve; certainly feel aggrieved at the manner and timing of your sister’s death. That would be perfectly understandable. But to do so in a church, at a solemn service, felt unforgiveable on many fronts. It was neither the time nor the place for such action, especially given that Diana’s children were present.

  The Princess was placed in a hearse for the journey to her childhood home at Althorp and followed by a suite car carrying the deputy comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. Although the entire route had been officially closed to traffic, the police needn’t have bothered. No-one was driving anywhere that day. At Hyde Park Corner, seven black-clad Special Escort Group (SEG) police motorcyclists took up their positions to guide the hearse on its long drive – three in ‘V’ formation in the front, and two either side of the hearse.

  Tens of thousands of people lined the route as the sad cavalcade made its slow progress through the streets of London, north to the M1, and on to Althorp, for a private interment on a small island in the middle of the lake there. It was a distance of 77 miles, but onlookers flanked every possible inch of it, many of them throwing flowers towards the vehicle. Due to the disruption that throngs of visitors would likely cause, the family had decided against interring Diana in the family vault at Great Brington.

  Along with my colleagues, I watched the trip in its entirety on television in the Buckingham Palace press office, ready to deal with any problem that might require our intervention. I was struck by how the driver had to keep using his windscreen wipers to clear away the flowers. If there had been any doubt in life, it was very apparent in death, that the British public was united in its love for Diana.

  I marveled at the outpouring of love and respect, and hoped the Princes would draw comfort from the great show of support from every direction. As she had hoped, she truly had become the ‘Queen of People’s Hearts’. I’d also like to believe that it was their way of making sure she wasn’t alone for her passage home.

  Althorp’s wrought-iron gates closed behind Diana at 5:30pm that Saturday afternoon, thus ending the journey to her final resting place. The irony of the location wasn’t lost on me. The place she had so desperately wanted to call home while alive was now hers in death.

  My own day, which for all practical purposes had begun a whole week earlier, on August 31st, was now done.

  Many people had strong opinions about Diana, Princess of Wales. I don’t doubt there are many who still do. But as someone who knew her well, the one tag I never really felt summed her up as a person, was that which the Prime Minister Tony Blair gave her – the ‘People’s Princess.’ Yes, she was the Princess in people’s hearts that she had always aspired to be. But at the same time, she was very much her own person. She was a one-off, and however many column inches are written about her, history will decide how she should be remembered.

  I felt deeply saddened by her death, but I knew we had served her well. The team at Buckingham Palace, the private secretary’s office, the Lord Chamberlain’s office and the press office, achieved in six days what many had thought might well be impossible, and we did it with the dignity and precision that one expects from the Palace. I was proud to have been part of that team.

  I had known Diana for 17 years, first as a young woman in her late teens bursting onto centre stage in 1980, then as a fully-fledged member of the Royal Family, doing her share of duties with professionalism and flair.

  I had reported her movements for eight years as Court Correspondent for IRN, and then handled her media-related affairs at Buckingham Palace.

  During her 16 years as a member of the Royal Family, she undertook some wonderful work, putting a definitive lid on the myths surrounding diseases like leprosy and AIDS, as well as drawing attention to those who had been so often overlooked – the homeless, drug and alcohol addicts, the victims of land mines and so many others for whom life had dealt a hard blow.

  She was a full-time mother, who cherished and nurtured her sons, and she flew the flag for independent women everywhere.

  I travelled a great deal with her, on solo visits to the USA, Egypt and Pakistan, as well as on many worldwide joint visits with the Prince of Wales. We spent countless hours in each other’s company, aboard planes and in hotels. We had enjoyed many laughs, and we had the occasional differences of opinion.

  In the five years I looked after her and Charles, she frustrated me more than once, but the good times far outweighed the bad.

  Though we were all subjected to a freeze every now and then, most of us made it back. I was lucky in doing so, and even when I stopped looking after her, we had regular contact either by phone, correspondence or when passing one another on foot or in the car, always stopping for a chat.

  Diana, Princess of Wales left this earth too soon. I was deeply shocked when I heard the news of the crash and devastated over her death. I don’t think I even quite believed it until I saw her coffin gently removed from the aircraft at RAF Northolt. I did have a very soft spot for her, and yes, I was very fond of her. As I told her, I would miss her. I still do.

  CHAPTER 19

  All Quiet on the SW1 Front

  The days immediately f
ollowing Diana’s funeral were anticlimactic in the extreme. Working flat-out for seven straight days had rendered everyone physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. That is not to say that there wasn’t a sense of satisfaction in knowing that when given a seemingly insurmountable project, we had risen to the occasion. The media consistently accused Palace courtiers of being out of touch, but we had demonstrated that with matters of ceremony we were distinctly in touch.

  It was also a time of much discussion regarding personnel around the office, and the funeral proved to be a catalyst for a fairly radical staff change. I have always believed that the Buckingham Palace press office, though extremely professional, has an unenviable and sometimes impossible job spec to fulfill.

  It wasn’t always that way. Prior to the engagement of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, the British press showed little appetite for the salacious trials and tribulations of a royal marriage. I’m not sure if this was down to a natural deference to the aristocracy – something deeply ingrained in the British psyche – or rather a lack of prurient interest, but our press certainly wasn’t cut from the same cloth as that of our French counterparts.

  According to early dispatches from France, the Queen had more than her fair share of media-driven Annus Horribilis. In the first 15 years of her reign alone, the French press was kept extremely busy commenting upon 73 reports that she and Prince Philip were to divorce, 63 forecasts of her imminent abdication and a whopping 92 revelations that she was pregnant.

  In contrast, our domestic media was extremely reticent for a time. But then, as the trend for both divorce and public soul-baring began to steadily rise, so too did the interest in royal affairs of the heart. Gradually the public started to lean towards topics of a more personal nature than the matters of state which had led before.

  In turn, it meant the press office had a rather more complex and thankless task at hand than ever before. From the early days of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s relationship, to that of the Duke and Duchess of York five years later, the press office was constantly put into the difficult position of being reactive rather than pro-active, particularly when it came to the private lives of its various principals.

  Stories about what the young royals were up to in their private time were invariably splashed, without our prior knowledge, across the front pages of the tabloids. It wasn’t helpful when friends of Prince Charles talked openly and critically about the Princess, or when the Princess talked directly to the media. Things only went from bad to worse when the Duchess of York, still very much married to Prince Andrew at the time, latched on to Texan oil man, Steve Wyatt, and then to financial advisor, Johnny Bryan. No matter what we said or did in response to the sensational stories these liaisons generated, we were fighting a losing battle.

  Even those closest to ‘The Firm’ couldn’t always be relied upon to offer the best guidance for fear of how it would be received by the royal in question. The media frenzy over flags and flagpoles that ensued following Diana’s death was a perfect case in point. Although we dealt quite ably with the issue of Her Majesty remaining with her grandsons at Balmoral, we were thrown to the wolves when it came to that glaringly bare flagpole, despite our protestations that the Union Flag should be flown at half-mast.

  It wasn’t a case of the press office not doing its job on the public relations front, but rather a case of common-sense advice being ignored further up the chain of command. The media debacle surrounding the funeral and subsequent public backlash led to a somewhat knee-jerk reaction from the Palace in terms of communications, so much so that when the dust settled a plan was devised to bring in a Communications Secretary. The role of this hypothetical employee was to oversee the press office, draw up strategies and deal with crisis management, which was tantamount to saying that the press secretaries were incapable of carrying out these duties themselves. Not only were we conducting our roles effectively, but we were also overseeing the British Monarchy’s newly-launched website, which went live in March of 1997. Suffice to say, the suggestion that an outside PR expert was necessary did not go down well.

  That the modern age required a press office capable of undertaking radical change wasn’t in doubt, but it already had an established personnel which was more than capable of meeting those challenges. The hiring of a Communications Secretary led to a contentious couple of years filled with opposition and resentment.

  From a personal standpoint, my final two years working for the Royal Family were relatively uneventful. During my tenure I had weathered many a tumultuous storm, but now, in my twilight years at the Palace, I had perhaps the most enviable job of all – overseeing press relations for Her Majesty the Queen. Suddenly, my working life felt calm. Our Monarch is loved for good reason, and press-managing her relationship with her people was never less than a joy.

  I had thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of my role with the Royal Collection. I don’t believe anyone can tire of Windsor Castle. It doesn’t matter how many times one goes there, there is always something new to see.

  I had been fortunate enough to attend several State Banquets at the Castle, each time seated at a magnificently laid 120-foot table in St George’s Hall. Prior to any such occasion the Queen would always inspect the room to ensure that everything was just right, from the seating arrangements and table settings to the microphone neatly concealed amidst the floral arrangement opposite her seat.

  In October 1997, I received an invitation to attend a ball at the Castle to be held the following month in celebration of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Golden Wedding Anniversary. I had been given no indication as to how the guest list of 300 had been compiled, but I knew that it would include every member of the Royal Family, friends and senior members of the Household.

  We arrived at the Castle at the appointed time of 10:15pm and made our way up the grand staircase towards the State Apartments, assuming that we would then be directed to either the Waterloo Chamber, the Grand Reception Room or St George’s Hall. Upon reaching the top of the stairs we were greeted by the Queen and Prince Philip, who were in place to welcome each of their guests with a handshake and a few words.

  The band in full swing, it was clear that the Waterloo Chamber was strictly for dancing. The Grand Reception Room had been designated for socializing, and St Georges Hall – the largest room in the Castle at 180-feet long – had been arranged with round tables and chairs, and a half-bar with canapés at one end.

  I had walked through St George’s Hall a number of times during the restoration, and yet I still marveled at the level of skill and craftsmanship that had gone into restoring it to its former glory. It was beautiful.

  We were halfway down the Hall when I turned to my wife, Rosemary, and said, ‘There’s four of a kind over there.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she replied.

  ‘Only in Windsor Castle…four genuine queens,’ I said. As other guests mingled around them, Queen Margrethe of Denmark, Queen Beatrix of Holland, Queen Sofia of Spain and Queen Anne-Marie of Greece sat chatting amiably.

  I continued to show Rosemary around the newly-restored areas, and when we reached the end of the Hall we entered the Lantern Lobby, which had previously been the private chapel. Five years earlier it had been the site where the initial fire started; now it served as an open space providing a thoroughfare between the State Apartments and the Queen’s private apartments. Princess Anne was there waxing lyrical on the restoration project to a group of guests, though her information wasn’t entirely correct. She caught my eye and the slight shake of my head, to which she said, ‘Thank you, Dickie,’ before moving on.

  It was a grand ball, allowing for a once in a lifetime experience. A 60th wedding anniversary ball held in a newly-restored Windsor Castle – I don’t believe I have ever seen the Queen so happy.

  In 1998, Mary Francis, one of the Queen’s private secretaries, suggested a ‘themed away-day’ for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. It was a concept that proved to
be a breakthrough in terms of the perceived formality of royal visits. Their first such away-day fell during the spring of 1998, and was aimed specifically at London’s theatre industry. It provided the perfect opportunity to showcase homegrown talent.

  In the morning, the Queen went to see youngsters put through their paces at the National Theatre on the South Bank before going on to visit the Lyceum Theatre, where a rehearsal of Oklahoma! was in progress. Meanwhile, Prince Philip made a trip to the Adelphi Theatre in the Strand to watch a rehearsal of Chicago.

  I don’t think I could be accused of betraying any confidences by saying that the choice of show was probably right up Prince Philip’s alley given the cast of ladies dressed in leotards and fishnets. Later that morning he rejoined the Queen to take a look around Angels, the famous theatre and film costumiers in the heart of London’s West End.

  Established in 1840, Angels is legendary. To date, the company has won 32 Academy Awards for Best Costume Design for its work on films such as Titanic, The Great Gatsby and Lawrence of Arabia. Both the Queen and Prince Philip were fascinated by what they a saw, and would have spent longer looking around were it not for a pressing lunch engagement at The Ivy.

  The afternoon continued with a visit to one of Britain’s most prestigious drama schools, The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), before the royal couple returned to the Palace to prepare for the evening performance of Oklahoma! back at the Lyceum Theatre. Oklahoma! was the first musical the Queen ever saw in 1947, and knowing her taste in music, I managed to persuade her private secretary to include it in the day’s programme of events.

  The audience wasn’t told that there would be royalty in the house that evening, nor was a distinctive red and gold royal box organised. The first inkling that anyone had of the Queen and Prince Philip’s arrival was when they appeared at the entrance to the royal circle. Upon seeing them the audience leapt to its feet, alerting those in the stalls below to an unannounced arrival. By the time the couple had reached their seats, the theatre had erupted into spontaneous applause.