The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor

by Penny Junor

  The impression is that these people, who come in all shapes, sizes, ages and colours, have been specially selected by the Queen for their award. The list of those selected is published twice a year, at New Year and on the Queen’s official birthday in June, which reinforces the notion that they are her choice. This is not so. The only honours that are in the sovereign’s gift today are the Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348 by Edward III and limited to twenty-five knights with the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks evil); the Most Ancient and Noble Order of the Thistle, founded in 1687, limited to sixteen knights, all of whom must be Scottish – motto Nemo me impune lacessit (No one provokes me with impunity); the Order of Merit, which Edward VII founded in 1902 to reward outstanding contributions to science, art, music, literature and public life – with a corresponding award for exceptional military leadership in times of war – limited to twenty-six; and the Royal Victorian Order for services to the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, which is usually conferred on long-serving members of the household on their departure. Apart from those, whose number is limited, the Queen’s role in the honours system is almost exclusively constitutional; the bulk of the names are chosen in Whitehall and she has little power to affect the honours given in her name.

  Each list has about 1350 names on it and a large proportion of them are civil servants, diplomats and the military – a hangover from the days when civil servants were poorly paid, for which a gong at the end of their career compensated. And for the high-flyers it denoted rank (despite vastly improved salaries, it still does); they rise from the CMG (Call Me God) to the KCMG (Kindly Call Me God) to the GCMG (God Calls Me God) to a Knighthood. In recent decades media figures have also been increasingly showered with honours, leading to the inescapable suggestion that the gongs have been given either as inducements or rewards for favours or support, and that the system is therefore rotten to its core.

  Harold Wilson began the trend when he was Prime Minister in the sixties and ennobled no fewer than six journalists from the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror. Margaret Thatcher, in turn, knighted a number of prominent Tory supporters including the Jeremy Paxman of his day, the inquisitorial television journalist Robin Day; Peregrine Worsthorne; Kingsley Amis; and three loyal editors, Larry Lamb of the Sun, Nicholas Lloyd of the Daily Express and my father, John Junor, of the Sunday Express – he who had always insisted he would never accept a title if it were offered, any more than he would take a freebie, on the grounds that it would compromise his freedom to write what he believed. But he wasn’t the first or the last to be so seduced. ‘The English really are in the grip of the religious passion of monarchy,’ wrote Richard Eyre, director of the National Theatre, in his diary when he received a CBE from the Queen in 1992. ‘How can it change? It can’t if people like me go on accepting honours.’ Mrs Thatcher was well aware of the influence that all three of those newspapers had on the outcome of the general election that swept her to power in 1979 and knew the value of their continued support. John Major widened the scope of the honours system by introducing nominations by members of the public but he too used the system and Tony Blair has been no different – except that he cunningly honoured the then editors of the two major Tory broadsheets, Max Hastings of the Daily Telegraph and Peter Stothard of The Times.

  In November 2003 Benjamin Zephaniah, the Rastafarian poet, broke with convention and announced publicly that he had rejected the offer of an OBE because he claimed it stood for colonial brutality and slavery. Would-be recipients are always sounded out by letter to see whether they will accept an honour before the list is passed to the Queen – 98 per cent accept. In rejecting the honour, Zephaniah did not pull his punches: ‘It reminds me of thousands of years of brutality – it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalized.’ He added, ‘Stick it, Mr Blair and Mrs Queen – stop going on about the empire.’

  The next month documents leaked from Whitehall, hitherto secretive about the whole matter, revealed just how many prominent figures from the world of literature, stage, screen and sport had also turned down honours; and also how confidently a committee of civil servants, chaired by Sir Hayden Phillips GCB of the Lord Chancellor’s department, decided who was to be honoured and who left out – revelations which once again brought the whole legitimacy of the honours system into question. The result was two reports, both published in July 2004. One, written by Sir Hayden Phillips, came up with thirty-one recommendations to ensure that the system would be seen to be fair and more accessible to the population at large. ‘Some people believe the whole system should be swept away,’ he wrote. ‘Others would abolish traditional titles and historic orders. Some of those who hold these views hold them with a passionate intensity. But I do not believe that there is a broad public opinion that is seriously opposed to having a national system through which the Queen, as Head of State, confers recognition on the contribution of individuals to our society. Put more simply the honours system is our way, within our cultural history, of saying thank you publicly.’ The other, a House of Commons Select Committee, attracted rather more attention, however. Under its recommendations, top civil servants and diplomats would also lose their entitlement to more ‘exclusive’ honours – the Order of the Bath and the Order of St Michael and St George; Knighthoods and Damehoods would be abolished and the Order of the British Empire renamed the Order of British Excellence. Knighthoods, so they said, were ‘redolent of past preoccupations with rank and class, just as “Empire” is redolent of an imperial history’. It was roundly condemned by traditionalists and constitutional experts as ‘damaging political correctness that could undermine the monarchy’.

  Nearly forty years ago, however, the Queen tried to change the name of the OBE herself. In 1966, according to the author Anthony Sampson, she handed the Prime Minister Harold Wilson a four-page memo written by Prince Philip proposing the name be changed as the empire had been ‘virtually eliminated’. He suggested alternatives like the Order of St James’s or the Order of the Lion and the Unicorn. ‘But senior civil servants were horrified,’ Sampson wrote in Who Runs This Place?, ‘and revealed all their conservatism in opposition to the Palace, the supposed “fount of honour”.’

  The head of protocol Sir Lees Mayall mockingly suggested that St James might recall a Tudor nunnery which was home to ‘fourteen leprous maidens’. The head of the diplomatic service Sir Saville Garner complained that any change would arouse ‘a good deal of unnecessary controversy’. The head of the Treasury Sir Laurence Helsby argued that it would be too expensive, and ‘the less relation the name of an order has to reality, the better, and the further the empire disappears into the sands of time, the less difficulty there is in retaining the name’.

  The mandarins won the day.

  Garden parties are another great Palace institution. Three times every summer nine thousand people, most of them mystified as to why they have been invited, make their way from all over the country to Buckingham Palace – and once each summer to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The men are mostly in morning dress or uniform (although increasingly it is lounge suits or national dress), women in their best summer suits, hats and handbags – all clutching their prized and exceedingly stiff and embossed invitations from the Lord Chamberlain who ‘is commanded by Her Majesty to invite’ them. As with every invitation issued by the super-efficient Malcolm Ross, who also organizes the garden parties, there are detailed instructions about where to find the Palace and which entrance to use, what clothes to wear, what time to arrive (4.00 – gates open at 3.15) and what time to leave (6.00), accompanied by car park stickers for their windscreens and instructions about where to park should they elect to come by car. The guest list is a hotchpotch of people from every walk of life, pulled together by a variety of list makers – the government, the civil service, the Armed Forces, professional bodies and the Lord-Lieutenants – and they are another means by which the Queen acknowledges and rewards good works and communi
ty service.

  As with everything the Queen does, the pattern is the same party after party, year after year. She and the Duke of Edinburgh and members of the Royal Family walk out on to the terrace outside the Bow Room at four o’clock, at which point one of the two bands that play a selection of music throughout the afternoon stops and plays the National Anthem. Everyone stands to attention, including the royal party; a handful of people are then presented formally to the Queen – new Lord-Lieutenants, chaplains to the Queen or tenants of the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. After that members of the Royal Family disperse themselves among the crowd mingling on the lawn, each one taking a different route, weaving their way between groups, talking at random to people who catch their eye. There is no formality and it is largely a matter of luck as to whether a guest will meet one, several or none of the family, but unless they are off exploring on the other side of the lake they are certain to come close. Besides, just to be inside the secret garden, behind the high brick wall with the black iron spikes on the top that seals off royalty from the rest of London, has a certain magic in itself. There are almost forty acres of garden at the back of the Palace, to the west, with a tennis court, wonderful rose beds, shrubberies, a huge herbaceous border, and more than two hundred mature trees, many of them specimens, gifts from different Commonwealth countries. The lake covers four acres and is a haven for wildlife. Tea and cakes are served in huge open-sided tents and for those guests who are rather more special than others – ambassadors, high commissioners, government ministers and the like – there’s a royal tea tent. On the dot of 6.00, the band launches into a second rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’, she and the rest of the family disappear into the Palace and everyone else flocks out into the Mall, their day of excitement done, and heads home.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Voluntary Service

  Lord-Lieutenants are the Queen’s representatives in the country; there is one in every county, appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister. They are usually retired, can be men or, nowadays, women, aristocrats or commoners but are recognized as figures of distinction and good standing in the community. Glory comes with the job but not hard cash. The position is voluntary and although they get mileage, telephone and postage reimbursed, and have part-time use of a secretary, they have to provide their own car and meet all other expenses, which can during their tenure run into many thousands of pounds, out of their own pocket. As one of them said to me:

  Everywhere you go as Lord-Lieutenant, you go to church, you sit in the front pew and the collection plate comes to you first, you can’t just put a couple of coins into it, you have to put at least £5; you go to a charity do and you can’t buy a single 10p raffle ticket, you buy a £5 strip – and I am patron or president of fifty organizations. Heaven knows what I spend but I don’t begrudge it. It’s a huge privilege to be Lord-Lieutenant. You represent the sovereign which is a great honour, everywhere you go you’re in the front row of the stalls, you’re greeted properly, your wife is hugely esteemed and you meet wonderful people we would never have met before – little people, big people, good people doing nice things, just beaming all over when someone says ‘What a wonderful job you’re doing’. One of best parts of the job is finding people to pat on the head and say well done to.

  Lord-Lieutenants may be out of pocket but they are the top dog in the county, and except when the Queen or another member of the Royal Family comes to visit – which they organize with military precision right down to the last millisecond – they reign supreme.

  They were originally appointed in Henry VIII’s reign as part of the reorganization of local government, to control the military forces of the Crown in each county, and for a couple of hundred years had full control of the militia; but under the Forces Act of 1871 control reverted back to the Crown. The military flavour remains, however. The men wear military-style navy blue uniform with scarlet stripes down the trousers. On formal occasions they dress it up with overalls, swords, sashes, spurs, medals and peaked hat with a scarlet band – the full fig. Less formally, they leave off the sword and spurs and on other occasions can wear ordinary suits or blazers. The women – helpfully also called Lord-Lieutenants – are positively drab by comparison. All they have to show for themselves is a diamond brooch in the shape of the Queen’s crown and emblem of the nation which hangs on a red and white striped ribbon that they wear with normal clothes.

  Lord-Lieutenants are in demand, in much the same way as members of the Royal Family, to be presidents or patrons of charities, to open schools, factories and new buildings, to attend local functions and present awards and prizes including the public service Long Service and Good Conduct medal, the Queen’s Awards for Export and Technology and the Queen’s Scout and Queen’s Guides Awards. It is a pretty full-time job and involves most evenings, too. They are automatically senior magistrates, they chair the Lord Chancellor’s advisory committee, which appoints and sacks local Justices of the Peace, they are Keeper of the Rolls – the county archives – they are head of the county’s Reserve Forces and Cadets Association, president of the St John Ambulance in the district and by tradition they are made Knights of St John. And at midnight on their 75th birthday they are sacked.

  ‘Once appointed, we used to do it for life,’ says Lieutenant General Sir Maurice Johnston, former Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire since reaching the magic age last October, ‘but allegedly the Queen went up to the furthest reaches of Scotland and a nonagenarian drooled over her hand and she came back and said, “Up with this, I will no longer put. Sack them at seventy-five!”’

  It is very often out in the country, at the grass roots away from the city cynics and chattering classes, that you get a more accurate sense of how the monarchy is viewed and valued. And the Lord-Lieutenants are useful in feeding the mood of the nation back into the system.

  Occasionally you get nobbled: ‘Would you tell the Queen that …’ People sometimes assume you see the Queen after breakfast every day, which of course you don’t, but the relationship with the Private Secretaries of all members of the family is very close and we talk a lot. We are one of the avenues for advice and temperature gauging which goes to Sir Robin Janvrin. He used us a lot during the Golden Jubilee to sound out attitudes and opinions. Wiltshire is a conservative county with small and large C – except for Swindon which has two Labour MPs. The attitudes of people are pretty conservative, they don’t like change, they like order and authority, they don’t like disorder and disharmony, and, as I discovered when I started, and during Jubilee Year, the Royal Family is held in huge esteem in the county. If, for instance, I have laid on a programme for a visit, there is massive disappointment if the visit has to be cancelled. And there is huge excitement when I bring a minor member of the family – the Duchess of Gloucester, for example – people go wild with excitement; or the Duke of Kent – he’s a very valuable member of the family, does a good job and people are thrilled to see him. When Prince Philip came to open the new Great Western Hospital everyone knew where he was by the gales of laughter.

  The Queen and Prince Philip spent a whole day in Wiltshire in December before the Jubilee Year. They went to Chippenham, Calne and Malmesbury; it was wonderfully successful, the programme encompassed big things, small things, walkabouts. I didn’t announce that they would be travelling from Chippenham to Calne at such and such a time and the car would go past houses on the A4, but every single house had Union Jacks hanging from the window and every single house had someone standing on the pavement waving and taking off hats. People don’t do that if they are longing to become a republic.

  At the other end of the country, parts of which are considerably less Conservative, Sir John Riddell, the Prince of Wales’s former Private Secretary and now Lord-Lieutenant of Northumberland, had the same experience.

  I can tell you in the county of Northumberland when the Queen and Duke came on a pre-Jubilee visit I took them to Ashington, which is a very melancholy and very large ex-pit village; it use
d to be the biggest pit village in the world. When I said the Queen was going to walk down Station Road there was a slightly bored response and I was expecting that no one would turn out and no one would make much effort. And they didn’t make much effort, but it happened to be a sunny day and you’d have been in floods of tears if you’d been a monarchist because Station Road was absolutely full of people waving Union Jacks; you may say it doesn’t take very many people to fill Station Road, Ashington, but by God they were all there, and that’s a very important thing.