They consorted with stars of stage and screen (as royalty has often done) and they had a lot of fun, too, in their own way with their own set. Gina Kennard told me, ‘I remember lots of laughter, lots of old-fashioned gaiety. Country weekends. Shooting – not hunting in Philip’s case. We used to pot at rabbits. Serious shooting, too, of course. Shoot suppers. Hunt balls. Proper house parties. With tennis. And croquet. And dancing. They are both wonderful dancers. You should have seen Philip’s samba! And games. Sardines. Hunt the Thimble. So much fun.’ And some dressing up, too. At the American Ambassador’s fancy-dress ball, Philip came as a waiter and Elizabeth as a maid.
In the summer of 1949 the world was an uncertain place. The Cold War was upon us. The Soviet Union was testing the atomic bomb. In China, Shanghai had just fallen to Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army. The British Empire was no longer what it once had been. India and Ireland had become republics. There were race riots in Durban. In Britain, the economy was enfeebled. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of ‘the crushing difficulties’ faced by the British people as he prepared to devalue the pound sterling by a staggering 30.5 per cent. But at Windsor Castle the champagne still flowed. At the end of Royal Ascot, a royal ball. They danced till dawn. There was magic in the air. In his diary Chips Channon described the scene: ‘The rooms were banked with flowers … Windows were open on to the terrace … The doors were flung open, and we saw the King and Queen waiting to receive us, side by side: he seemed brown and she, though unfortunately very, very plump, looked magnificent in a white satin semi-crinoline number with the Garter and splendid rubies … We walked along a long passage with magnificent Canalettos and Zoffanys, by the dozen, many of which have been rehung and cleaned since the war … The King had his foot up on a foot stool to rest, though he seemed quite well and often danced … The Edinburghs made a somewhat late appearance (he had been to the Channel Islands or somewhere) and they looked divine. She wore a very high tiara and the Garter – he was in the dark blue Windsor uniform, also with the Garter. They looked characters out of a fairy tale … At a quarter to five, [the Queen] told the band to stop; everyone bowed and curtseyed to the remaining Royalties and we left, and drove back in the dawn – looking back, the Castle rose romantic in the pink morning light. I was enchanted with the evening.’
Philip had boundless energy. He could indeed make a flying visit to the Channel Islands (‘or somewhere’) and then dance till dawn. Patricia Mountbatten said to me, ‘He was a dynamo.’ Mike Parker told me, ‘He crackled with energy. He made things happen. He made things jump.’ As well as fulfilling his naval and his royal duties, he was beginning to take on a range of ‘good works’ – starting with the presidencies of the London Federation of Boys’ Clubs and the National Playing Fields Association. He was not inclined to be a docile figurehead: he wanted to be proactive and hands-on. Mike Parker said to me, ‘He wanted to make a difference and, if necessary, he was ready to make a noise.’
Elizabeth was altogether quieter. She was still quite shy. She didn’t have her husband’s ability to swing into a room of strangers and talk easily to anybody. She sometimes felt, as they went out on official visits together, that the crowd would rather see the Duke than the Princess. She was wrong, of course. She was beautiful and she was the Heiress Presumptive. She knew her duty, and did it conscientiously. Encouraged by Jock Colville, she was now regularly reading Foreign Office telegrams because – as Colville put it to the King’s private secretary, Tommy Lascelles – they ‘would give HRH an idea of world affairs which she cannot possibly get from the newspapers’. She was also making speeches – speeches drafted by Colville and Lascelles – whose content, when not simply anodyne, reflected the essentially conservative views and values of the Establishment of the day. In October 1949, for example, the young princess and mother, aged twenty-three, addressed a massed meeting of the members of the Mothers’ Union in Central Hall, Westminster, and, in her thin, high-pitched voice, deplored the ‘current age of growing self-indulgence, of hardening materialism, of falling moral standards’ and nailed her colours firmly to the unshakeable, unbreakable matrimonial mast: ‘We can have no doubt that divorce and separation are responsible for some of the darkest evils in our society today.’
In the same October, Philip, now twenty-eight, was appointed first lieutenant and second-in-command of HMS Chequers, the Leader of the 1st Destroyer Flotilla of the Mediterranean Fleet at Malta. The appointment was a good one – Philip was the youngest of the first lieutenants in the Flotilla – and reunited him with his old friend from HMS Valiant, the future First Sea Lord and Chief of the Defence Staff, Terry Lewin. ‘I found him doing the job of Flotilla Gunnery Officer,’ Philip recalled. ‘We served together until August 1950 in what was a very happy wardroom, four of whose members were destined to become flag officers.’
The posting also brought Philip back into daily contact with his uncle, Dickie Mountbatten, recently translated from Viceroy to Vice Admiral. Mountbatten, having overseen the end of empire in India, was reconnecting with the Royal Navy in Malta in a relatively humble role as Commander of the 1st Cruiser Squadron. Philip arrived on his own in Malta and went to stay with Dickie and Edwina at the house they were renting, the Villa Guardamangia. The two men took a little while to get used to each other again. Philip, according to Dickie, was ‘very busy showing his independence’. Within three weeks, however, everything was much jollier. ‘Philip is right back on 1946 terms with us,’ Mountbatten reported in a letter to his daughter, Patricia, ‘and we’ve had a heart-to-heart in which he admitted he was fighting shy of coming under my dominating influence and patronage!’ Mountbatten’s joy was wholly unconfined when, towards the end of November, Princess Elizabeth came out to Malta to join her husband. ‘Lilibet is quite enchanting,’ declared Mountbatten, ‘and I’ve lost whatever of my heart is left to spare entirely to her. She dances quite divinely and always wants a Samba when we dance together and has said some very nice remarks about my dancing.’
This is the period in Elizabeth’s adult life that can perhaps be described as the most ‘normal’ – or, at least, ‘the least unreal’, the most like that of other young couples of Philip and Elizabeth’s generation. He was a serving officer; she was a naval wife. Buckingham Palace was a thousand miles away and the British press left them largely unmolested. ‘It was a good time,’ according to Philip. ‘It was a fabulous time,’ according to Mike Parker. ‘I think it was their happiest time,’ said John Dean. ‘They were so relaxed and free, coming and going as they pleased.’ Of course, the very fact that Parker, as equerry, and Dean, as valet, were in Malta as well, is a reminder that, when it comes to royalty, nothing is ever entirely ‘normal’. The Princess arrived in Malta comfortably attended: as well as Parker and Dean and the inevitable police officer, there was the ever-faithful Bobo MacDonald and a new lady-in-waiting, Lady Alice Egerton, sixth and youngest daughter of the 4th Earl of Ellesmere and sister of Meg Egerton, who had recently married Jock Colville.68
The Edinburghs, plus retinue, stayed with the Mountbattens at the Villa Guardamangia where the indoor help included a butler, a housekeeper, three cooks, six stewards, two housemaids, two cleaning ladies, and a valet. ‘We are not too grossly overstaffed,’ protested Dickie, who was accustomed to living on a fairly grand scale. Clearly, however, he felt a little sheepish about the valet, writing to Edwina: ‘I fear you think I’m very spoilt wanting a valet and I do admit I am, but if one is working hard it does help if there is a second man in the house who can look after my clothes.’
John Dean, who was there looking after Philip’s clothes, paints a very sunny portrait of the Edinburghs in Malta. There were parties and picnics, swimming expeditions and boat trips. Elizabeth went out for coffee and shopping and visits to the hairdresser with the other young officers’ wives. Philip – encouraged by his uncle – took to the polo field and discovered one of the great sporting pleasures of his life.
Princess Anne was conceived in Malta. Prince Cha
rles was just one year old and back in England, being looked after by his nurses and devoted grandparents. The King sent a progress report to Lilibet: ‘He is too sweet for words stumping around the room.’ Elizabeth had been in London for Charles’s first birthday on 14 November. Six days later she flew to Malta to join Philip and, after a few duty nights as a guest at the Governor’s residence, settled in happily to life at the Villa Guardamangia, ‘although,’ according to John Dean, ‘she was probably a little sad at leaving Prince Charles behind.’ She was away from her boy for five weeks. She stayed in Malta until 28 December, when Philip and HMS Chequers (along with six other warships) were sent on manoeuvres to patrol the Red Sea. Neither Philip nor Elizabeth was with Charles for his second Christmas, and, when Elizabeth did get back to England, she did not rush immediately to Sandringham to be reunited with her little boy. She spent four days at Clarence House, attending to ‘a backlog of correspondence’, and fulfilling a number of engagements, including a visit to Hurst Park races, where she had the satisfaction of seeing Monaveen, a horse she owned jointly with her mother, win at 10–1.
Today it is evident that Prince Charles has mixed feelings about his upbringing. Overall his memories of his childhood are not happy ones and they go back a long way. He told his biographer, Anthony Holden, that he could still recall his first pram, ‘lying in its vastness, overshadowed by its high sides’. Charles believes he was neglected by his parents when he was small. His parents, understandably, saw it differently. When I raised it with him, Prince Philip shrugged and pointed out that, at the time, he was serving in the Royal Navy and that servicemen and their families are often apart. ‘It’s the way it was. It’s the way it is.’ He also made it clear to me that Elizabeth believes that, all her life, she has done her best to balance the range of her responsibilities – as a princess and monarch, as a mother and wife – but, of course, ‘it has not always been easy’. The Princess was with Charles for his birthday. That was important. She was with Philip in Malta. That was important, too. And, as his father reminded me, Charles was far from being either neglected or unloved: when he was not with his parents, he was with doting nurses and grandparents who adored him.
At the beginning of 1950 Princess Elizabeth spent three months in England before returning to Malta – again without Charles – on 28 March. On her twenty-fourth birthday, 21 April 1950, at 8.45 a.m., the telephone rang in her bedroom at the Villa Guardamangia. When she picked up the receiver she was greeted with a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ performed by a group of young naval officers accompanied by some of the band of HMS Liverpool. According to Bobo, who was there (of course), ‘Lilibet was wildly excited and kept saying, “Oh! Thank you, thank you! That was sweet but who are you?”’ She was answered by a second chorus of the song, harmonised by the officers’ Glee Club, then a burst of bagpipes. Bobo reported to Dickie Mountbatten – whose flag officer had been responsible for organising the surprise birthday greeting – that ‘Lilibet first went white, then quite red, and ended up with tears in her eyes’. Mountbatten was enchanted with the birthday girl: ‘I think she’s so sweet and attractive. At times I think she likes me too, though she is far too reserved to give any indication.’ Elizabeth’s birthday treat was to watch her husband and her uncle playing polo.
The young wife spent six weeks with her husband in Malta and then returned to England on 9 May and did not see him again for three months until he, too, came home, for five weeks’ leave, at the end of July. Princess Anne was born on 15 August at Clarence House. The birth was a cause for general rejoicing. Among the first callers was Philip’s mother, Princess Alice, who had come over specially from Greece, determined not to miss the birth of her latest grandchild. She was dressed in her nun’s habit and was spotted by a sharp-eyed reporter from the Daily Mail who decided to describe her, intriguingly, as ‘one of the few remaining mystics in the Greek church’.69 It was a happy time for the whole family – with the possible exception of Prince Charles. This is how Sarah Bradford puts it in her biography of the Queen: ‘For Prince Charles, the return of his father closely followed by the appearance of a new baby must have been something of a shock. A photograph of the time shows him peering into the cradle with a slightly puzzled air. He was two years old and had not seen his father for nearly a year, his mother only at intervals. Now the appearance of a new sister as the focus of everyone’s attention must have been very confusing; only his loving grandparents and his unchanging nursery retinue provided stability. His father left again for Malta on 1 September and in December his mother went out to join him. At Christmas Prince Charles and his new sister went as usual with their grandparents to Sandringham.’
Philip did not and Elizabeth does not dispute the facts. What they found frustrating is the gloss. There is another photograph of Charles, taken at the time, looking quite content. Princess Elizabeth was devoted to her son and knew that when she went away – always after several months at home and usually for no more than four or five weeks at a time – her boy was in good hands – the best. And her mother, Queen Elizabeth, sent regular and enthusiastic reports from the home front: ‘What a joy Charles and Anne are to me … I shall miss them quite terribly when you return.’
In July 1950, a few weeks before Princess Anne was born, Philip was promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander and given his first command: the frigate HMS Magpie. Queen Elizabeth wrote, sending him ‘a thousand congratulations’. The promotion was not automatic: it involved an exam, part of which the Duke failed first time around. Apparently, the Commander-in-Chief was all for overruling the examiner. Philip was having none of it. ‘If they try to fix it,’ he said, ‘I quit the navy for good.’ He took the exam again and, according to Mike Parker, ‘went through like a breeze’. Parker told me, ‘Philip was first-class at his job and popular with his men.’ Terry Lewin agreed: ‘They admired him because he was good.’ Some did not admire him. According to Sarah Bradford, ‘One said he’d rather die than serve in that ship again, while another described him as “stamping about like a —— tiger”.’ The Duke’s biographer, Tim Heald, probably has the balance about right: ‘His command of Magpie was a success. He was tough, hard, mucked in with everybody, and if he had a fault it was a tendency to intolerance. It is not just his enemies who have commented on this last trait.’
As a young naval officer Philip was ambitious and fiercely competitive. He was determined that Magpie would be the smartest, sharpest frigate afloat, and that her eight officers and 150 men pull their weight at all times. He led from the front. He demanded the best and gave his all. In the annual Mediterranean Fleet regatta, the officers and men of Magpie rowed to victory in six out of the ten races, with ‘Dukey’, as he was known to his men, rowing at stroke in the Destroyer Command Officers’ race – which they won (of course) by half a length from a field of fifteen. As well as taking part in routine naval manoeuvres, Magpie – or ‘Edinburgh’s Private Yacht’ as some called her – was sent on sundry ceremonial exercises. In December 1950, when Princess Elizabeth came to Malta, there was an expedition to Athens to call on Philip’s cousins, King Paul and Queen Frederika. Elizabeth travelled on board the Commander-in-Chief’s dispatch vessel, HMS Surprise. One morning there was a jovial exchange of signals between the ships:
Surprise to Magpie: Princess full of beans.
Magpie to Surprise: Can’t you give her something better for breakfast?70
Happy days. But the fun – and Philip’s career – did not last. The King’s health was gradually deteriorating. On 4 May 1951, when George VI and Queen Elizabeth went to the official opening of the Festival of Britain on the south bank of the Thames,71 the King looked grey and weak. Three weeks later, on 24 May, at Westminster Abbey, during the installation of the Duke of Gloucester as Great Master of the Order of the Bath, the King appeared seriously ill. His doctors diagnosed ‘catarrhal inflammation’ on the left lung and prescribed a course of penicillin injections. The King felt relieved, confident, he told his mother, that
the condition would resolve itself with treatment.
In the event, his condition worsened. In July he started to undergo a series of tests that would eventually establish the presence of a malignant tumour in his lung. That same month the Edinburghs returned from Malta. The Princess and her husband were required for public duty. Elizabeth had revelled in the relative freedom she had enjoyed as a naval officer’s wife. ‘They’re putting the bird back in its cage,’ said Edwina Mountbatten. Philip had relished his year in command of his own ship. ‘That’s that,’ he said to Mike Parker. ‘It was bloody for him,’ Parker told me. ‘Absolutely bloody.’ ‘No,’ Prince Philip said to me. ‘It’s what happened. That’s all. It happened sooner than might have been expected, but it was inevitable. I accepted it. That’s life.’
That autumn the King and Queen had planned to make a state visit to Canada and the United States. The Princess and the Duke were sent in their place. They were due to leave on 25 September, sailing on the liner Empress of Britain, but their departure was postponed as the King’s condition deteriorated further. On Sunday, 23 September, in a two-hour operation at Buckingham Palace, the King had his left lung removed. A crowd of 5,000 waited outside the Palace for news and, when it came at 5 p.m., the bulletin, written in black crayon, encased in a picture frame, and hung on the Palace gates, told the truth, but not the whole truth: ‘The King underwent an operation for lung resection this morning. Whilst anxiety must remain for some days, His Majesty’s immediate post-operative condition is satisfactory.’ In 1951 cancer was a word rarely spoken above a whisper.72 On 24 September Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary: ‘The King pretty bad. Nobody can talk about anything else – and the Election is forgotten. What a strange thing is Monarchy!’
Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister, had already told the King that he proposed dissolving Parliament at the beginning of October to hold a general election on the last Thursday in the month. Despite the King’s frailty, on 25 October the election went ahead. Attlee’s Labour Party lost. The Liberals were routed. Winston Churchill and the Conservatives were returned to office with a majority of seventeen. Churchill was coming up to his seventy-seventh birthday and had suffered a stroke. He was hard of hearing, not altogether mobile, and not always wholly alert. He had no doubt, however, that he was ready for office.
Philip: The Final Portrait Page 28
