Philip: The Final Portrait

by Gyles Brandreth

  The Queen’s has been a life of duty, but also one of privilege. She has met everyone and been everywhere. She has never wanted for anything. Wherever she goes she is cosseted. And the corgis come, too – flown, if need be, in an Andover of the Queen’s Flight. Her days are sometimes long, and often arduous, but she has staff ever in attendance and the comfort of a routine that rarely varies. At 8 a.m. Her Majesty’s dresser enters the royal bedroom with the ‘calling tray’ and a pot of Earl Grey tea. The curtains are drawn, the bath is run (to a depth of seven inches and a temperature of 72 degrees Fahrenheit – tested by thermometer), the Palace begins to stir. (No vacuuming is permitted before 8 a.m.) Her clothes are laid out for her, her hairdresser is at hand. At 9 a.m., as her personal piper plays beneath her windows, the Queen walks from her bedroom, through her sitting room to her dining room, holding her Roberts radio, listening to the news of the day. Breakfast is modest: cereal (from those Tupperware containers), a slice of granary toast, a layer of Oxford marmalade. At ten o’clock the business of the day begins: her private secretary appears; correspondence is considered, state papers scanned; if it is a morning for receiving ambassadors or the day of an investiture, Her Majesty studies her briefing material. At one o’clock, before a light lunch (she is not fussy about her food), she might treat herself to a gin and Dubonnet: equal measures, two lumps of ice and a slice of lemon. (The lemon is sliced for her.) At 2.30 p.m. she walks the corgis. At five she takes tea. At six the drinks tray reappears and Her Majesty might allow herself a moderate gin and tonic. At 8.15 p.m. it is dinner time.

  On some days the Queen and Prince Philip would share breakfast, lunch, and dinner – but not every day. For example, a few years ago, on the day I happened to visit Buckingham Palace to begin the picture research for this book, I noted that Philip and Elizabeth had breakfast alone together. At one o’clock that day, together, they hosted one of their regular, informal Buckingham Palace luncheons for the great, the interesting, and the good – an idea instituted by the Duke in 1956. (The party of eight included representatives of the worlds of business, music, and sport, the director of the National Maritime Museum and the chairman of the Shah Jahan Mosque at Woking.) In the evening, the Duke of Edinburgh, without the Queen, attended a dinner at Drapers’ Hall in the City of London on behalf of the Royal Academy of Engineering. The Queen has long been accustomed to evenings on her own. She watches television, she completes the Daily Telegraph crosswords, she gives the corgis their late supper. She telephones her racing manager. She chats with her personal page.

  I can tell you exactly what the Queen is like. She has the interests, attributes, and tastes of an English (or Scottish) countrywoman of her class and generation. Dogs and horses, courtesy, kindliness, and community service count with her. Essentially conservative (with radical flourishes), intelligent (not intellectual), pragmatic (not introspective), ‘immensely tolerant’ (Prince Philip’s phrase), even-tempered, and utterly reliable, she is what she is and makes no pretence of being what she is not. She may be formally apolitical, but she is definitely not politically correct. If she chooses, she will wear fur, she won’t wear a seat belt, she will go out riding without a hard hat, and, in her assorted residences, cigarettes are freely available to her guests. (I am told she even smokes one herself from time to time. Can that be true? If it is, it will make her more understanding of her daughter-in-law Camilla’s weakness for the weed.)

  Occasionally I heard Prince Philip use four-letter words, though rarely in the presence of ladies. The Queen is averse to bad language, but she is by no means a prude – or an innocent. When Lech Walesa was President of Poland and came to stay, she told an aide, ‘He only knows two English words.’ She paused, before adding, ‘They are quite interesting words.’ More recently, at an art gallery, she was confronted by a series of Lucian Freud nudes: heavy, spreading bosoms, weighty, blue-veined thighs. Sensing that the photographers present were eager to get a shot of her gazing up at one of them, Her Majesty moved herself adroitly out of range. When her host enquired, ‘Haven’t you been painted by Lucian Freud, Ma’am?’, she smiled and said, sotto voce, ‘Yes, but not like that.’

  Famously, the Queen is a skilful mimic – not so much of individuals, but of accents, be it cockney or Norfolk – and she has a lively, even impish, sense of humour. We all know that: we all gasped in amazement when she appeared on film with James Bond as part of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. She was amused to be asked; she was happy to do it; she played her part without fuss and in just one take; she enjoyed the surprise on the night – she had not confided to her family that she was making this unique contribution to the Olympic celebrations.

  Given the weirdness of her life (imprisoned by her fate: destined to be Queen from the age of ten), the Queen seems to me to be quite remarkably well balanced, rounded, grounded, and at ease with herself, the world, and her place in it. Friends who knew her when she was younger tell stories of her sitting on the sofa after dinner, her feet tucked up under her, chatting late into the night. People (even those who know her well) still find it difficult to treat her normally, but she behaves normally nonetheless. She arrived a little late for a supper at a private house in Belgravia. ‘Cooee,’ she called up the stairwell as she was taking off her coat, ‘it’s us. Sorry we’re late. Terrible traffic.’ This essential normality – combined with fundamental decency – presents a problem for the media. Where’s the story? It is something of a dilemma for her biographers, too. At the heart of the biographies (and autobiographies) that become best-sellers nowadays is trauma – true ‘trauma’ from the Greek for ‘wound’. The Queen’s story has known moments of high drama, but her own life, her personal life – in my view, at least – has not been traumatised.

  Others disagree. At the time of her Golden Jubilee, my psychologist friend Brett Kahr (the disciple of Lucian Freud’s grandfather, Sigmund), told me he was quite concerned for the Queen. ‘She has lost her only sister and her mother at the anniversary of her father’s death,’ he said solemnly. ‘She is vulnerable.’ (He also told me that, in psychiatric circles, a rumour has circulated for years that the Queen once had ECT treatment for depression.) As a psychologist I am unqualified, of course, but I told Brett, ‘For what it’s worth, my hunch is that Her Majesty has not had and will not be having a breakdown in this or any other year.’

  There was a streak of hysteria in Diana, Princess of Wales: you sensed it even with a brief acquaintance. There is none in the Queen. The Queen is sane. The Queen is sensible. She has her feet on the ground. She is not self-conscious: she will apply her lipstick whoever is watching. She is not easily flustered: however hectic the schedule, however many stops on the tour, her own steady pace never varies. She has a good team around her: senior courtiers who know what they are doing (unstuffy, for the most part; unfussy, with a couple of exceptions), and loyal ladies-in-waiting who are real friends. Yes, she lost her sister and her mother and, before them, her dresser and confidante Bobo MacDonald, who died at Buckingham Palace having given sixty-seven years of devoted service. (The Queen came down from Balmoral to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace for her funeral.) But Bobo was succeeded by another dresser, Angela Kelly (a Liverpool dock worker’s daughter, twenty-five years younger than the Queen), who has become an ally and friend. The Queen has a good team around her and a large family only a telephone call away.

  Inevitably, given the length of her reign, she has had her ups and downs. In 1957 a thirty-three-year-old peer, writer, and historian, the 2nd Lord Altrincham,117 became internationally notorious overnight for publishing what many regarded as an unforgivable personal attack on the Queen. Altrincham accused the thirty-one-year-old Queen of being out of touch, living entirely within the confines of her own class, surrounded by courtiers of ‘the “tweedy sort”’, making speeches that amounted to ‘prim little sermons’ in the manner of ‘a priggish schoolgirl’ and speaking with a voice that was ‘a pain in the neck’. ‘Like her mother,’ wrote Altrinc
ham, the young Queen ‘appears to be unable to string even a few sentences together without a written text.’ He went on, ‘When she has lost the bloom of youth, the Queen’s reputation will depend, far more than it does now, upon her personality. It will not then be enough for her to go through the motions; she will have to say things which people can remember and do things on her own initiative which will make people sit up and take notice. As yet there is little sign that such a personality is emerging.’

  Sixty years on, the Queen’s reputation does indeed rest upon her personality. With a handful of exceptions, she has not said things which people can remember, or done things which have made people sit up and take notice, but her personality has emerged nonetheless. We know what the Queen stands for and cares about. Take, for example, her dogged commitment to the Commonwealth. When her reign began, the British Empire was already set on its inevitable decline and the Commonwealth, as we know it, still in its infancy. In 1952 there were eight members of the Commonwealth. Today there are fifty-four, of which sixteen are still constitutional monarchies with the Queen as head of state. Whitehall and Westminster may be more preoccupied with the United Kingdom’s relations with Europe and the United States, but the Queen’s interest in Commonwealth has never wavered. Indeed, her knowledgeable enthusiasm for what she describes as a ‘free and voluntary association of equal partners’ that ‘in all history has no precedent’ is a wonder to behold.

  The novelist Daphne du Maurier, when her husband Boy Browning was still Comptroller of the Duke of Edinburgh’s household,118 stayed at Balmoral and was struck by the way Prince Philip could talk about anything – literature, art, murder, military manoeuvres – while the Queen’s range of interests – and conversation – was much more limited. Her Majesty’s face only really ‘lit up’ when the talk was of horses – and world affairs.

  The Queen is exceptionally well informed. This is because she is conscientious. She does her ‘boxes’ week in, week out, throughout the year. She says she is a quick reader, ‘though I do rather begrudge some of the hours that I have to do instead of being outdoors’. She knows the presidents and prime ministers of the Commonwealth personally. The way they speak of her – invariably with respect, often with affection, occasionally with awe – suggests their admiration is genuine, not simply a matter of form. In the United Kingdom she has had thirteen prime ministers. She has maintained a cordial relationship with them all. Margaret Thatcher told me that the talk of her having a strained relationship with the Queen was ‘a lot of nonsense’. ‘The Queen,’ said Lady Thatcher, ‘is simply marvellous. And her commitment to the Commonwealth and to our armed services has been especially important.’ When Parliament is sitting, Queen and Prime Minister meet once a week, and, in September, Prime Minister and consort are briefly guests of Her Majesty at Balmoral. (It is reckoned that the Blairs’ baby Leo, born a tad prematurely on 20 May 2000, was conceived under the royal roof.) The Queen sees herself as a ‘sounding board’ for her prime ministers. She says, ‘They unburden themselves, or tell me what’s going on. If they’ve got any problems, sometimes one can help in that way, too. I think it’s rather nice to feel that one’s a sort of sponge. Some things stay there and some things go out the other ear and some things never come out at all. Occasionally you can put one’s point of view when perhaps they hadn’t seen it from that angle.’

  On the whole, the Queen has accepted what the politicians have thrown at her across the years. In 1964 Sir Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Royal Pictures, confessed to an MI5 interrogator that he had been a Soviet spy since before the Second World War. In return for his confession he was offered legal immunity, and, to avoid alerting the KGB, Her Majesty was asked to keep him in royal service until the due date of his retirement. She acquiesced. She does. She has little choice, in the end. That is why the Civil List has gradually been curtailed and, from 1993, the Queen and the Prince of Wales paid tax on their private income. There was negotiation – a bit of give and take on either side – but, ultimately, the government of the day calls the shots. The Queen successfully resisted an attempt by Tony Benn (when Postmaster-General in the mid-1960s) to have the sovereign’s profile removed from British postage stamps, but, in the 1990s, failed to secure a successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia.

  Once I asked Lord Charteris, Her Majesty’s longest-serving private secretary, if the Queen herself ever felt she had put a foot wrong. He said, at once, ‘Aberfan. She got that wrong and she knows it.’ In October 1966, in the south Wales mining village of Aberfan, a slag heap collapsed, engulfing the village school and killing one hundred and forty-six people. The Queen expressed her anguish in a press release and dispatched Prince Philip and Lord Snowdon to the scene. She did not immediately go herself. ‘It was a mistake,’ Charteris told me, ‘and one she regrets. The scale of the tragedy called for an immediate response, but she is not a spontaneous person and she is not given to emotional gestures. Custom, form, and precedent count with her. She tends to do what she has done before.’ She made up for her error in the years that followed. She has visited Aberfan four times, most recently during her Diamond Jubilee tour in 2012, when she unveiled a plaque at Ynysowen Community Primary School and made a speech. (She is ever-present and always highly visible, but she does not make that many speeches.) ‘I have travelled the length and breadth of this country during my sixty years as your Queen,’ she said. ‘Prince Philip and I have shared many of the joys and sadnesses of the Welsh people in that time and have always been struck by your sense of pride and your undimmed optimism.’

  The Queen is still charged by some with being out of touch and slow to react (for example, in the case of Paul Burrell’s trial and at the outset of the week of Diana’s death) and even her keenest admirers, who regard her as a force for good, would not describe her as a force for change. But while that might have mattered when she was a younger woman, now she is old it does not matter at all. The world changes: the Queen, thank God, does not. Amid life’s uncertainties, she is reassuringly familiar. She keeps the show on the road. She keeps her profile on the postage stamps, not for reasons of vanity, but because that is where it belongs, that is where you expect it to be.

  On 24 November 1992 I attended the lunch at the Guildhall in London at which the Queen gave probably the most memorable speech of her reign. She had a cold and a sore throat, but she had some things she wanted to say and she hoped to be heard and was not sure how long her voice would last, so she decided to speak before we all tucked into the turbot, partridge, and Ruby soufflé, rather than after. The speech – wry, reflective, personal – was made all the more moving by being spoken in a husky voice. The Queen talked of her annus horribilis, ‘not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure’. (The phrase was suggested by her former assistant private secretary, Sir Edward Ford, and the next day brilliantly translated by the Sun’s headline writer as ‘One’s Bum Year’.) She did not mention Princess Anne’s divorce, Prince Andrew’s separation, or Prince Charles’s marriage on the rocks, but they were in her mind – and ours. She talked, poignantly, about the fire that had done so much damage to Windsor Castle the weekend before and – because the lunch was to mark the fortieth anniversary of her Accession – reflected on lessons learnt over four decades. She said, rather wistfully, that, of course, any institution – monarchy included – must accept scrutiny and criticism, but asked, ‘Couldn’t it be done with a touch of humour, gentleness, and understanding?’ She commended loyalty and ‘moderation in all things’.

  ‘Annus horribilis’ is one of just a few of the Queen’s turns of phrase that will not be forgotten. ‘My husband and I …’ is another. It was a phrase that the Queen used in almost every public utterance in the early years of her reign. She used it to such an extent that it became a joke and she was forced to drop it. She used it because, it seemed, wherever she went, he came, too. They were a double act. At every key moment in the Queen’s reign – at every significant event – every one – until he was over ninety and ill
ness began to take its toll, the Duke of Edinburgh was there.

  I once asked him what he considered to be his lifetime’s chief achievements. We were sitting in his library at Buckingham Palace. It is a large room, with a workmanlike feel, airy, ordered, user-friendly, serviceable rather than cosy. I put my question and a silence fell. He snorted. He spread his hands across the sofa and sighed. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme was clearly a considerable ‘achievement’, though, as we talked of it, his one anxiety seemed to be to give credit to John Hunt as its first director. The creation of the Commonwealth Study Conferences was clearly another ‘achievement’. His impact on the World Wide Fund for Nature was certainly a third. But all these fine endeavours – and there is a list including many more here – are almost incidental. The essence of his role in life was to support the Queen. He never talked openly about his feelings for the Queen, because that was not his style,119 but it was clear from his every action that he was fiercely protective of her. On walkabout, if a photographer or cameraman was encroaching on Her Majesty, he would bark at them to get out of the way. When, once, a journalist asked him about the overseas tour on which he was reported to have fallen asleep during the Queen’s speech, he retorted sharply, ‘Not at all, it wasn’t during the Queen’s speech, it was during the president’s!’ In almost forty years, beyond occasional complaints about her devotion to her corgis and the amount of time she seemed capable of spending on the telephone, I did not hear him speak one critical word of her.