The Queen

Her Life

By Andrew Morton

As Princess Elizabeth went about her solemn, destructive task, her younger sister Margaret played with the snaffles, bridles, and saddles of the wooden horses that crowded their nursery. She was focused on her make-believe world, unconcerned about her sister’s silent rage over a certain Mrs. Simpson who, unbidden, was now changing all their lives. Disinterested, too, in the growing crowds that jostled and shoved in the winter gloom to watch the to-ing and fro-ing from 145 Piccadilly, the London home of their parents, the Duke and Duchess of York.

After all, they had spent a lifetime peering out from their top-floor bedroom watching people looking at them, both sides wondering what the other was doing. It was a game that would last a lifetime.

(Morton 2022, pp.1-2)

Royal custom dating back to the seventeenth century decreed that the home secretary be present at the birth lest an imposter be smuggled into the bedchamber. In keeping with tradition the current occupant of that office, William Joynson-Hicks, whose agitated mind was occupied with thoughts about how to defeat the trade unions in the coming conflict, sat in a nearby room at 17 Bruton Street, the duchess’s family’s London home, during the royal birth.

Once the baby was delivered, royal gynecologist Sir Henry Simson gave Joynson-Hicks an official document outlining the bare details of the birth of a “strong healthy female.” The certificate was then handed to a special messenger who hurried to the president of the Privy Council to make the official announcement. At the same time the home secretary informed the lord mayor of London, who posted the news on the gates of his official residence, Mansion House.

In the official bulletin, signed by Simson and the duchess’s personal doctor Walter Jagger, they stated that before the confinement a “certain line of treatment was successfully adopted,’ decorously suggesting that the princess had been delivered by cesarean section.

Though the sleeping infant was, by virtue of the 1701 Act of Settlement, third in line to the throne behind her father and the Prince of Wales, and not expected to reign, her lineage was a rich stew of the royal, the exotic, and the common.

While her great-great-grandmother was Queen Victoria, she was also linked, through her grandmother Queen Mary, to dentist Paul Julius von Hugel, who practiced in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires. On her father’s side the blood of European royalty, notably the German Houses of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Hanover, predominated, though it was her mother’s British heritage that intrigued.

Anthony Wagner, Garter king of arms, noted that among Elizabeth’s many aristocratic ancestors were two dukes, the daughter of a duke, the daughter of a marquess, three earls, the daughter of an earl, one viscount, one baron, and some half a dozen country gentlemen. It was not only the aristocracy represented in her bloodline but also the world of commerce and religion.

(Morton 2022, pp.9-10)

The temporary feeling of disappointment that the duchess had given birth to a girl rather than a boy served once more to highlight Elizabeth’s constitutional position. It led to earnest discussion about the proposition that the crown could technically be shared between the sisters or that the younger sister could take precedence. It became such a course of debate that the king ordered a formal investigation into the vexing issue. As common sense suggested, it was officially recognized that Elizabeth had seniority. The constitutional niceties of being a member of the royal family were further brought home to the duchess when it came to the naming of her second child. She had to accept that the final decision was that of the girls’ grandparents King George and Queen Mary, not the parents. Initially the Yorks were set on naming their child Ann Margaret, the duchess thinking Ann of York a pretty name. Her in-laws demurred, preferring Margaret Rose, Margaret being a Scottish queen and family ancestor. The king and queen prevailed. It would not be the last time they interfered in the upbringing of the royal princesses. The mother bit her tongue and busied herself with the new arrival. She was eager to describe her personality to friends and family. In a letter to Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, she wrote: “Daughter number 2 really is very nice, I am glad to say that she has got large blue eyes and a will of iron, which is all the equipment that a lady needs! And as long as she can disguise her will, and use her eyes, then all will be well.”

(Morton 2022, pp.16)

For Elizabeth horse riding was a chance to be herself, to enjoy control in a socially acceptable setting. So much of her daily routine was out of her hands: Bobo chose her clothes, Alah picked her menu, Crawfie organized her lessons, her parents, grandparents, and the men in suits at Buckingham Palace defined her future. She went through a phase where she would wake several times in the night and ensure that her shoes and clothes were folded and arranged just so. It was control but in another guise.

Her education was a classic example of the continual battle for the heart and mind of the heir presumptive. While her grandfather King George V barked at Crawfie, “For goodness sake, teach Margaret and Lilibet to write a decent hand, that’s all I ask of you,” Queen Mary was much more involved. She vetted Crawfie’s academic timetable, the royal matriarch suggesting more Bible reading and dynastic history. Most Mondays she took the girls on educational excursions incognito to the Royal Mint, the Tower of London, the Bank of England, as well as art galleries. These visits didn’t always go to plan. On one occasion the party was looking around the Harrods department store when a craning crowd gathered to catch a glimpse of the princesses. Elizabeth became so excited at the prospect of so many people wanting to see her that her grandmother, not wanting her moment of stardom to go to her head, gently ushered her out by a back door.

(Morton 2022, pp.20)

Literature and Scripture were her scholastic strengths, and so it was no surprise that the duchess insisted on teaching the girls Bible stories in her bedroom every morning. Kindness, courtesy, and Christian values mattered, the duchess believing that a decent character, a moral compass, and a sensitive awareness of the needs of others were as important as, if not more important than, intellectual endeavors. In a letter to her husband she laid out her own strictures. She reminded Bertie that his own father lost the affection of his children because he should at him and his brothers.

Stuck in the middle was the hired hand Marion Crawford, only twenty-two. Though a graduate of Moray House college of education in Edinburgh – the future alma mater to Harry Potter novelist J.K. Rowling and Olympic cycling gold medalist Chris Hoy – she was out of her depth in the subtle back-and-forth of palace politics. Indeed the Yorks had chosen Crawfie precisely because she was young enough to enthusiastically join in with the children’s games.

Lessons, which included math, geography, poetry – anything about horses captured Elizabeth’s interest – and English grammar, took place only in the morning between nine thirty and twelve thirty, with a thirty-minute break for drinks and snacks. There were also frequent interruptions for visits to the dentist, hairdresser, and dressmaker, Crawfie sensing that education did not come high on the list of the duchess’s priorities.

(Morton 2022, pp.21-22)

He was a strange, exotic creature indeed. After all, royal blood aside, the backgrounds and upbringings of Elizabeth and Philip could not have been more different. His was an extraordinary, scarcely believable early life. His grandfather was assassinated, his father imprisoned, his mother Princess Alice forcibly placed in an asylum. He was famously born on a dining table in a villa called Mon Repos on the Greek island of Corfu. Shortly after his birth, the infant, an orange box for his crib, and the rest of his family escaped the island aboard an English destroyer after his father Prince Andrea was sent into permanent exile; a death sentence imposed by a military tribunal was commuted following the intervention of George V.

From the age of eight he led a wandering lifestyle, seeing little of his father – who moved in with his mistress in a small apartment in Monte Carlo – and less of his mother. Within eighteen months his four sisters all married and had moved to Germany to be with their aristocratic husbands. Philip was enrolled at Cheam boarding school and studied at Salem. In Germany before completing his formal education at Gordonstoun in north Scotland, the newly founded school run by Kurt Hahn, a German Jew who had escaped from his home country.

(Morton 2022, pp.29)

Shortly after Winston Churchill became wartime prime minister in May 1940, a Nazi spy was parachuted into Britain. The Dutch-born agent who went by the name of Jan Willem Ter Braak carried with him a revolver, a radio transmitter, fake documents, and a bundle of cash. His orders were simple: find and kill Winston Churchill. For a time he lived with a couple in Cambridge and then, his money running out and fearing capture, he walked inside an air raid shelter and shot himself. This was probably the earliest of at least three plots to kill the wartime leader, the conspirators sometimes killing the wrong target. As Churchill himself noted in his war memoirs: “The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents.” He was too dismissive. The German policy of killing or capturing political leaders and royal heads of state came within a whisker of success. George VI, the queen, whom Hitler later described as “the most dangerous woman in Europe,” and their daughters were high on the list for imprisonment. One plan was for parachutists to drop into the garden of Buckingham Palace and other royal parks and hold the king and his family under “German protection.”

The man behind this scheme, Dr. Otto Begus, had almost snared Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands during the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries. While troops parachuted over the royal residence at The Hague, Begus and his Kommando were involved in air-landing operations that led to a number of gliders crashing at the nearby Valkenburg airport.

Wilhelmina, with only the clothes she was wearing, just managed to avoid being caught, leaving behind all her personal belongings and making her way to the Hook of Holland. There, a British destroyer, HMS Hereward, was waiting to pick up the queen, her family, the Dutch government’s gold and diamond reserves, as well as the Dutch government itself. The operation, code-named Harpoon Force, was a success though the destroyer was attacked by Stuka bombers during the passage to England. Eventually Wilhelmina safely arrived at Buckingham Palace, where the exhausted sovereign recounted her adventures to the king and queen.

The Belgian king, Leopold III, was not so fortunate. On May 28, days before the fall of France, he controversially surrendered his forces to the Nazis after the embattled troops were surrounded. He spent the rest of the war imprisoned in his chateau outside Brussels and was finally sent to Austria.

Throughout Europe, other crowned heads were on the run from the Nazi invaders. King Haakon of Norway spent weeks evading capture as he and his son, Crown Prince Olav, were chased by a one-hundred-strong squad of crack Nazi paratroopers. Like Queen Wilhemina, he was eventually rescued, the exhausted sovereign and his son clambering aboard the British heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire and taken to England. Upon arriving at Buckingham Palace, they were so tired after their traumatic escape on June 7 that they fell dead asleep on the floor, the queen quietly tiptoeing around them lest she disturb their slumbers.

Farther south, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who were in neutral Portugal, narrowly avoided being kidnapped. Under a plan code-named Operation Willi, Hitler sent his top spymaster Walter Schellenberg to Lisbon to head a team who planned to pasture the royal couple and spirit them across the border to Franco’s Nazi-friendly Spain. In the nick of time Churchill got wind of the plt and ensured that the couple boarded a ship bound for the Bahamas, where the former king became the reluctant governor.

Hitler’s grand scheme was based on the thinking that by installing the duke as a puppet king of the soon-to-be-conquered England or holding other European royals as hostages, they could be used as puppet-rulers or as surety for the continuing good behavior of their citizens. It was a strategy as old as warfare.

In the summer of 1940, with Britain on the ropes, its expeditionary force rescued at great cost from the bloodstained beaches of Dunkirk from late May to early June, Hitler was circling for the kill. Sometime in August 1940, as the invasion plan, code-named Operation Sea Lion, was being drawn up, Begus, according to his later testimony, received written instructions to report for a special mission. His target this time was the British royal family. A specially trained Kommando of parachutists, including some from the Dutch mission, was readied to capture the king, the queen, and their daughters. The emphasis was on taking the royal hostages alive. Parachutists were briefed on the correct salute and form of address when seizing a member of the royal family.

In the grand German scheme it was Hitler’s belief that if the airborne kidnapping attempt had succeeded, Britain would have been forced to surrender. Only the failure of the Luftwaffe to win the Battle of Britain resulted in the plan being scrapped. Even so, the prospect of German paratroopers landing in Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, and other royal residences was one taken very seriously by the royal family and military planners.

The queen, who was frightened of being captured, practiced her shooting skills with a pistol in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, using rats flushed from bombed royal outbuildings as targets. Her niece Margaret Rhodes later recalled: “I suppose quite rightly, she thought if parachutists came down and whisked them away somewhere, she could at least take a parachutist or two with her.”

(Morton 2022, pp.31-34)

The debate about what to do with the heir presumptive and her sister, independently of the king and queen, occupied the minds of ministers and the military. It was accepted that the king and queen would want to stay with the resistance in Britain. However, if the fight were to continue from Canada, then the heir presumptive should be there as the legitimate head of the British state in exile. With a blackout on any discussion, some generals feared that a delayed departure would place Elizabeth and Margaret in unnecessary danger. The government would hear none of it, ministers alarmed that rumors were already circulating that suggested the princesses had departed for Canada.

(Morton 2022, pp.37)

The dire situation facing the country was no laughing matter. Several weeks later, on September 7, 1940, the code word Cromwell was broadcast signifying that a German invasion was imminent. Church bells tolled through the night, several bridges were blown, and land mines were haphazardly laid on roads. The warning, which placed the men of the Coats Mission on high alert, marked the effective beginning of the Blitz, with the Luftwaffe sending wave after wave bombers over southern England. London was the first target and the hardest hit, the royal family firmly in the front line. Buckingham Palace was bombed in the first attack though the explosion caused little damage. The second attack, on September 9, 1940, could have been far more serious. A bomb landed near the king’s study but failed to explode. Thinking it was a dud, the king continued working. It was a foolhardy assumption as the bomb later exploded in the early hours of the night, causing considerable damage to the north front of the palace, breaking every window and dislodging much plasterwork It was a lucky escape for the king – and the country.

An even more serious attack took place on September 13, when a single German bomber flew straight up the Mall and dropped six bombs, two landing near the king who was with his private secretary Alec Hardinge. “The whole thing happened in a matter of seconds,” the king wrote later. “We all wondered why we weren’t dead.” It was clear that Buckingham Palace was the target for this daring daylight attack, the king and others suspecting that the pilot was one of his many German relations. In total the palace was bombed sixteen times during the war, nine of which were direct hits. Thanks to the RAF and its decisive impact in the Battle of Britain, the fear of parachutists landing in the king’s garden receded. In reality the bombing attacks on Buckingham Palace were a tremendous propaganda victory, cementing the emotional compact between the sovereign and his people and producing a worldwide wave of sympathy for the beleaguered royal family, especially in the United States. This patriotic sentiment was expressed in the queen’s ringing phrase: “I’m glad we’ve been bombed, now I can look the East End in the face.” (The East End was a poor part of London that had taken the brunt of the damage.)

(Morton 2022, pp.39-41)

“She’s the most ungossipy person I know. Placid and unemotional, she never desires what doesn’t come her way; always happy in her own family, she never needs the companionship of outsiders; she never suffers, therefore she never strongly desires.”

The princess was not one for gossip, though, as her best friend during the war, Alathea Fitzalan Howard, described. “She’s the most ungossipy person I know. Placid and unemotional, she never desires what doesn’t come her way; always happy in her own family, she never needs the companionship of outsiders; she never suffers, therefore she never strongly desires.”

The constraints and responsibilities of her position in wartime Britain emphasized and endorsed her stoical, reserved character and her somewhat solemn demeanor, qualities perceptively observed by First Lady Elanor Roosevelt when she visited Britain in October 1942. She was staying in the queen’s rooms at a bombed and freezing-cold Buckingham Palace and twice met the sixteen-year-old princess, who had officially entered the adult world after formally signing on at the labor exchange at Windsor, and during the First Lady’s visit was strenuously lobbying her reluctant parents to let her face the same hazards as other girls her age. “If she were anyone’s child that I met outside a palace, I would say she was very attractive, quite serious, a child with a good deal of character. Her questions put to me about life in this country were all serious questions. She has had to think seriously. I don’t think they have kept her from seeing the seriousness of the war – after all, practically every window in Buckingham Palace is out!”

The First Lady met the princess at a time when her father was gradually introducing her to the unique world of a reigning monarch through the interminable red despatch boxes, which contained top-secret cabinet and Foreign Office documents for the sovereign’s perusal and signature. Unlike previous monarchs, notably Queen Victoria and George V, who very reluctantly allowed their heirs a peek into their destiny, George VI was eager and earnest int he training of his successor. As F. J. Corbitt who worked at the palace for twenty years as deputy comptroller of supply, noted: “I don’t think any Sovereign of England has been taught so much in advance about his work by his predecessor as Queen Elizabeth was by her father. It was always a joy to see them together so happy in each other’s company.”

(Morton 2022, pp.48-49)

During his first summer back in Britain, Philip was, as Elizabeth recalled, invited to spend a few weeks at Balmoral. While the examination wasn’t as rigorous as those he taught at Corsham, the Balmoral test was and continues to be an important assessment by the family of a potential bride or groom. Essentially the intention was to assess, quite informally, the sailor prince to see if he would fit in to a country lifestyle where deer hunting, grouse shooting, and salmon fishing are an essential part of the royal round – as, too, are frequent wardrobe changes.

Philip did not get off to the best of starts. His wardrobe was as threadbare as his bank balance, his father Prince Andrew only leaving him several suits, an ivory-handled shaving brush, and signet ring after his death in 1944. He had borrowed a kilt for his sojourn on the fifty-thousand-acre royal estate. As it was just a wee bit too short the prince, in attempting to turn a fashion faux pas into a moment of levity, dropped a cute curtsy rather than a neck bow when he greeted George VI. The king who, like his brothers, was a stickler for the correct attire and formalities, was not amused. Philip’s behavior added to the sense among his detractors at court that this rather unpolished, overly confident young man, without a home, a fortune, or a kingdom to bolster his credentials, was little more than a Continental carpetbagger.

During his stay his shooting was as wayward as his dress sense, with the ghillies and beaters declaring his marksmanship “erratic and poor.” He did, though, hit the target in matters of the heart. This was where it really mattered. Forthright and to the point, he took Elizabeth out for a drive on the estate and then, as they walked alone on the heather, the sound of a distant curlew adding to the sense of solitude, he asked if she would be his bride. The princess, who had inserted pictures of the prince in her photograph album and had kept a framed picture of her bearded navy beau on her desk for months, accepted on the spot. It was only later that the prince separately sought the formal permission of the king, his consent required under the 1772 Royal Marriages Act, which was passed by Parliament to prevent unsuitable or improper marriages that would diminish the standing of the royal house.

During his six-week stay the king formed a warm attachment with the young prince. Like any father he was happy to see his daughter blossom thanks to the love and support of her future husband. In the dynastic juggling act this was, caveats aside, deemed to be a good match, and he willingly gave his permission. There was one condition.

A royal tour of South Africa, which had been months in the planning, was scheduled for early 1947, and the king asked the couple to wait until the royal family returned in May before making a formal announcement. The palace even issued a statement in early September denying the rumor that there was an engagement between the two. This prevarication left the princess bewildered and crestfallen. She knew her own mind; it was her parents who were being indecisive, using the excuse of the South African tour to test the couple’s resolve. In fairness the prince still needed to become a naturalized British citizen before any announcement, and that was not going to be a straightforward application.

(Morton 2022, pp.67-68)

With anti-German feeling at its height, King George V changed the name of the dynasty from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which was Germanic in origin, to Windsor so as to appear more British.

Elizabeth’s first crisis was not long in coming. As was to be the case throughout her reign, it concerned her family, on this occasion the family name. Two days after the funeral, the editor of Debrett’s, the bible of the aristocracy, had written that, as Philip had taken the name Mountbatten as his surname, the royal house was not the House of Mountbatten rather than the House of Windsor. Churchill and his ministers made it clear that this “appalling fact” be amended. It was not so simple. The issue went to the heart of the relationship between Elizabeth and Philip. As the wife of Philip Mountbatten, it was tradition that she indeed took his name. What was more, he expected it.

However, as with so many aspects of daily life, the royal family is literally a law unto itself. Members of the royal family can be known both by the name of the royal house and by a surname that is not always the same. Until 1917 members of the British royal family had no surname, only the name of the house or dynasty to which they belonged. Hence Henry VIII or Henry Tudor, he of the six wives fame.

This all changed during World War One. With anti-German feeling at its height, King George V changed the name of the dynasty from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which was Germanic in origin, to Windsor so as to appear more British. At a meeting of the Privy Council on July 17, 1917, George V declared that all male descendants of Queen Victoria would bear the name of Windsor.

As the queen came from the female line of the family, it was argued by Lord Mountbatten and Prince Philip that the family name should reflect his surname as well.

(Morton 2022, pp.115)

In her day Princess Elizabeth was a competent singer and actress who enjoyed concerts and dancing. In social situations she was able to winkle out the amusing and unusual or weave a funny story around a royal encounter. On one occasion she kept a member of the Privy Council in fits of laughter as she performed the contortions of a wrestler she had watched during a televised bout. Yet these qualities were often overlooked because her younger sister was more overtly theatrical. Princess Margaret would eagerly join Hollywood stars to sing around the piano late into the night, the blue-gray plume from her cigarette holder giving her sitting room the feeling and smell of a downtown nightclub.

Margaret was “a girl of unusual intense beauty who was capable of an astonishing power of expression,” observed her lover Peter Townsend, who described the royal comedienne as both “coquettish and sophisticated.” It was a description that, by and large, stuck – even though in pictures of the sisters, Elizabeth was taller and slimmer with more open, welcoming features. Her younger sister often seemed as if she were only present at public occasions by force. She was the royal bachelor girl who was catnip for the gossip columnists, linked to thirty-one different suitors by the time she was twenty-one. Her public image was that of the excitable young girl out for a good time in the nightclubs of Mayfair in central London surrounded by a coterie of the frivolous sons and daughters of the aristocracy.

Margaret was different from her sister but similar in so many ways. Romantically they both fell for the first man they met and ignored the wishes of their parents, particularly their mother, to find happiness with a duke or an earl. Elizabeth was just thirteen when she first met Prince Philip, and Margaret was only sixteen when she realized that she had fallen for a married man many years her senior and father to two children.

(Morton 2022, pp.129-130)

Marshall Frady’s biography recalled the occasion when he and the queen were looking out of the window, perhaps at Buckingham Palace, observing the huge crowd peering at the royal edifice. “I asked Queen Elizabeth if she ever felt sometimes she would like to be able to just go down and join them. She said: ‘With all my heart.’ I said to her: ‘That’s just the way I feel.’” The little girl who looked out at the passing parade from her bedroom window at 145 Piccadilly had not changed overmuch. Just as the world was curious about her life, she remained intent on knowing about theirs.

(Morton 2022, pp.139)

It was the new prime minister Anthony Eden, though, who teased a pathway through the secular and spiritual jungle on behalf of the princess. When he arrived at Balmoral in early October 1955 for the customary weekend visit by the prime minister, he was able to inform the queen and the princess that, after reviewing the situation, Margaret would have to give up her right of succession but not her title or Civil List moneys, or go into exile. In fact, should she decide to marry Townsend he might be conferred with his own title and receive a Civil List allowance. Of course conflict with the Church of England would remain, but the state now stood aside from her decision.

This was all very different from the dire prognostications of Tommy Lascelles and Winston Churchill. There were potential pitfalls – but for the queen and the monarchy. An unsigned Downing Street memorandum suggested that the crown could sustain some damage, but not fatal damage, should the match go ahead. There would be objectors among the wider population, which could have an effect on the institution. Eden encouraged Margaret to make up her mind sooner rather than later in order to end the uncertainty for herself, her sister, and the monarchy. He made it clear in a letter to other Commonwealth leaders that the queen did not wish to get in the way of her sister’s happiness. With Townsend now on leave and preparing to see Margaret, the queen gave her sister license to meet discreetly at Clarence House and at the homes of known friends.

(Morton 2022, pp.139-140)

“She immediately had to take on the responsibilities of state. She had been trained since the cradle by her father that duty came before everything, including family. She reluctantly had to abandon her children and they virtually didn’t see their parents for months on end.”

In the informal agreement the queen and Philip made at the beginning of their marriage, the prince took control of important family matters while she embraced matters of state, taking on the responsibilities of her ailing father, George VI. Neither parent expected the king to die so young, and it meant that the new queen was plunged into her royal duties with very little time for her children. She constantly had to choose between red boxes and bath time. Duty always triumphed. Godfrey Talbot, a royal correspondent of the period, recalled: “She immediately had to take on the responsibilities of state. She had been trained since the cradle by her father that duty came before everything, including family. She reluctantly had to abandon her children and they virtually didn’t see their parents for months on end.”

(Morton 2022, pp.153)

Much as she sympathized with her son’s plight, she not only supported her husband but also felt that Charles’s boarding school experiences were good training for the ups and downs of his future position. While the queen took a benign, though imperturbable, view of her son’s education, she showed little interest in her daughter’s academic progress. Anne was schooled in the nursery by a governess, Catherine Peebles. Even though her schoolroom was just above her mother’s rooms at Buckingham Palace, the queen never came to see how she was faring. Instead it was Princess Margaret who reviewed her niece’s work, discussed her curriculum with her tutor, and even tested Anne herself. What she considered to be her own inadequate education rankled, so she was pleased when eventually Princess Anne became the first daughter of a reigning sovereign to attend a boarding school, this time Benenden, an all-girl school in Kent.

(Morton 2022, pp.155)

Over the years dogs and horses helped keep her sane. They responded to her for who she is as a human being, not her title. In a world where she was regularly surrounded by people she barely knew, animals gave her a sense of normality and help explain why even into her nineties the queen rode out every day, accompanied only by a groom and a detective. It was a chance to be alone, at least for a time. Just as she was sincere in her enthusiasm for dogs and horses, so, too, she was serious about starting a second family now that she and Philip had evolved into a professional working couple able to cope with the demands of a professional working couple able to cope with the demands of “the job.” Though the watching world was surprised when she fell pregnant in the spring of 1959, she and Philip had considered the issue. Several years before, after Philip returned from his controversial circumnavigation of the globe.

The arrival of Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward in Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace on February 9, 1960, made him the first child born to a reigning monarch for more than a hundred years. His predecessor was Princess Beatrice, the fifth daughter and youngest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Both were thrilled by the new arrival, particularly Prince Philip, as they named their third child after his father.

(Morton 2022, pp.157-158)

This Cold War warrior in ermine had a close encounter of a rather different kind shortly before her trip to Ghana when, in July 1961, she met the first man in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Once again realpolitik was at play – and the queen was drafted in at short notice to play a part. Gagarin’s Russian masters had sent him on a worldwide goodwill mission in order to extol the virtues of communism. The tour’s success alarmed ministers so much that when he arrived in London to a tumultuous reception it was thought prudent to invite the cosmonaut to Number 10 Downing Street to meet Prime Minister Macmillan and to Buckingham Palace for breakfast with the queen.

After the initial introductions, a clearly nervous cosmonaut took his seat next to the queen and then, to her utter astonishment , put his hand forward and stroked her leg just above the knee. The queen followed Queen Mary’s advice and kept smiling while sipping her coffee. He later explained, through interpreters, that he touched her leg to make sure that she was real and not some animated doll.

The former foundryman also struggled with the rules of dining etiquette, baffled by which cutlery he should use. The queen responded kindly: “My dear Mr. Gagarin, I was born and brought up in this palace, but believe me, I still don’t know in which order I should use all these forks and knives.”

(Morton 2022, pp.164)

One Cold War couple who knew their way around the table settings for a formal dinner were President Kennedy and his sophisticated First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. They came to dinner at Buckingham Palace at the end of a whirlwind European tour and received a similarly rapturous welcome as the Russian cosmonaut.

The rapport between the First Lady and the queen was not quite as intimate as her close encounter with the Russian cosmonaut. Mrs. Kennedy later complained that she found the queen “heavy going.” When writer Gore Vidal passed the remark to Princess Margaret, she exclaimed loyally, “But that’s what she’s there for.”

At a later visit, in March 1962, when the First Lady was returning from Pakistan after a successful official visit, the two women bonded over lunch at Buckingham Palace. If the queen had heard some of the First Lady’s remarks – she criticized her clothes and “flat” hair style – she never showed it.

The chilly emotional temperature warmed up once they discovered their mutual love of horses. During her stay in Pakistan, President Ayub Khan presented the First Lady with a ten-year-old bay gelding called Sardar, whom she called her “favorite treasure.” Like many others before and after her, the First Lady saw the queen’s face light up and become more animated when others shared her passion for the equine community.

While they were never going to be best friends, the queen and First Lady shared many characteristics besides a love of horses. Both had married extrovert, aggressive, alpha husbands while they were quite private, quite shy women who found themselves in positions where they had to mask their personalities with a calm reserve. When Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the queen was unable to console or pay her sympathies to the grieving widow in person as she was pregnant with her fourth child. Doctors advised her not to travel to the funeral, which took place in Washington. Prince Philip went in her stead.

(Morton 2022, pp.164-165)

“Churchill’s relationship with the queen follows a beautiful trajectory. She’s this completely untutored queen who, arguably because of his instructions, gradually realizes her role and sense of her own power, eventually coming to overrule and discipline him. His last audience with her in 1955 is extremely moving, when age and infirmity force him to step down.”

The death of Winston Churchill in Wilson’s first months in office, on January 24, 1965, showed how far the nation had changed. Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace with a lineage of dukes and knights in his family. His rattle had been saved for posterity. Wilson was delivered at Number 4, Warneford Road, a small terraced house in the mill town of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. When wartime prime minister Churchill offered only “blood, toil, tears and sweat” to his beleaguered people, Wilson was able to promise “the white heat of technology.” At St. Paul’s Cathedral where the state funeral took place, the queen responded to the enormity of the event by waiving the precedent that she always arrived last.

Instead she awaited the arrival of her greatest subject. Her simple act of humility, a sovereign standing aside for her subject, served to make the farewell even more poignant. Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames observed: “It is absolutely exceptional if not unique for the Queen to grant precedence to anyone. For her to arrive before the coffin and before my grandfather was a beautiful and very touching gesture.”

His death marked the end of an era and the passing of perhaps Britain’s greatest statesman and leader, a man whose loyalty and counsel had been invaluable during Elizabeth’s early years on the throne. As actor John Lithgow, who studied Churchill’s life before playing him in the TV series The Crown, observed: “Churchill’s relationship with the queen follows a beautiful trajectory. She’s this completely untutored queen who, arguably because of his instructions, gradually realizes her role and sense of her own power, eventually coming to overrule and discipline him. His last audience with her in 1955 is extremely moving, when age and infirmity force him to step down.” While numerous men of stature advised kings and queens during their reigns – Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, Queen Elizabeth and William Cecil, Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne – Churchill was unique in helping to shape an entire royal dynasty.

(Morton 2022, pp.171-172)

With the prospect of Prince Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales looming, thoughts turned to how best to showcase the monarchy to take advantage of the arcane spectacle.

Fortuitously there was a changing of the old guard at Buckingham Palace with the affable Australian William Heseltine taking over from the dead hand of Commander Colville. The new press secretary argued that there was nothing between the dull prose of the Court Circular and the gleeful exaggerations of the tabloid press to explain and illustrate the work of the monarchy and its relevance to the modern world.

(Morton 2022, pp.175)

The queen and her consort enjoyed a very royal marriage; Philip and Elizabeth were from a generation that expected loyalty, if no fidelity. She was prepared to forgive him almost anything because he had been such a supportive and steadfast consort.

(Morton 2022, pp.190)

By contrast her humor was on the dry side, like her evening martini. She and her husband would smile conspiratorially at each other when things went wrong on a royal tour, the classic being her visit to California in 1983.

Unintentional irony always tickles the regal funny bone. There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that during a regal visit to a coastal town, the mayor, resplendent in his gold chains of office, proudly showed her around wooden cabinets displaying local treasures in the council chamber. In one was a splendid mayoral chain embellished with gold and gems. When the queen asked what it was, the mayor replied that it was a unique chain of office that was only brought out for very special occasions. She needed all of Queen Mary’s self-control not to burst into laughter.

Given her ingrained awareness of how those not in the immediate family can react to her presence, her admonishment of Charles’s girlfriend for sitting on Queen Victoria’s chair uncharacteristically jars. She has a well-deserved reputation of being a careful and thoughtful hostess, inspecting bedrooms before guests arrived and thinking of suitable books and flowers to place in their rooms. At pre-dinner drinks she is usually at her most relaxed, solicitous and humorous, such as the time Princess Margaret was chatting to thriller writer Denys Whodes. She asked him how he was getting on with his latest book. “It’s nearly finished,” he replied, “but I desperately need a title.” At which point a voice behind said gaily: “And I cannot think of a reason for giving you one.” It was the queen, most amused with herself at this bon mot. So why did she embarrass Charles’s girlfriend Sabrina Guinness? The most benign explanation is that it was a social reflex, that she had said it so often over the years there was an assumption everyone knew what to expect. Or it was an unexpected lapse in someone who was constantly attuned to the sensitivities of others. Alternatively, she disapproved of Charles’s cosmopolitan girlfriend with her rock-and-roll lovers and this was one way of making her feelings known.

(Morton 2022, pp.209-210)

From an upper-floor window, the queen watched the couple and attendant media unnoticed. It was a moment of quiet triumph. After so many years of prevarication by her son, at last he had chosen a girl who had the pedigree, personality, and popularity to support and nurture the future king. At last the kingdom seemed secure.

At this moment of triumph, shadowy forces plotted to assassinate the head of state. The success, as the Provisional IRA saw it, of Mountbatten’s murder eighteen months previously had encouraged them to aim higher.

This time the queen was in the crosshairs of their murderous campaign. As the palace planners prepared for the wedding of the year, the IRA began their own deadly plotting. On May 9, just over eleven weeks before the wedding, the queen was due to open Sullom Voe oil refinery on the Shetland Islands, a place so far north it was as near to Norway as Britain. Employing more than six thousand workers and costing £1.2 billion ($6.5 billion in 2021), the facility, which took six years to build, was one of Europe’s largest construction projects.

Unknown to the site’s operators, the oil company BP, at least one of the workers there was a member of the Provisional IRA. When the queen was due to open the facility, tensions across the water in Northern Ireland were at an all-time high. The death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands at the Maze prison on May 5 sparked fierce rioting in nationalist areas and an upsurge in IRA attacks.

While violence raged in Northern Ireland, on the Shetland Isles the IRA unit at Sullom Voe received a parcel posted from Ireland. It contained seven pounds of gelignite and a twelve-day timer device. A second bomb was also due to arrive but was delayed in the post. The IRA operative, fearing that the second bomb had been intercepted by security services, hid the first bomb in a power station, set the timer, and then escaped back to Ireland.

As the band struck up the national anthem and the queen prepared to deliver her speech, there was a sharp bang from the power station five hundred yards away, the noise mainly masked by the band. Fortunately the first bomb only partially detonated, and BP was able to claim that the small explosion was just an electrical fault. If the Irish postal service had been more efficient, Saturday, May 9, would have gone down in infamy – especially as the queen was also accompanied by Prince Philip and King Olav V of Norway.

(Morton 2022, pp.215-216)

The hastily assembled naval armada included Sub-Lieutenant Prince Andrew, who was a Sea King helicopter pilot based aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible. On Thursday, April 1, Thatcher traveled to Windsor Castle to warn the queen about the potential conflict in the South Atlantic and the government’s intent to defend Britain’s sovereign territory. When the issue of Prince Andrew and his role in the conflict was raised, the queen, speaking on behalf of her son and her husband, who saw active service during World War Two, insisted that Andrew be treated like any other naval officer.

According to one report the prince threatened to resign his commission if the Invincible sailed without him. Shortly after the mini summit, Buckingham Palace released a short statement from the queen: “Prince Andrew is a serving officer and there is no question in her mind that he should go.” On April 5 the prince and his fellow officers sailed off to an uncertain and dangerous future in the South Atlantic.

What neither he, the queen, nor Mrs. Thatcher realized at the time was that the Argentinian junta considered the capture or death of Prince Andrew and the sinking of the Invincible as their primary war aim. At a meeting of the Argentinian chief of staffs in Buenos Aires, Admiral Jorge Anaya explained to his colleagues, “This is an easy war to win. All we have to do is sink one ship – the Invincible and Britain will crumble.” His plan was to launch an audacious air raid and concentrat the entire Argentinian air force on the British aircraft carrier.

Prince Andrew’s role was already inherently dangerous. Not only was his unit, the 820 Naval Air Squadron, involved in search and rescues, submarine reconnaissance, and airborne supply, but his Sea King was assigned the role of an Exocet decoy. The Argentine air force was armed with French-made Exocet missiles, and the theory was that when one was launched at the Invincible from an enemy jet, the helicopter would attract the projectile away from the ship. Once it was spotted heading for the helicopter, the pilot would soar upward and the Exocet fly harmlessly underneath before falling into the water. At least that was the theory. In reality the Sea King was a sacrifice to save the aircraft carrier. It was such a terrifying assignment that years later when he gave an interview to the BBC regarding his friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew admitted that the adrenaline rush he suffered while under fire in the Falklands conflict left him unable to sweat.

The “frightening” incident that prompted this condition came during the much-vaunted attack on HMS Invincible. Instead of hitting the aircraft carrier, the assault, which took place on May 25, ended with the sinking of the 695-foot container ship Atlantic Conveyor and the deaths of twelve crew members.

In Buenos Aires the junta falsely claimed that they had sunk the Invincible and issued doctored photographs to the world media. Like any parents, the queen and her husband were concerned about their son, especially knowing the precarious position of the task force.

The next day, May 26, 1982, at the opening of the giant Kielder Water in Northumberland, the queen told the crowds. “Before I begin, I would like to say one thing. Our thoughts today are with those in the South Atlantic, and our prayers are for their success and safe return to their homes and loved ones.” Days later the queen was shaken once more by further claims from Argentina that her son was wounded and in enemy hands and that Invincible was a blazing hulk. Even Princess Anne made a rare visit to her local church in Gloucestershire to join a prayer service for the well-being of the fighting men in the South Atlantic.

The British task force ultimately prevailed, and following the Argentinian surrender on June 14, Andrew took the opportunity visit the islands’ capital, Port Stanley, where he spoke to his “surprised” mother using one of the few satellite phones.

(Morton 2022, pp.227-229)

The queen recognized her mythical status and once remarked that she accepted that she was seen as a Jungian archetype, a concept developed by the psychologist Carl Jung whereby society projects its dreams of motherhood, justice, and leadership on the figure of the monarch.

During his self-imposed quest Fagan walked from his home in Islington, north London, to the perimeter of Buckingham Palace.

He easily scaled the wall, got through an open window, and before long found himself in the Throne Room. By good fortune he accidentally pressed a hidden handle in the dado rail that opened a secret door leading to the queen’s private apartments.

His good luck continued. Normally a policeman would be sitting outside the queen’s bedroom but he had gone off duty and the queen’s footman, Paul Whybrew, had just taken the royal corgis for their early-morning walk. By a million-to-one chance the queen was alone and unguarded and, after quietly opening a door, Fagan found himself in her bedroom. He hid himself behind the curtains as he assessed the person in the bed, thinking at first the figure was so small it must be a child. He pulled the curtains aside to get a better look. The shaft of light woke the queen who saw, not her female maid, but a barefoot Fagan, in jeans and T-shirt, clutching a broken ashtray that had cut his thumb.

She pressed the alarm bell and then, according to the official report by Assistant Commissioner Dellow of Scotland Yard, made the first of two calls to the palace telephonist to send police to her bedroom. As the queen waited for the police, she reacted in textbook style, remaining calm and collected while she engaged the intruder in polite conversation. She listened to Fagan’s tale of woe and in turn chatted about her own children, noting that Prince Charles was about Fagan’s age.

Six minutes later the queen made a second call, coolly asking why there had been no response. Then she used the pretext of Fagan’s craving for a cigarette to summon a maid, Elizabeth Andrew, to her bedroom. When she saw Fagan sitting on the edge of the sovereign’s bed the startled housemaid uttered the immortal phrase: “Bloody hell, Ma’am. What’s he doing here?” Afterward her broad northern accent became part of the queen’s own comic repartee.

Fagan’s version, which has varied, is somewhat different. According to him, there was no conversation. Instead the queen grabbed the white telephone, asked for help, and then shouted, “Get out, get out,” before she jumped out of bed herself ran across the room and out of the door. The confrontation was all over in seconds, Fagan left alone and crying by the empty bed. A few minutes later he was ushered into a pantry by Paul Whybrew who had just returned from walking the dogs.

He recalls the queen saying: “Can you give this man a drink?” The footman, astonished by the queen’s calm demeanor, took an unprotesting Fagan into the Page’s Vestibule and poured him a Famous Grouse whiskey.

As he did so he heard the queen screaming down the phone demanding to know why the police hadn’t arrived. “I have never heard the Queen so angry,” he later told colleagues.

The subsequent inquiry revealed a whole catalog of blunders, from exterior cameras and other detection devices not working on the palace perimeter to the duty police officer changing into a smarter uniform after being summoned by the monarch.

The queen was as annoyed that her domestic affairs had become a matter of consuming public interest as she was that security had allowed Fagan all the way into the royal bedroom. “Give her a cuddle, Philip,” pleaded the Daily Mirror as the nation gleefully discussed the separate sleeping arrangements of the sovereign and her consort. The reality was that the royal couple did share the same bed but, by ill luck, Prince Philip had slept in his own quarters before leaving very early to exercise his horses.

(Morton 2022, pp.230-232)

In the midst of this largely self-inflicted bombardment of negative headlines, one member of the family managed to evade the fallout. Princess Diana was forgiven any Fergie-inspired silliness after she shook hands, ungloved, with an AIDS patient at the Middlesex Hospital in London in April 1987. At a time when AIDS was dubbed “the gay plague” with no cure in sight, her behavior gained international headlines and approval.

When it eventually emerged that the queen and her advisers had counseled caution, Diana’s courageous steadfastness was seen as a positive counterpoint to the self-indulgent silliness of the other royals, a view that became more pronounced after the airing of the It’s a Royal Knockout show. The emerging consensus was that Diana was different and that she cared for the man and woman in the street.

(Morton 2022, pp.244)

In their eyes Charles was articulating his truth about his childhood, not necessarily the truth, or the truth as his siblings remembered it.

Two absent words run like a river through the recent history of the royal family: Well done. During her brief stay in the royal family Meghan Markle complained she was never praised by anyone in the system. So, too, did Diana. For Charles, he would have done anything to hear those words from his mother. But he never did. As one of his circle noted: “He can’t understand the total absence of motherly genes in her.”

Other friends repeated this refrain: “Charles is absolutely desperate for his mother’s approval and knows he’ll never really get it. He’s the wrong sort of person for her – too needy, too vulnerable, too emotional, too complicated, too self-centered.”

The tragedy of Charles’s upbringing is that he repeated his memory of his father’s behavior toward him with his own sons. Prince Harry explained in a television interview: “My father used to say to me when I was younger, ‘Well, it was like that for me, so it’s going to be like that for you.’“ Harry took issue with this parental philosophy, saying, “That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered, that doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer, in fact quite the opposite.”

If Prince Charles was looking for sympathy from his siblings after the publication of his biography, he was profoundly disappointed. His brothers and sister were furious at this unfair and one-sided portrayal and told him so. They had very different memories of their upbringing, cherishing the times their father read to them or made up a story at bedtime, took them swimming in the palace pool, and taught them country pursuits. In their eyes Charles was articulating his truth about his childhood, not necessarily the truth, or the truth as his siblings remembered it.

Inevitably the queen, because of her unique role as mother, head of state, head of the Commonwealth, and head of the household, had to ration her time, especially during Charles’s early years. It could, though, be argued that she delegated too much parental control to her husband, his bluff, brusque behavior at odds with his son’s sensitive spirit.

(Morton 2022, pp.272-273)

“You don’t wear private grief on a public sleeve.”

Paradoxically it was the fact that the boys displayed the traditional royal virtues of stoicism and fortitude amid a sea of tears that lent the funeral such an emotional resonance. They adhered impeccably to the maxim of Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone: “You don’t wear private grief on a public sleeve.” Prince Philip comforted his grandsons on that lengthy walk by quietly pointing out historic landmarks and explaining their background.

(Morton 2022, pp.297)

“We are not seeing a new Queen. What we are gradually noticing is the same Queen reflecting the changing society around her.”

During a tour of Malaysia in September 1998 she signed a Manchester United football for fans and even allowed glimpses of humor to shine through her normally impassive facade. She let it be known that when England had a goal disallowed during a World Cup match with Argentina she had thrown her arms up in the air in disgust at the decision and declared “one is not amused.” As a further nod to egalitarianism, she took the train to and from King’s Lynn in Norfolk for her annual festive holiday in Sandringham. Several commuters expressed their shocked delight at walking past her first-class carriage and seeing the queen quietly looking out at the passing parade.

As the Sunday Telegraph observed, “We are not seeing a new Queen. What we are gradually noticing is the same Queen reflecting the changing society around her.”

(Morton 2022, pp.301)

“Grief is the price we pay for love,”

Terrible events in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania overshadowed all thoughts of “Queen Camilla” when al Qaeda terrorists carried out the 9/11 atrocities. The queen, who was in Balmoral, acted with alacrity. Her robust decisions were in sharp contrast with the paralysis that affected the royal family following Diana’s death. She agreed to the Union Jack flying over Buckingham Palace at half-mast and prepared to fly to London for a special service at St. Paul’s Cathedral to honor the dead who included sixty-seven Britons. The queen also approved a suggestion that at the next Changing of the Guard, the Coldstream Band play the “Star Spangled Banner.” It was a deeply emotional few minutes that left many of the crowd outside the gates of Buckingham Palace in tears. In her message of condolence, which was read out by the British ambassador at a memorial service in New York, the ringing phrase “Grief is the price we pay for love,” which was penned by her private secretary Sir Robin Janvrin, struck just the right tone.

(Morton 2022, pp.309-310)

There was constitutional housekeeping taking place much nearer to home. As the Diamond Jubilee of the queen’s reign approached, she agreed to sweeping but long-overdue reforms to the royal succession. At the heads of Commonwealth meeting in Perth, Western Australia, in October 2011 British prime minister David Cameron put forward proposals, unanimously agreed by the other fifteen leaders, to change the law so that firstborn girls could become queen. It meant that should William and Catherine’s first child be a girl, she would be the sovereign. In fact their firstborn was a boy, Prince George.

The leaders unanimously agreed to reform the 1701 Act of Settlement, which discriminated against women, and also repeal the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. The scrapping of the latter act lifted the ban on a monarch marrying a Roman Catholic and also removed the requirement for all those in line to the throne, apart from the first six, to obtain permission to marry from the sovereign. They were made law in the 2013 Succession to the Crown Act.

(Morton 2022, pp.331)

For years she wanted to make a childhood dream come true and to be photographed more informally, with her hands in her pockets. However, the queen mother as well as her advisers had always suggested it was not an appropriate look for the sovereign. Then, as with so many things, she had given in to their arguments.

Not this time. Kelly brought in photographer Barry Jeffery who shot her as she mimicked the poses of a professional model – with and without her hands in the pockets of her white dress.

For several years the pictures remained private. Officials from the Royal Collection argued, according to Kelly, that these more candid informal photographs of the queen could bring down the monarchy and therefore were not suitable for the public. Some years later the whole set of photographs was released – and the sky did not fall in on the institution.

(Morton 2022, pp.337)

Then, when the queen gave her Christmas message, there was no photograph of Harry, Meghan, and Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, her most recent great-grandchild, on her desk with the other members of her family. Prince Harry, notoriously thin-skinned at the best of times, interpreted this in the most conspiratorial way possible: that they were no longer part of the royal family.

It all fed into their decision making as they carefully gamed out their future. On January 8, 2020, the couple announced, with minimal notice to the queen, Prince Charles, and Prince William, that they were indeed “stepping back” from royal duties and dividing their time between Britain and North America.

Their official statement, which was issued against the queen’s express wishes, read in part: “After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution. We minted to step back as ‘senior’ members of the royal family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty the Queen.” They aimed to “collaborate” with the queen and the rest of their family to make this happen. This choice of wording clearly demonstrated how weakened the queen’s position had become. The idea of a junior member of the royal family “collaborating” with the head of state on an equal footing left historians, royal officials, and commentators aghast. If it was anything, the royal family was a hierarchy, not a republic of equals.

The couple’s declaration of independence, some 244 years after the original, was met with disbelief by the rest of the royal family and their officials. A new front in the War of the Windsors was about to break out. Though increasingly incapacitated, Prince Philip’s indignant and mystified response summed up the feelings of many inside and outside the family: “What the hell are they playing at?” The idea of a royal not wanting to be a royal anymore nor willing to accept the queen’s authority without question was simply incomprehensible, particularly to a man who had sacrificed his whole life in supporting the queen and upholding the monarchy.

(Morton 2022, pp.355-356)

References

Morton, Andrew. 2022. The Queen: Her Life. N.p.: Grand Central Publishing.

ISBN 978-1-5387-0043-3