A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II (16 page)

The Levees, which had been such a fixture of previous reigns, had already gone. They had ended with the outbreak of war and it was decided not to revive them. These had been occasions on which
people of suitable social or professional standing could apply to attend St James’s Palace in formal
‘Levee Dress’ (civilian men wore a black velvet tailcoat
and knee-britches). Here, they shuffled in line towards the throne, bowed to the sovereign and passed on. In their place – and this was a noteworthy innovation – was instituted a series
of regular luncheons, at which people who had made some contribution to national life were invited to meet the Queen and Prince Philip informally – if anything that involves footmen and
bowing can be described as informal. These began in May 1956 and early guests included the editor of
The Times
, the Bishop of London, the Headmaster of Eton, the managing director of Wembley
Stadium and the chairman of the National Coal Board. Although most of them were Establishment figures, the guest list has been highly varied over subsequent years and has brought the Queen in touch
with a range of important opinion. They continue during the months of March, May, June, October and December, and they take place on Tuesdays or Thursdays. There are 12 people there, of whom seven
are guests. The others are Her Majesty, Prince Philip, the Master of the Household, the Deputy Master and a lady-in-waiting. Those who have attended these testify to the Queen’s ability as a
hostess to put her guests at ease. They are carefully chosen and matched. The Queen will have read about them in advance, as usual. She knows that for some of them it is difficult to relax in such
company or surroundings and she is very good at chairing conversation and ensuring that everyone is involved.

Another casualty of the 1950s was the presentation of debutantes at Court. It was announced in 1957 that the custom was to end the following year. This had been a much more important occasion
than the Levees. Presentations were the major event of a young woman’s ‘coming out’, something enjoyed, hated or viewed with impatience by the girls themselves, and cherished by
their mothers. It had been said that Prince Philip, who attended the presentations, only smiled at the ugly ones. With the ending of presentations at Court a major headache
for
London’s drivers was removed. For generations, afternoon traffic in the Mall had been held up by the crawling line of vehicles taking the young ladies and their parents to the Palace. A
related change was that Trooping the Colour – which, by tradition, had always been held on the second Thursday in June – was moved in 1958 to the second Saturday, so that it would no
longer add to weekday congestion. One wonders if there was any connection between the Queen’s wartime experiences of driving in the London rush-hour and this consideration for motorists!

Presentations were replaced by an additional Palace garden party, which was added to the two already held each summer. These had been instituted in the 1860s by Queen Victoria, and for almost a
century only members of Society attended them. Queen Elizabeth decided that a wider circle of people should have the opportunity, and invitations have since then been issued to organisations,
companies, schools, the Civil Service and regiments. About 9,000 people at a time (90 per cent of those invited accept), the men clad mostly in rented finery, spend the hours between four and six
in the afternoon wandering the Palace gardens, listening to band-music or crowding the avenue that is cut through the crowd to allow the Queen and her husband to pass. There are three tents in the
grounds: one for the Royals, one for the public and one for diplomats. There is another garden party, held in June, at Holyrood in Edinburgh, where the procedure is the same. Guests devour a tea
(they consume 20,000 sandwiches) provided by Lyons, the caterers, and in the early years were offered strawberries and cream as well, although this was given up as too expensive. An American,
impressed by the custom, once commented that at home, ‘Presidents only do this sort of thing when they’re running for re-election, and then you know they want something from you.’
The Queen does not need her people’s votes, yet she gives hospitality anyway. It has proved a most successful innovation.

And yet another change was the televising of the Christmas broadcast. These were begun, on wireless, by George V in 1932. His son had hated them and so did his granddaughter.
The speeches were made live on the afternoon of Christmas Day, and understandably ruined the holiday for the sovereign, who could not relax until they had been got over with. Elizabeth did not want
to go on television – knowing that she has limited gifts as a public speaker and has difficulty injecting into her scripted words any sense of spontaneity. She gamely did it anyway, as she
has ever since, although at least from 1960 it was possible to pre-record it.

The upbringing of the Queen’s children was from the beginning different to her own experience, and this too was an innovation. Although if either of them walked past a sentry he would
present arms, they did not receive the same level of deference that their mother had known. The Queen told Palace staff that they need not bow and curtsy to her children until they were older, and
need not address them as ‘Royal Highness’. Their Christian names would be used instead.

It was also a novelty that Prince Charles started school as an ordinary pupil, first at Hill House in Chelsea and then at his father’s old prep school, Cheam. The press staked out this
school and for a short time besieged it with cameramen. Such attention had not, of course, been a problem in previous reigns when royal children had been educated out of sight behind palace walls.
The Queen had to summon Fleet Street editors and ask them, in exchange for a single press opportunity at the school, to leave Charles in peace. The point of sending him to school had been to give
him some chance to experience a normal education. The interest it provoked, however, threatened to negate any advantages. The public expectation was in any case that the Queen’s children
would go to school like other people’s, even if their education was private. The notion of royal children being taught at home, as the Queen
and Princess Margaret had been
only 20 years earlier, now seemed absurdly out of date.

These changes may seem cosmetic – mere tinkering at the edges – when seen in context of the reign as a whole, but at the time they were noticed and appreciated as evidence that the
monarchy was updating. The notion of a new and young sovereign, assisted by a husband who was known to be keen on technology and innovation, and somewhat impatient with flummery, was welcomed by
much of the public. It fitted the age of jet engines and space exploration. Members of the public, questioned on their attitudes to the monarch, were often impressed: ‘She’s done away
with a lot of the pomp and ceremony,’ said one. ‘She’s a lot more modern in her ideas and a lot more democratic.’ Another commented that: ‘Nowadays royalty are very
different. They’re one of us.’

Another innovation of the decade was the advent of outright criticism of the monarch. Attacks in the press on the King or Queen had been commonplace in Hanoverian times, and had also been
directed at the eldest son of Queen Victoria both before and after he became King. George V had been characterised as ‘dull’ by the writer H. G. Wells and, while there could be little
arguing with this, his worthiness and sense of duty endeared him to the public. The misdemeanours of Edward VIII were largely unreported and his successor, George VI, was extremely popular. There
was thus no recent precedent for personal attacks on the monarch, and Queen Elizabeth was dutiful and conscientious enough not to merit strong criticism. Nevertheless she had from the beginning of
her reign courted rebuke by leaving her children for long periods while travelling abroad. She was known to put duty before family, and therefore this was to be expected. However it was also known
that, on the night Prince Charles was rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital for an emergency appendectomy, his mother had stayed at home in bed.

This was mere sniper-fire in comparison with the broadsides
that were suddenly to come, although the attacks were not directed at the Queen’s personality or her
attitude to her role, but were intended as friendly advice. Lord Altrincham, writing in 1957 in the
National and English Review
, blamed her advisors for the public image she projected as
‘a priggish schoolgirl’ whose cut-glass, public speaking voice was ‘frankly, a pain in the neck’, and her speeches – none of which expressed thoughts of her own
– were ‘prim little sermons’: ‘Like her mother she appears unable to string even a few sentences together without a written text.’ He went on to say, in words that
have been remembered ever since: ‘The personality conveyed by the utterances that are put into her mouth are those of a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team, a prefect and recent
candidate for confirmation.’ Ironically, Elizabeth had only ever been the last of these. He also castigated her Court for its snobbish remoteness and – in a foretaste of one of our own
age’s most tiresome preoccupations – its lack of ‘diversity’. The author was appealing to the Queen to soften her image, but his views provoked a furious backlash from
monarchists. The town of Altrincham in Cheshire dissociated itself from him and asked that his title be removed. He was also attacked in the street.

A similar tone was taken by the editor and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge in an article for the
Saturday Evening Post.
This was, of course, an American publication, and the British
therefore did not initially have easy access to the text. They read quotations in their own press, and were so infuriated that Muggeridge was inundated with threatening and abusive letters. He had,
as well as seeing the monarchy as obsolete and snobbish, described the Royal Family as a ‘kind of soap opera’, a notion that has since become entirely commonplace and, it might be
argued, has contributed to its popularity.

Although there was no official reply to the charges, there were lessons to be learned by the Palace about dealing with the press. Access to the family by the media was controlled very
strictly. The Palace Press Officer was Commander Richard Colville, a former naval officer with a bluff, quarterdeck manner. He considered the family’s private life – and
indeed many aspects of their official life – to be none of the public’s business, and earned the nickname ‘the abominable no-man’ for his repeated refusals to answer
questions or confirm information: ‘That is a private matter. I can’t help at all.’ He was to be the last such official employed by the Press Office. There would soon be a change
of attitude.

Many people felt that the young Queen was breathing fresh air into a moribund institution. There was a perception that she was surrounded by dinosaurs, who, because they actually ran her
Household and filled her appointments book, ensured that she remained stuck in the past. Sixty years later, the perception of a visitor to the Palace would still be that the Queen’s staff
are, in Altrincham’s phrase, ‘tweedy and plummy’. There is no denying this, but why should it matter? It is a close-knit working environment in which the shared backgrounds of
officials and their families mean that they can work well together. Those – and they include most of the ceremonial posts at Court – who are, or were, senior officers in the Services
have by definition qualifications that are highly suitable. Military training or background provides familiarity with ceremonial, orders and graded hierarchy, it implies proven loyalty to the
Crown, an ability to organise large groups of people efficiently and to think fast if some emergency requires an improvised solution. They are unlikely ever to pose a security risk or to talk to
the press.

Whatever a few errant subjects thought of her at home, the Queen had proved her value abroad, where the New Elizabethan image had become unstuck. The invasion of Egypt by French, British and
Israeli troops to seize control of the Suez Canal in 1956 had proved a major humiliation. The operation had been cynical and ill-conceived,
and America refused to support it. It
was called off and the soldiers evacuated.

Towards America the British public had considerably bruised feelings. They had already had to accept that they were now a second-rank power, but they believed they were still capable of
greatness and of international influence. They felt entitled to American respect, if not active support. The USA felt that Britain had brought catastrophe on herself by embarking on such a rash
adventure in the first place. The following autumn, the Queen made a state visit to the USA – the 350th anniversary of the founding of Virginia made a handy excuse – to restore good
relations.

It is at these moments that Royalty comes into its own. Not officially connected with the government’s foreign policy, and therefore never to blame for mistakes, it can appeal instead
entirely to the intangible but important areas of sentiment and culture. The visit was a greater success than anyone could have predicted. It was the Americans’ first chance to see the young
Queen, and they were charmed – as others had been – by her combination of personal shyness and official gravity. She was given a ticker-tape parade in New York, and greeted by a huge
turnout in Washington. No modern American president has yet declined to be seen with British Royalty, and Eisenhower was in any case an old wartime acquaintance. Delighted by this reception, she
was willing to set aside a certain amount of formality. The press at home noticed that she had been at close quarters – almost mingling – with crowds and one paper, the
Daily
Herald
, asked: ‘People here have been reading of the Queen going about freely among ordinary people, behaving like an ordinary person. Canada loved it. America was bowled over by it. Why
is it not allowed to happen here?’

Seeing the enthusiasm of crowds that greeted her, an American commentator observed: ‘There goes Britain’s ultimate diplomatic weapon.’ She had saved Anglo-American relations
during a very sticky patch, refocusing attention on
the two countries’ shared heritage instead of their divergent world-views. There is between the British monarchy and
the American public a very warm relationship. It goes back not to 1957, or 1951 – her own first visit – nor even to 1939, when her parents went to the USA in an attempt to win sympathy
in the coming war. It originated in the first such visit, by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) in 1860, which was a goodwill tour without ulterior motive. Since that time the British monarchy
has considered the American public worth meeting and befriending. They also genuinely love the country, whose people – despite their republican past and present – have never shown them
anything but the deepest kindness. Their visits have enabled those Americans who wish to do so to feel that they, too, are part of the magic.