A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II (27 page)

Wherever the Queen is to go, an advance party will investigate. It will work out exactly where she is going and how long it will take to get there – to the minute. She brings her own car
and chauffeur, and will be driven slowly so that she can be seen. On her trip to Russia her Rolls-Royce was delivered in advance, but her hosts discovered at the last minute that they had no
suitable ramps to unload it. A frantic search of railway sidings, the night before the car was needed, provided what was necessary.

Her staff will visit every place she will stay, measuring doorways and rooms and beds. It will work out the length of time
she will stay in each place, how she will enter
and exit, and will even factor in the length of speeches. It will take careful note of the colour schemes. She cannot arrive wearing shades that will clash with wallpaper, with the uniforms of a
guard of honour or with the sash and ribbon of an order with which she is to be invested – not least because she will be extensively photographed. Meanwhile, at the start of each year while
she is at Sandringham, she will begin the extensive reading that is necessary for the visits she will make. She works her way through books, articles, reports – anything her staff feel will
help her grasp the essence of the place and the people she is going to meet.

The making and fitting of the clothes she wears will have begun at least a year ahead. As well as avoiding certain colours, her dressmakers will look for ways of paying compliment. This can be
done by incorporating the colours of the national flag, or more commonly by having a decorative pattern that incorporates an indigenous flower. Such measures will be taken whether she is going to a
foreign country or to one of her own overseas realms. In Canada it can be guaranteed that the maple leaf will appear somewhere, in New Zealand the fern, in Australia the wattle flower. These
devices will be particularly noticeable on the evening gowns she wears for state dinners. Otherwise, her wardrobe naturally also has to take account of the climate and the time of year at which she
is visiting, as well as making it possible to travel in different types of vehicle – everything from a canoe to a howdah – as well as being easy to do up and to get in and out of, for
she will have several changes of clothing a day. Apart from ensuring that she does not wilt in heat or freeze in cold – and also that she is prepared for sudden or unseasonable changes of
conditions – garments must as always ensure that she can be seen from a distance.

She also takes with her a number of travel essentials: Malvern water, which she drinks every day; chocolate mints; Dundee
cake; Earl Grey tea; her personal kettle; a
thermos; a hot water bottle and pillows (how many people cannot sleep comfortably away from home?); barley sugar to ward off travel sickness; and her own soap.

Everything is transported in distinctive blue trunks. Yellow labels are fixed to the Queen’s, to mark them out from those of others in her party. There are also hatboxes, jewel-cases and
other items. A specialist servant, the Travelling Yeoman, is tasked with looking after the luggage. One of his problems is disembarking the trunks after she has arrived at her destination, and
getting them to the Embassy, or the hotel,
before
she reaches it. Fortunately this is not as difficult as it sounds. Welcoming ceremonies and speeches are often lengthy enough to allow a
head start.

If she is staying in a hotel, which is not uncommon, an entire floor will be rented for her and her suite. When in 1968 she visited Vienna, 40 rooms of the Imperial Hotel were allocated to her.
She and Prince Philip occupied seven of them, their staff – typically there would be about 30 travelling with them – and their baggage had the rest. Her Majesty’s rooms were
refurnished specially. Not for her the bland decor and reproduction paintings seen even in expensive hotels. Her suite was filled with baroque treasures that had belonged to the Empress Maria
Theresa, brought out of government store and magnificent enough to be coveted by any museum. A direct telephone link was installed with Buckingham Palace, and two guards, quite apart from the
Queen’s own protection officers, were stationed outside all day and night. For her hosts, as for her Household, a visit by the Queen is not something that can be arranged and prepared for in
the space of a few days.

She has, of course, minimal opportunity to enjoy her surroundings or the facilities. Whatever the furnishings in a hotel suite, she will spend very little time there. Every morning she will be
out early and will return late. She will have official
engagements all day, because on a three- or five-day visit there is so much to be done. She will have speeches to make
that may require last-minute revision, and she will have to change clothes several times.

She is extremely adept at this. She can put on a hat without needing a mirror, and can finish dressing while running downstairs. Her clothing is designed with a minimum of awkward catches and
buttons so that she can replace one outfit with another swiftly and with the least time and effort. She has with her on every overseas visit two dressers and a hairdresser. Her make-up is applied
only sparingly, due to a naturally pure skin, but her lipstick must not be smudged – no matter the circumstances. Her hair must likewise stay in place regardless of how many hats she has
taken off and put on, and no matter what the temperature. Because she has only minutes, or even seconds, in which to change clothes or otherwise prepare between events, there is no margin for
error. Delays and mistakes are a luxury that cannot be afforded. Time spent looking for the gloves she needs would delay her appearance and the knock-on effect of this could spoil the whole day.
Such a mishap could also annoy her, and that too might adversely affect the occasion. Everything must be perfect, not because the Queen is a highly demanding employer but because her own timetable
is so utterly unforgiving. If the hat or the umbrella she needs is not being held out ready for her by someone, her appearance may be spoiled and those who have attended it will feel
disappointed.

While the Queen’s staff plan for every contingency, there are sometimes mishaps. Notorious in the annals of royal travel was her state visit to Morocco in 1989, when the king kept her
waiting for over three hours in the heat on her arrival.

Two of her visits during the 1990s were of special significance. In Russia she stayed in the Kremlin, a fortress in the centre of Moscow whose very name evokes chilling memories of the Cold War.
Before the Revolution it was a place of
pilgrimage and Her Majesty participated in a service, with the Orthodox Metropolitan of Moscow, in one of its several cathedrals. She
had several reasons for finding this a moving experience. The Romanovs, the murdered family of the Tsar, were relations of hers, and she had heard stories of them from her grandmother and from Lord
Mountbatten. She had also lived through the decades of East–West confrontation as a Head of State. Knowing better than most the dangers to peace during that time, she could marvel at the fact
that war had not come. Devoutly religious, she could appreciate that the Christian Church in Russia had survived and flourished despite decades of disapproval and active persecution. Small wonder
that she spoke of this event in her Christmas broadcast that year.

There was another bright moment the following year she visited South Africa, for the first time since 1947. After long years of defiant isolation, the country had abandoned its
Apartheid government, become a fully democratic country and been readmitted to the Commonwealth. South Africa had played a minor but significant part in her life and she was delighted to see it
again, knowing that an issue which had poisoned Commonwealth relations during the 1980s was laid to rest. Nelson Mandela was now President, and had gained immense international respect for his lack
of bitterness towards a regime that had imprisoned him for 27 years. A man of legendary warmth, charm and humour, he would be impossible not to like, and his friendship was much-courted by
fashionable liberals. He and the Queen had a genuine and unmistakeable mutual admiration, and she must have found him refreshingly unlike any world statesman with whom she had previously dealt. She
brought with her, and gave him, the Order of Merit, an award that is entirely in her personal gift and independent of government recommendation. The only other non-British
recipients in recent times have been those two other secular saints of the 20th century – Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa.

However popular the Queen had been abroad, the monarchy was in the doldrums at home, with the behaviour of the younger Royals still commanding the headlines. In the middle of the decade came the
50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. This was to be a national celebration, at which the Family – and especially the Queen and Queen Mother – were to be highly visible.
It was speculated by those planning the event, that, with the unpopularity of the monarchy, the turnout would be low. Some suggested that to avoid embarrassment it should be held on a modest scale.
But just as with every time this argument had been used since 1947, the pessimists were proved wrong. Hyde Park had been envisaged as the venue, but was felt perhaps to be too big and thus liable
to look embarrassingly empty. On the day itself – 8 May – it was packed. This celebration, in any case, focused on the older generation of the Family, and not on their errant offspring.
It reminded the public of the service given the country by the Queen and her mother. Recent troubles had, in any case, brought the Queen a great deal of sympathy from across the country and the
world. The Queen Mother, with her two daughters, appeared on the Palace balcony just as they had a half-century earlier and, in the course of the celebrations, they sang with the rest of the
audience the wartime songs. When one of those who led the singing, Cliff Richard, complimented the Queen Mother on remembering the words, she answered: ‘We’ve been rehearsing this for
about three weeks.’

In November 1995 the last nail was put in the coffin of the Wales’s marriage. The previous year, Charles had participated in a televised interview with the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby,
who had written a magisterial biography of the Prince. The picture it gave of Charles’s parents – his father a no-nonsense bully and his mother preoccupied with affairs of
state – was not a flattering one. He himself was presented as an extremely well-meaning man who was doing his best for the country and the monarchy, who was sensitive to social
issues and who had an ingrained sense of decency and fairness. The programme was largely remembered, however, for the simple fact that he admitted adultery on television. Now Diana hit back with
the same weapon. She too gave an interview, to the BBC current-affairs programme
Panorama
. Everything about it suggested calculation, including her use of black eye-liner to increase the
soulful look with which she regarded the audience. Her delivery was halting, emotional, heartbroken. No one could argue that she was not a wronged woman, but she too admitted adultery, with a
Household Cavalry officer. She went on to say that she did not think her husband was fit to become King. Whatever sympathy the Princess garnered from this, to have the future queen insulting her
husband in public was undoubtedly an ugly and upsetting episode. She said afterwards that she regretted it and she was deeply contrite about any pain caused to the Queen, whom she genuinely
respected, but she had gone into this fully aware of what she was doing. For her mother-in-law, Diana’s appearance to plead her cause in every sitting room in the country was a measure that
could simply not be ignored. It had even happened on the Queen’s wedding anniversary. The day after the programme was broadcast, Diana and Charles were written to by Her Majesty and asked to
divorce. There was no point trying to keep up appearances when the public now knew all about their animosity. Damage limitation must begin at once before this situation could further threaten the
monarchy.

Their separation became final eight months later. Diana, no longer HRH but still a princess, became a celebrity in her own right and a campaigner for good causes. She was quickly removed from
the world of the Royal Family – all souvenirs bearing her image at once vanished from the gift shops
of royal palaces on the orders of the Queen – although her hold
on public affection remained, and she was in no doubt about her ability to win support. She was especially popular in America, whose people have never been able to relate to the Royal
Family’s unemotional public style or to appreciate how useful this is. The public there sided with her to such an extent that the USA became ‘Diana territory’. She went there
several times. Charles did not go at all.

At home, opinion was divided into two camps. Traditionalists sided with Charles – he, after all, was the one who was Royal – because they respected his essential integrity and his
undemonstrative manner. They viewed Diana as hysterical and self-centred. To others, she was a saint and martyr. Those of modern outlook saw her as a victim of Establishment bullies who had tried
to silence her (‘She won’t go quietly,’ she herself had warned). Every divorced, wronged woman in the country empathised with her. So did the froth of the showbusiness world, and
the people who sang the songs to which she had danced or made the clothes she wore. This was a cultural conflict between an older, stiff-upper-lip Britain and a new one obsessed with appearance and
celebrity. The country braced for a continuing, bruising war of attrition.

The Yorks separated, but this was as amicable as the Wales’s split had been acrimonious. Dubbed ‘the world’s happiest divorced couple’, they remained close friends. The
Duchess had continued to be an embarrassment. Prince Philip had described her as ‘pointless’ while the Queen’s Private Secretary, Martin Charteris, had famously summed her up with
the words ‘Vulgar! Vulgar! Vulgar!’ Her extravagance – and consequent debts – were a cause for concern, as was her blunt, outspoken manner and willingness to talk to the
media about her life within the Family. To the older generation it was inexplicable and horrifying that, instead of keeping their problems to themselves, the younger ones should parade them in the
national media. Such openness did them little good.
Respect for the monarchy was crumbling, and increasingly often – in pubs and newspapers – was heard the view
that the Crown should ‘skip a generation’ so that William would be the next king.