Her Majesty (67 page)

Authors: Robert Hardman

BOOK: Her Majesty

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St Paul’s Cathedral, 2006.

3-D glasses are required at Sheffield University’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

No need for introductions. The Queen meets the Queen on board Cunard’s new Queen Elizabeth. She has sat for more than 140 portraits during her reign.

Acknowledgements

In producing a comprehensive portrait of the most enduring international public figure of the last sixty years, it has been essential to have a good view. From the outset, I have enjoyed privileged access not only to events, royal engagements and some of the daily routines of Palace life but also to every level of every department of the Royal Household. For that, I am most grateful to Her Majesty The Queen.

I would particularly like to thank His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge for granting me his first author’s interview and His Royal Highness The Duke of York for his thoughts and insights.

Despite this extraordinary opportunity, this is not an authorised publication. I have had an entirely free hand with my research. I have asked my own questions, made my own observations and drawn my own conclusions. But I am particularly indebted to Samantha Cohen, Assistant Private Secretary to The Queen, and Ailsa Anderson, her successor as Press Secretary, for their help and forbearance in response to my persistent requests for interviews and access during the last two years. This book would be much thinner without them, if indeed it had been written at all.

All the departments of the Royal Household and their staff have been generous with their time. My thanks go to the Earl Peel, Sir Christopher Geidt, Edward Young, Doug King, Sir Alan Reid, Air Vice-Marshal Sir David Walker, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Ford and Jonathan Marsden and their respective teams at Buckingham Palace, along with Sir Michael Peat and his staff at Clarence House.

Those who work for the Sovereign are, understandably, wary of discussing their jobs and experiences with strangers bearing notebooks. Some of those to whom I have spoken had never previously given any sort of interview about their work. Some had been grilled by me before but were good enough to talk to me all over again. They are all named in these pages and I am very grateful to them all.

Arranging all this has been a substantial logistical undertaking. My thanks go to Dr Ed Perkins, Colette Saunders, David Pogson, Meryl Keeling, Jen Stebbing, Zaki Cooper and Marnie Gaffney at Buckingham
Palace; to Dame Anne Griffiths in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Office; to Paddy Harverson and Patrick Harrison at Clarence House; to Miguel Head and Nick Loughran at St James’s Palace; to Frances Dunkels and Emma Shaw at the Royal Collection; to Dr Lucy Worsley at Historic Royal Palaces; to Marcus O’Lone and Helen Walch at the Sandringham Estate.

I am also very grateful to so many former members of the Royal Household who have helped me in so many ways, in some cases over many years. They include the Earl of Airlie, Lord Fellowes, Lord Janvrin, Sir William Heseltine, Sir Malcom Ross, Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, Dr Mary Francis, Elizabeth Buchanan, Ron Allison, Charles Anson and Stuart Neil.

No study of any constitutional monarch would be complete without recourse to that monarch’s Prime Ministers. I wish to thank David Cameron, Tony Blair and Sir John Major for their insights and their time. The Queen has been served by more than 150 Prime Ministers across all her realms during her reign. I have met several of them during my twenty years of reporting on royalty. But I would like to thank, in particular, John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia, for their time in relation to this book.

I am also indebted to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and his predecessors, Jack Straw, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Lord Hurd for the accumulated wisdom of their many years in the royal orbit, whether in one of the Great Offices of State or other ministerial positions.

Among the Queen’s many representatives, I am particularly grateful to Lord Shuttleworth, Chairman of the Association of Lord-Lieutenants, William Tucker, Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire and David Briggs, Lord-Lieutenant of Cheshire, along with their respective staff. Overseas, I am grateful to Eric Jenkinson, High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Noël Guckian, Ambassador to Oman, Dominic Jermey, Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Julian King, Ambassador to Ireland, and all their respective teams. The Queen’s many roles have taken me in many directions. For their help in studying the Head of the Commonwealth, I thank His Excellency Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, and Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society.

My thanks go to Dr Rowan Willams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester and Lord High Almoner, for talking to me about the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Men and women of every rank and age from across the Services have
helped me to understand that crucial bond which they all share with the Head of the Armed Forces and the Royal Family. It is always a pleasure to talk to them.

There are many people who have helped this book to take shape in all sorts of ways. What they all have in common is that they have seen some merit in my endeavours and have gone out of their way to help. I am grateful to them all. Some prefer to remain anonymous. Others include Alastair Bruce of Crionaich, Edward Llewellyn, Catherine Fall, Ciaran Ward, Arabella Warburton, Vanessa Burgess, Sir Sydney Chapman, Sir Michael Willcocks, Alexander Galloway, William Chapman, James North, Elizabeth Scudder, Sir Antony Jay, Edward Mirzoeff, Marie Papworth, Sir Simon Dawbarn, Wesley Kerr, Peter Wilkinson, Daniel Sleat, Harriet Hewitson, Sophie Douglas-Bate, Didy Grahame, Sir Michael and Lady Parker, Lesley Hamilton, John Phillips, Dr Stephen Spurr, Duncan Jeffery, Alan Duncan MP, Kate Hoey MP, Bob Honey, Robin Roberts, Don and Cathryn Kelshall, and James Dolan.

I have been extremely fortunate to draw on the advice, support and expertise of some our most eminent historians and biographers. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Andrew Roberts, William Shawcross and Kenneth Rose have all been kind and wise in equal measure. I am also grateful to Dr Amanda Foreman, Dr Jane Connors and Derek Ingram for their help. Wherever I have drawn on the scholarship of others, I hope that the credit is clear and unambiguous. And to my Fleet Street colleagues, to the photographic fraternity and the television crews, I say thank you for your camaraderie along the way.

At Hutchinson, I owe a very great deal to my editor, Paul Sidey, for his unfailing enthusiasm and wisdom, and I also thank Paulette Hearn, Charlotte Bush, Emma Mitchell and Amelia Harvell. From the very start of this project, I have been indebted to my unflappable agent Charles Walker, at United Agents, and to his assistant Katy Jones. A considerable part of this book, of course, owes nothing to my words and everything to the superb photography of my old friend and former Fleet Street colleague Ian Jones. Bravo to him.

These pages have been written in many places and many countries. But I am particularly grateful to my mother-in-law, Marion Cowley, my parents, Richard and Dinah Hardman, and Santa Sebag Montefiore for providing somewhere quiet to concentrate as the deadlines have loomed. No one, though, has been more supportive, despite all the lost weekends and truncated holidays, than my darling wife, Diana. This book is dedicated to her.

Sources and Bibliography

Sources have been quoted directly when possible, anonymously when not. In addition to all the research for this book, I have drawn on my coverage of royal matters – in newspaper, book and television form – over the last twenty years.

I have gathered fresh material from internal Buckingham Palace records and the London Metropolitan Archives. I have consulted many publications and official records (Hansard, the
London Gazette
, etc.) but I commend the following list of selected works, all of which make an important contribution to our understanding of the modern monarchy.

Allison, Ronald and Riddell, Sarah,
The Royal Encyclopaedia
(Macmillan, 1991)

Blair, Tony,
A Journey
(Hutchinson, 2010)

Boothroyd, Basil,
Philip: An Informal Biography
(Longman, 1971)

Bradford, Sarah,
Elizabeth: A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen
(William Heinemann, 1996)

Brandreth, Gyles,
Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage
(Century, 2004)

Connors, Jane Holley,
The Glittering Thread
(University of Technology, Sydney, 1996)

Dimbleby, Jonathan,
The Prince of Wales: a Biography
(Little, Brown, 1994)

Heald, Tim,
The Duke: A Portrait of Prince Philip
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1991)

Hoey, Brian,
At Home With the Queen
(HarperCollins, 2002)

Jay, Antony,
Elizabeth R
(BBC Books, 1992)

Jebb, Miles,
The Lord-Lieutenants and Their Deputies
(Phillimore, 2007)

Lacey, Robert,
Royal
(Little, Brown, 2002)

Longford, Elizabeth,
Elizabeth R
(Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1983)

Paxman, Jeremy,
On Royalty
(Viking, 2006)

Prochaska, Dr Frank,
Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy
(Yale, 1995)

Roberts, Andrew,
The Royal House of Windsor
(Kindle, 2011)

Roberts, Andrew,
The House of Windsor
(Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2000)

Rose, Kenneth,
Kings, Queens and Courtiers
(Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1985)

Shawcross, William,
Queen and Country
(BBC Books, 2002)

Shawcross, William,
Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother
(Macmillan, 2009)

Turner, Graham,
Elizabeth – The Woman and the Queen
(Macmillan, 2002)

Vickers, Hugo –
Elizabeth, The Queen Mother
(Hutchinson, 2005)

Index

Abdication crisis (1936)
14
,
40
,
46
,
85

Aberdeen, Marquess of
244

Aberfan disaster (1966)
45

Abu Dhabi, UAE
318

Académie Culinaire
127

Act of Settlement
187
,
324

Acts of Union
187

Adams, Gerry
57
n

Adeane, Sir Michael
190–91
,
209
,
215–16
,
316

Adu, Regina
165

Afghanistan
149
,
155
,
242
,
320
,
329
,
330

African National Congress
115

Agnew, Sir Godfrey
163
,
169

Airlie, David, 13th Earl of
138
,
192
; appointed Lord Chamberlain
191
; and death of Diana
100
,
102
,
106
; on Duke of Edinburgh
285
; Palace reforms
34
,
75–81
,
111
,
112–13
,
192
; and tax issue
87
,
89
,
93
,
94
,
95
; on Windsor fire
91
,
92