Not in Front of the Corgis (4 page)

Once The Queen Mother had died, William found his former colleagues in the Royal Household were not as welcoming as he had hoped they would be and he became a lonely and disillusioned man. He still enjoyed tea at The Ritz if invited but the light had obviously gone out of his life.

During the final years of William’s life, his
connection
with the Royal Family was mainly confined to a weekly Sunday lunch with Lord Snowdon, The Queen Mother’s former son-in-law. Queen Elizabeth retained a great affection for Snowdon even after he and Princess Margaret divorced and he was a frequent visitor to Clarence House.

When he heard about William Tallon’s loneliness following his dismissal from the Royal Household,
Tony Snowdon telephoned him and invited him to lunch at his home in Kensington. It became a regular date and William told me that Tony (Lord Snowdon insisted that William use his Christian name) had been a true friend in his hour of need: ‘His loyalty never wavered for a moment.’

William’s health had been in decline for some years and he died on 23 November 2007. He was
seventy-two
. Just over a week later his funeral was held in The Queen’s Chapel, St James’s Palace. It was a ceremony meticulously planned by the man himself with every detail laid out: hymns, prayers, eulogy, order of service and final music.

More than 2,000 mourners applied to attend, with only 200 being admitted to the tiny church.

Lord Snowdon and his daughter Lady Sarah Chatto were there, but no other member of the Royal Family attended. His Master of the Household represented the Prince of Wales. The rest of the congregation was made up of the great and the good from the worlds of show business, the arts and high society.

Sir Derek Jacobi read a verse specially written for the occasion ‘in Praise of Billy’, while the actresses Phyllida Law, June Brown (Dot Cotton from
Eastenders
) and Patricia Routledge (Mrs Bucket of TV fame) joined in the singing.

As a final tribute as his Union Jack bedecked coffin was carried from the chapel, the rousing
Radetsky March,
one of William’s favourite pieces, was played. He chose it to be played at his funeral after hearing it played at the wedding of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips. He would have loved the occasion.

Eight months after his death, many of William’s treasures, given to him by The Queen Mother and other members of the Royal Family, were sold at auction. There were 700 lots and buyers were attracted from all over the world, some arriving in person to bid, others by telephone.

An optimistic estimate of the total price was around £200,000. When the final tally was counted, it amounted to a staggering £444,364, more than twice the original estimate.

A handwritten note from The Queen Mother to William asking him to pack two bottles of Dubonnet and gin for a picnic fetched £16,000. It was expected to sell for £3,000.

Another letter, this time from Princess Diana to William went for £5,000, while a further seven Diana letters fetched £15,000.

The bidding was frantic and frenzied with 1,000 people on the telephones competing with the 400 men and women who had crowded into the saleroom in Essex. Among the beneficiaries of the sale were several charities that William had supported.

The £400,000 would have made a huge difference to his retirement if he had sold them in his lifetime, but he always refused to cash in, even refusing offers, said to be around £1 million, to write his memoirs.

William Tallon lived his life with panache and
joie de vivre.
He wasn’t always as popular with his colleagues as he was with his boss, and the senior aides to The Queen Mother – the upstairs staff – didn’t trust him at all. But they were cautious in their treatment as they realised he had the ear of Her Majesty, and
in royal circles, that’s all that counts. The sixty-odd domestic staff at Clarence House were terrified of him and he said that when dealing with people below you in the pecking order it was more important to be feared than liked. He once told me that the secret of his success was that it didn’t matter who you were or where you came from; it was what people thought you were and where they thought you came from that mattered. He manufactured a persona for himself that was completely at odds with his humble working-class background and he said The Queen Mother
encouraged
him to assume the mannerisms and demeanour of someone from the ‘upper crust’ – his words. But he added that he always knew his place in the system and never succumbed to ‘Red Carpet Fever’ like so many others.

here has always been an unofficial popularity ‘league table’ within the Royal Household regarding who the servants – and the police – prefer working for. It’s been a running gag for generations of staff. The table changes from time to time but surprisingly, the people that, to the outside world, appear to be the most arrogant, difficult and uncompromising usually come out at the top of the table.

The relationship between the Royal Family and their servants is difficult to define in that you rarely get the sort of comfortable master/mistress/servant familiarity that exists in some aristocratic families.

The Royals are reluctant to allow anyone outside the immediate family to get too close, with few
exceptions
. The Queen’s former Nanny, the late Bobo McDonald, enjoyed a special relationship with Her
Majesty until the day she died and Prince Charles is on friendly terms with his closest servants, his valets. But they know they should not confuse friendliness with familiarity. Royalty’s apparent friendship with their servants is, inevitably, temporary, usually lasting only for the duration of the employment, and there is also a slight air of patronage about the relationships.

The late Diana, Princess of Wales was by far the most popular member of the Royal Family to the public during her lifetime, but not always to her staff. She could be the most loved and adored and occasionally the most disliked and feared when her mood changed. Generous to a fault, she encouraged familiarity with her staff, even joining her chef in the kitchen at Kensington Palace where she would sit on the table, swinging her legs and enjoying a good gossip. She would often ask for egg and chips to be served with lashings of ketchup. The next day she could be the most imperious of women; a regular prima donna; demanding, suspicious and autocratic. She inspired devotion more than fear. But the staff never quite knew where they were with her – and royal servants like to know their place, and for their masters and mistresses to know theirs. It’s safer that way. One of her staff said Diana was very easy to love, but not so easy to like.

Several of her protection officers asked to be moved because of her capricious behaviour and Oliver Everett, one of the most trusted officials in the Royal
Household, was charged with instructing Diana, before she became Princess of Wales, in how to walk down the aisle at her wedding. He did this by
attaching
pieces of paper to an ordinary day dress to simulate the twenty-five foot train on the actual wedding dress. Oliver and Diana got along famously, until shortly after the wedding, when, once again, he found it
difficult
to cope with her moods. He resigned from the Household of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and found himself working for The Queen as Librarian at Windsor Castle. So it wasn’t all sweetness and light with the woman who was regarded by many as the most adored person in the world.

Prince Philip, who receives £359,000 a year from Government funds to meet his public duty expenses, has always had a reputation for being rude and
overbearing
, but excluding The Queen’s personal staff, he employs the most loyal team anywhere in the Household. They will not hear a word said against their boss, and even though he still rants and raves from time to time, he doesn’t bear grudges, so they all know that once he has got something off his chest, even when it means they have to stand and take the most appalling abuse, he will forget it the following day – as if nothing has happened.

The present author was once sitting in the office of Sir Philip [later Lord] Moore, private secretary to The Queen, when Prince Philip burst in and proceeded to
give the poor man the most horrific verbal roasting. All the while Sir Philip (a man who had been a gallant Bomber Command pilot during the Second World War and later played rugby for England) stood there and did not say a word. When Prince Philip left, Sir Philip apologised to me for having to witness the
incident
and then mentioned that the matter that HRH was accusing him of was, in fact, the responsibility of someone else. When I asked why on earth he didn’t speak up for himself, he replied, ‘You have to
remember
, in this house, royalty may not always be right, but they are never wrong.’

Apparently, later in the day, the Duke of Edinburgh spoke to Sir Philip as if the row had never occurred. It was just a normal glitch in the average day at Buckingham Palace. But if the situation had been reversed, Philip Moore would have been out of the Palace without his feet touching the ground.

But there is one characteristic that endears Prince Philip to his staff. His loyalty to them is second to none; unlike some other members of the family to whom loyalty is a one-way street. Philip will go out of his way to protect any of his team, from his valets to his most senior private secretary, if he believes they are in the right. There is a large turnover of staff in certain offices, but Prince Philip’s team are the longest serving of any – including that of Her Majesty. And when his chauffeur died in 2011, Prince Philip did not send a representative to the funeral, he broke with tradition by insisting on attending himself, showing how high a regard he had for the man who had served him loyally for many years.

Prince Philip is a man who had to endure
humiliation
the moment he joined the Royal Family. His father-in-law, King George VI grudgingly granted him the right to be styled His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, on his marriage to Princess Elizabeth in 1947, but refused to permit him to be called a Prince, even though he had previously been Prince Philip of Greece and at the time of his birth he was sixth in line to the Greek throne. So in some ways he was more royal than his wife, as she had a mother who had been born a commoner.

It was when Princess Elizabeth became Queen that she made up for her father’s attitude and showered honours on Philip, creating him a Prince of the United Kingdom in 1957; Knight of the Garter; Knight of the Thistle; awarding him the Order of Merit and making him a Privy Councillor. So in effect, every honour that Prince Philip has received has been from his wife.

While The Queen wears the crown, in the Mountbatten/Windsor family there is no doubt that Philip wears the trousers. Even at his great age, he still summons his four children to Balmoral every year – without The Queen present – even though they have all married and had children of their own.

He carries out a review of the previous year: what they have achieved; their successes and their failures. He doesn’t pull his punches, but neither is he unfair and if one of them disagrees with his assessment, he will listen to their arguments. He accepts reasons but not excuses.

In the early days it was a bit like being hauled in front of the headmaster; these days it’s more of a family
debate. If there is one major family disappointment it is Philip’s relationship with his eldest son who he believes is indecisive. Prince Philip has definite views on everything; he is ambivalent about nothing; just like his daughter Anne.

Of course, where The Queen is forced to steer clear of anything controversial, her husband appears to court it deliberately. He favours the head-on approach. Where she is required not to voice her opinions in public, there are no such constitutional constraints on Philip. He also likes to provoke argument with those who might be regarded as his social inferiors. One day he met an attractive young woman in the corridors of Buckingham Palace. Not recognising her, he asked what she was doing there and where she worked. She replied that she was employed in the Royal Collection. To which he said, ‘They are all mad there.’ She was then quick-witted enough to come back with the words ‘Yes, Sir. It’s one of the prime qualifications’. He was greatly amused and later told The Queen about the encounter.

Second in the popularity league table was the late Princess Margaret, The Queen’s only sister, who died in 2002. She lived in great splendour in a thirty-
five-room
apartment at 1A Clock Court in Kensington Palace, a home that for years was the centre of
society
among stars of show business, films and the arts. Margaret was acknowledged, even within her own
family, as the most Regal and arrogant of them all. She would never allow anyone, for an instant, to forget who she was and the position she occupied. She would not speak directly on the telephone to anyone unless they were of equal or higher rank, which narrowed the field down quite a bit. All others were instructed to speak to an aide and relay messages to her.

A young Welsh Guards officer was invited by a mutual friend to join the Princess at a dinner party. This was late in 1951 when the world knew that her father, King George VI, was seriously ill. The young officer was seated next to Margaret and when he was presented to her he politely asked how her father was feeling. ‘Are you referring to His
Majesty
?’ she
frostily
replied and then pointedly ignored him for the remainder of the evening.

On a later occasion, the wife of one of the Household private secretaries was on the guest list at a dinner party. This lady was from the Argentine and this was at the time of the Falklands conflict. When the Princess, who was seated near the guest, tried to guess at her accent, and failed, she eventually demanded to know where she had come from. On being told it was the Argentine, she turned her back and not only ignored her for the rest of the evening but excluded her from the conversation until the meal was over. It was an example of the extreme bad manners that Margaret would display on many occasions. Which makes it surprising that she was a popular employer among Palace staff.

One of her former police protection officers said that when he was told he was going to work for her,
his heart sank because of her reputation as a tyrant. However, the reverse was true. The first thing Margaret showed him was how she liked her drinks mixed. Her favourite was The Famous Grouse whisky, poured over ice cubes, with a little soda water added. She explained the exact measurements and told him that as long as he got it right every time they would get along famously. But the first time he got it wrong, he would be out on his ear. He must have done something right as he continued to work for her quite happily until he was moved to a younger member of the Royal Family.

When Margaret and Lord Snowdon were married, his valet, and other male servants, would frequently walk into the Princess’s dressing room to find her sitting at her dressing table stark naked. She didn’t bat an eyelid or try to cover herself. It was as if they didn’t even exist – just another piece of furniture. But, again, like her brother-in-law, Prince Philip, Margaret could be extremely loyal and if she found out that one of her staff was in trouble, she would go to bat for them. She was also generous to a fault. When she found out that the wife of one of her chefs needed surgery, she arranged for the woman to go into a private hospital immediately and paid all the bills herself. At Christmastime, her staff would all be treated to a
slap-up
meal at an expensive restaurant – but she declined to join them. Democracy went only so far.

There was one occasion though when Princess Margaret found herself upstaged by one of her maids. A young woman had been employed on a temporary basis, and one of the ways in which she liked to amuse herself, when Princess Margaret was out, was to try
on her clothes, as they had the same measurements. She took this a step further one evening when she had been invited out to an expensive restaurant by a new admirer. She ‘borrowed’ one of Margaret’s favourite dresses, knowing she would be back before the boss and no one would know. How wrong she was. By a chance in million, Margaret was dining at the same restaurant that evening and saw the girl – and the frock. Neither acknowledged the other but the following morning the maid was summoned and informed her ‘temporary’ employment would not be made
permanent
. In fact it was terminated that very day. However, the Princess did not appear to mind too much the fact that her maid had worn one of her dresses; she wanted to know how the girl and her companion could afford to eat at the same restaurant where she was dining. No explanation was forthcoming – and Margaret
continued
to wear the dress.

(The Queen’s clothes are a source of constant comment in the media and she will wear a favourite outfit for years. When she finally tires of it, she will hand it to one of her dressers, who can either wear it or sell it, with one proviso, all labels must be removed and anything that could possibly identify it as having come from royalty obliterated. One frock found it’s way to a jumble sale near Sandringham, but in spite of its obvious quality, it failed to sell.)