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Considering that she served fewer than 50 days in office, former British Prime Minister Liz Truss has a boldly titled new book that has just come out, Ten Years To Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room.
To borrow from King Charles, one can say only, ‘Dear, oh dear’, which is what he said to her on their first prime ministerial meeting at Buckingham Palace.
Before I go into highlights from the book, before its publication, The Critic featured an article on her premiership, ‘No, Liz Truss did not crash the economy’. An excerpt follows, emphases mine:
… Liz Truss crashed the Conservative Party’s poll ratings and she temporarily crashed the pound. She did not crash the economy and mortgage rates today have nothing to do with her or her mini-budget.
There is no technical definition of “crashing the economy” but using GDP as the best measure of the economy, it has conspicuously crashed twice since 2007, including the worst nosedive in 300 years. In neither case was Liz Truss in charge.
Not only did she not crash the economy, she had no means by which to do so. Hardly anything she announced in the mini-budget was ever enacted. The big exceptions were the Energy Price Guarantee and the abolition of the Health and Social Care Levy (effectively an extra 1.25 per cent on National Insurance). Between them they were by far the more expensive policies in the mini-budget but they are rarely mentioned today because they had cross-party support and most people thought they were a jolly good thing. It is inarguable that both of these policies led to more government borrowing but they did not crash the economy and the economy did not crash.
The more controversial parts of the mini-budget — freezing Corporation Tax and abolishing the 45p rate of income tax — did not crash the economy for the simple reason that they never happened.
What did happen is that bond markets became alarmed by a debt-financed dash for growth that was likely to be inflationary at a time when inflation was already at 10 per cent. Interest rates had been rising steadily since December 2021 as the Bank of England slowly woke up to the inflationary threat, but the fear of steeper rate hikes in response to the mini-budget led to a spike in bond yields and mortgage rates, both of which had also been rising for some time in Britain and around the world. But the spike in bond yields lasted less than a month … and the spike in mortgage rates did not last much longer.
If you happened to take out a mortgage (or remortgaged) in the autumn of 2022, you can reasonably blame Liz Truss for getting a rate closer to 6 per cent than 5 per cent, but it is absurd to blame the mini-budget for mortgage rates today. As one mortgage expert said a year after the mini-budget: “Would we be in the same situation now if the budget hadn’t happened at all? I think we would probably be here or hereabouts, certainly in terms of rate.”
The main determinant of UK mortgage rates is Bank Rate and that is determined by inflation and expectations of inflation. It was the same across Europe and in the USA: inflation rose therefore interest rates rose therefore mortgage rates rose. Liz Truss had about as much impact on long term interest rates and mortgage rates in the UK as she did in America. A mini-budget that was undone before it could be implemented caused a month of chaos but has made virtually no difference to any macroeconomic variables since October 2022 when inflation peaked.
The Conservative Party’s reluctance to challenge the narrative that Liz Truss caused the cost of living crisis is understandable on one level. Rishi Sunak’s claim to Downing Street rests on being the grown up who took the car keys off a drunk. But all the electorate really hears is that the Conservatives crashed the economy with a mad experiment that they would probably repeat if they got the chance.
Sunak could level with the public and tell them that the Bank of England printed a tremendous amount of money for him to give away back when he was popular during lockdown. This caused inflation, as it did in other countries where QE was tested to destruction, and he had warned about the risks of rising inflation and higher interests in 2020 when many people thought the magic money tree would last forever. Getting inflation down required higher interest rates and therefore higher mortgage rates, but interest rates had been insanely low for years and most other western countries had to tackle inflation in the same way. There are no free lunches and the last two years have been payback time. It’s been painful but the British public were generally very keen on lockdowns, furlough and “free” tests. Even today, only 21 per cent of Britons think Covid rules were too strict while 38 per cent think they didn’t go far enough. Everything that has happened since has been the inevitable consequence of policies that were wildly popular at the time and which the opposition parties wanted to do more of.
This might be too bitter a pill for the public to swallow, but Sunak has tried everything else, so why not try telling the truth?
Rishi will never tell the truth there because Liz Truss won the Conservative Party member vote propelling her into Party leadership and into No. 10. All Rishi could rely on to achieve the same were the votes of the Parliamentary Conservative Party — his fellow MPs.
On April 15, The Telegraph‘s Allison Pearson interviewed the former PM, ‘Liz Truss: “The people who claim I crashed the economy are either very stupid or very malevolent”‘.
Halfway through the interview, which includes reminders of Truss’s premiership, Pearson writes:
Which brings us to the events surrounding her downfall: cock-up or conspiracy? Truss’s leadership victory party was on September 5. But Sunak did not look defeated. There were rumours that a plot was afoot to have Liz out by Valentine’s Day. She was more vulnerable than she knew.
As for the economy:
Does Truss believe they were deliberately gunning for her?
“Look, I don’t have any proof. I mean, one version of events is that the governor [of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey] just believed in what he was doing. The economic consensus had been, amongst the Bank of England, Treasury and the OBR, relatively loose monetary policy, cheap money, which had been going on for years. I think that was actually very damaging to the economy, with high taxes and high levels of regulation, and I don’t think Andrew Bailey wanted to move away from that, even though we’d got a mandate to do things differently. So the markets reacted badly to the fact that it was clear the governor of the Bank of England and the Government were not necessarily on the same side. And what the Bank of England governor should have been doing – and this is what happened when the Bank of England wasn’t a law unto itself as it is now – is the Bank of England governor should have been co-ordinating monetary with fiscal policy, and he just didn’t.”
After Truss was ousted, the Bank swiftly reversed its actions – which made it looked like the markets were overjoyed at the installation (I was about to write “coup”) of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the so-called “adults in the room”. So how is that not a stitch-up? …
She says a lot of people who support her policies have asked why she U-turned.
“I literally had a gun to my head, that there would be a debt crisis if I hadn’t done it, or that we would not be able to fund UK debt. And that’s why I had to reverse those policies. But why did the £70 billion figure from the OBR leak? Why?”
Truss, like many ordinary Britons, sees that the Prime Minister and the Government are not really in charge at all:
Truss is silent for a while, holding tightly onto the gold circle of her necklace. Finally, she says: “The outsourcing of decision making to technocrats is completely wrong. What we should be basing our decisions on are the principles about what is the right thing to do, not some flimsy prediction in the future by the OBR that is very unlikely to happen. So the whole system is deeply flawed, but it’s in the interest of people who are insiders, who are part of the status quo. Andrew Bailey, he’s paid more than twice what the prime minister is paid. Andrew Bailey has done a bad job. Yet he doesn’t get 1 per cent of the scrutiny the prime minister gets, so it’s a completely perverse system.”
Truss tells me she wants an inquiry into what happened. “I mean, I think it’s a scandal, Allison, it really is. And I think the level of power that is exercised now in Britain by people who aren’t elected is a huge problem. I put forward policies that I’d advocated in the leadership election, which I believe would have resulted in the economy being in a better position today. Raising corporation tax has not been a success. Things like the windfall tax on energy has not helped. So I believe the policies were right and I had a mandate to deliver them. And I was forced to reverse them.”
Truss’s husband gently warned her that No. 10 would not be easy; in fact, it could ‘end in tears’. Their daughters took the end of her premiership to heart, as she told Allison Pearson:
She gets upset for the first time when I ask how her teenage girls handled seeing their mother cast out like a pariah. “It was awful, pretty awful. Frances and Liberty are very protective of me. But they laugh and say, ‘Mum, what on earth is wrong with you, you’re never normal?’ and I suppose I’m not.” Indeed, Liberty rang from school to tell her mum not to resign, but it was already too late.
Truss told Pearson:
I’m not regretful, I don’t know why. I suppose I see myself as a warrior, a combatant. So I’ve lost this battle, but I’m still alive. I knew when I went for the job that it was going to be really tough and I would face the onslaught and opposition. I didn’t realise quite how big the onslaught would be, but it makes me more determined because what’s the alternative to fighting? The alternative to fighting is giving into these awful people and their Left-wing ideology who are damaging our country.
On the topic of left-wing ideology, a review of her book at Reaction summarises what she says:
Truss portrays the Conservative prime ministers under whom she served as either unwilling or unable to challenge the entrenched left-wing agenda. In David Cameron, she writes, “I never really sensed a drive to transform the country.” Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Truss says, had cemented the left-wing orthodoxy, and Cameron and Osborne expressed no wish to change it. Theresa May and Philip Hammond continued that orthodoxy in line with the Treasury officials, she says.
The establishment’s agenda is not restricted to the civil service and, a particular obsession of Truss’s, the “quangos”. Even Dominic Cummings is deemed insufficiently pro-Brexit and controlling of Johnson. Truss writes that she finally managed to get Johnson to sign off on trade talks with the US when the Prime Minister was in hospital in April 2020: “I knew he would have his mobile on him and be free of nefarious Downing Street influences”.
In the cabinet, Michael Gove was Truss’s main antagonist, and she characterises him as an obstinate opponent of her true conservative agenda. After the 2016 referendum, she writes, she urged Gove to run for the Conservative leadership but he declined. When Gove did decide to run, forcing Johnson’s withdrawal, he phoned to ask for her support. “By this time, my shock had given way to anger. I told him bluntly I could not back him.” She continues: “His actions in stabbing Boris in the back were unforgivable. I simply did not understand how someone could do that”.
The Guardian‘s April 8 review pointed out the advice the late Queen gave her new Prime Minister:
“Pace yourself,” the 96-year-old queen said – a suggestion Truss admits she failed to heed after the queen died, leaving Truss unsure if she could cope.
Truss later introduced radical free-market policies that crashed the British economy and saw her ejected from office just 49 days after winning an internal Conservative party vote to succeed Boris Johnson, making her the shortest-serving prime minister of all.
“Maybe I should have listened” to the queen, Truss writes …
Of her historic meeting with the queen at Balmoral in Scotland in September 2022, Truss says the 96-year-old monarch “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.
“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics,” Truss writes. “She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty. Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”
When the Queen died:
… Truss writes, the news, though widely expected after the monarch’s health had deteriorated, still came “as a profound shock” to Truss, seeming “utterly unreal” and leaving her thinking: “Why me? Why now?”
Insisting she had not expected to lead the UK in mourning for the death of a monarch nearly 70 years on the throne and nearly 100 years old, Truss says state ceremony and protocol were “a long way from my natural comfort zone”.
Other prime ministers, she writes without naming any, may have been better able to provide “the soaring rhetoric and performative statesmanship necessary”. She herself, she writes, predominantly felt profound sadness.
Truss describes carrying out duties including giving a Downing Street speech about the queen’s death and having a first audience with King Charles III. A subsequent Buckingham Palace meeting between the king and his prime minister was widely noted for its stilted nature – Charles being heard to mutter: “Back again? Dear oh dear.” But Truss says their first official meeting made her feel “a bizarre sense of camaraderie between us, with both starting out in our new roles and having to navigate unfamiliar territory”.
As the UK went into mourning, so Truss watched on television with her family as the queen’s coffin was brought from Balmoral to Edinburgh. Truss describes being “suddenly overwhelmed by the emotion of it all”, and breaking down “into floods of tears on the sofa”.
“Once again,” she writes, “the grief was mixed with a feeling of awe over the sheer weight of the event, and the fact that it was happening on my watch.”
More recently, as most conservative-minded people know, Truss has been spending time in the United States:
Last April, she delivered the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. This February, in Maryland, she spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, telling a pro-Trump audience the Anglo-American right “need[s] a bigger bazooka” to take on its leftwing enemies.
The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley gave his take on the book, relating what Truss said about what it was really like in No. 10 away from politics:
The job of prime minister comes across as near-impossible, down to the bare essentials. Truss had to do her own hair and makeup (which probably took up half the day). There was no on-site doctor to care for her health. And the inhabitant of No 10 is kept awake by the Horse Guards clock that chimes every quarter hour. This might seem trivial, but Ten Years to Save the West – a brilliantly presumptive title from someone who spent 10 minutes in office – makes the powerful point that a modern PM “is treated like a President but has nothing like the kind of institutional support for the office that we would expect in a presidential system”.
Another Telegraph article had more, including an anecdote about an unintentional legacy, allegedly from Boris Johnson’s dog:
Downing Street was a prison infested with fleas caused by Boris Johnson’s dog Dilyn, Liz Truss has claimed in her new book.
The former prime minister said that she spent her first weeks in the job “itching” because of a flea infestation at No 10, which she said some believed was a result of Mr Johnson’s dog.
She also compared herself to a “prisoner” when resident in Downing Street, saying that “just being stuck there” was one of the most difficult things to get used to.
In an extract of her new book, Ten Years to Save the West, serialised by the Daily Mail, Ms Truss wrote: “The place was infested with fleas.
“Some claimed that this was down to Boris and Carrie’s dog Dilyn, but there was no conclusive evidence. In any case, the entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching.”
But, she said that “the most difficult thing to get used to was just being stuck there”.
“Spontaneous excursions were all but impossible: I was effectively a prisoner,” she added.
“If I insisted on going for a run or a walk, arrangements were made for me to be driven to a quiet bit of Hyde Park – but even this felt like being allowed out into the prison exercise yard” …
In the new extract, Ms Truss also complained that there was a “lack of personal support” available to her while prime minister – and that she had to organise her own hair and make-up appointments.
She said it was shocking that as “one of the most photographed people in the country” she had to arrange such bookings herself.
“As well as being personally inconvenient, all these things took precious bandwidth away from me. Here I was, the prime minister of a major G7 country, and I was having to spend time worrying about when I was going to be able to get my hair done,” she wrote.
She added that she had “no medical support” and had to send her diary secretary out “in the middle of the night to buy me some medicine” as there was nobody else available to do it.
On Wednesday, April 17, Guido Fawkes reported that Truss’s book hit the No. 4 spot on Amazon, despite the fact that lefties tried to downplay her rankings thus far, as Gordon Brown’s former economic adviser Danny Blanchflower did:
That day, Truss was the lead topic at Prime Minister’s Questions. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer began his questions to Rishi Sunak with this:
I am privileged to be the proud owner of a copy of the former Prime Minister’s new book. It is a rare unsigned copy; it is the only unsigned copy. It is quite the read. She claims that the Tory party’s disastrous kamikaze Budget, which triggered chaos for millions, was the “happiest moment” of her premiership. Has the Prime Minister met anyone with a mortgage who agrees?
Rishi responded with a deft riposte referring to a suspected tax controversy the Labour deputy leader, Angela Rayner, is involved in, a news story that has been running for weeks:
All I would say is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman ought to spend a bit less time reading that book, and a bit more time reading the Deputy Leader’s tax advice. [Interruption.]
That interruption was the howls of laughter from Conservative MPs. One political diarist said that it lasted for 32 seconds, a possible record.
To conclude on Liz Truss, she made a bold move in writing her memoir after a record-breaking brief time in office. One can only hope that the future holds brighter things in store for her.
Labour are forever criticising the Conservative plan to have some migrants crossing the English Channel processed in Rwanda, often called the Switzerland of Africa.
However, 20 years ago, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted migrants, who arrived in lorries and at airports at the time, processed on the Isle of Mull.
Declassified documents released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, on December 29, 2023, reveal the Labour government’s frustration.
The Shropshire Star reported (emphases mine):
The proposals, contained in files released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, reflect Mr Blair’s frustration that “ever-tougher controls” in northern France had not had an impact on the number of asylum claims – which reached a new monthly high of 8,800 in October 2002.
“We must search out even more radical measures,” Mr Blair scrawled in a handwritten note.
That would have been 13 months after 9/11. Scotland’s Herald reminded us:
Drawn up just months before the US-UK invasion of Iraq,
and told us that a number of countries were being considered for processing asylum claims:
the scheme also called for the creation of a series of regional “safe havens” in countries such as Turkey and South Africa – where refugees who could not be returned to their own country could be sent.
The Shropshire Star also named Kenya as a possibility.
From this, we see that finding countries in Africa to process applications was far from a new proposal. It existed 20 years ago. One wonders if the current batch of Labour MPs knows that or if they are just being economical with the truth as usual. Surely, the Mother of the House (the longest serving female MP), Harriet Harman must remember the Blair government’s plan. At the time, she was Solicitor General for England and Wales.
The Shropshire Star describes how this ‘nuclear plan’ unfolded:
Following a brainstorming session with senior officials and advisers, the prime minister’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell produced a paper entitled Asylum: The Nuclear Option, in which he questioned whether the UK needed and asylum system at all.
“As an island, people who come here by sea have by definition already passed through a safe country. And very few of those who apply at airports are genuine refugees,” he wrote.
“So in fact what we should be looking at is a very simple system that immediately returns people who arrive here illegally. Uttering the word ‘asylum’ should not allow people to opt out of this system and give them the right to remain here for months or years while their cases are heard.
“Ideally we should not have an asylum hearing at all, simply a decision by an immigration officer to return someone followed by a one tier fast appeal against that decision if that is necessary.”
Mr Powell said that it should form part of “a big bang solution that would send a shock through the system”.
In particular, he pointed to the “great success” the Australians had had by housing all asylum seekers in one place, with many asking to be returned to their own country.
At the time, a Labour QC (now KC), Lord Goldsmith — Peter Goldsmith — was Attorney General (AG) for England and Wales.
The Express says that Jonathan Powell’s January 2003 paper:
tells of a proposal put forward by the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith relating to the Isle of Mull on Scotland’s west coast.
Mr Powell said: “The AG’s office suggested we set up a camp in the Isle of Mull and detain people there till they could be returned.”
“I doubt that is going to work because of the Nimby [Not In My Back Yard] factor, but we have commissioned work to look at tagging, detention etc, to help deter people and ensure we are able to return them as soon as their appeals have been heard.”
The Express goes on to say:
Mr Blair did not comment on this option and none of the more radical proposals were put into effect.
Files from his time in office reveal how much of a headache he believed the asylum applications process was – and a portent of things to come.
No kidding. Twenty years on and here we are with Rwanda, getting nowhere.
Apparently, Blair was at his wit’s end over this, and we can understand why:
Mr Blair wrote on a typed memo: “It is mad. The system is mad.” On another he says: “We must search out ever more radical measures”.
A later note from January 2003 shows the weekly number of asylum bids lodged was 1,112 – including a 232% rise in Somalian applicants.
In the “nuclear option” memo, Mr Powell outlines problems including the cost of housing asylum seekers, the difficulty of assessing claims, and the challenge of deporting those with rejected bids.
He said the “most fundamental question” was “Do we need an asylum system at all?”, adding: “What we should be looking at is a very simple system that immediately returns people who arrive illegally.”
Mr Powell said one obstacle would be civil courts refusing to send migrants back to “countries where they might be at risk”.
He suggested a way around it was to set up “regional safe havens” run by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, saying: “We would be able to return Iranian asylum seekers to a centre in Turkey, Somalis to a centre in Kenya, etc.”
The nuclear option was short-lived:
By contrast, after EU expansion in 2004, Labour welcomed in tens of thousands of migrants from 10 nations.
I would like to know the whys and the wherefores behind that decision. Blair was still in office.
Returning to 2003, however, The Shropshire Star tells us of another proposed destination for refugee claimants:
Elsewhere, other officials suggested claimants could be sent to the Falkland Islands, 8,000 miles away in the south Atlantic.
A Conservative MP suggested the same thing several weeks ago; Labour met the suggestion with their usual opprobrium. That said, I do not think that the good people of the Falklands should have to put up with all the mayhem that asylum processing would cause.
Nor do I think that Scotland’s beautiful Isle of Mull was a suitable solution, either.
Let us look at a few more facts that the newly declassified documents reveal.
First, The Herald points to a seeming lack of co-operation from France — no surprise there:
“ever-tougher controls” in northern France had not had an impact on the number of asylum claims …
Secondly, Turkey was viewed as an easy option:
The Foreign Office said it believed Turkey in particular could be persuaded to set up such a centre “quite rapidly” in return for financial assistance, while the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees would back such an approach.
Thirdly, Blair’s government was willing at the time to stand up to the ECHR:
Mr Powell said they should also legislate “incompatibly” with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights to allow the removal people despite the risk of persecution – even though it would be challenged by the court in Strasbourg.
“We would like to extend this to return any illegal immigrant regardless of the risk that they might suffer human or degrading treatment,” he advised.
“We would almost certainly lose this case when it got to Strasbourg. But we would have two to three years in the meantime when we could send a strong message into the system about our new tough stance.
“And we would make clear that if we lost in Strasbourg we would denounce the ECHR and immediately re-ratify with a reservation on Article 3.”
Fourthly, there was the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees:
Home Office lawyers warned that the measures would fall foul of the Geneva Convention on refugees.
An exasperated Mr Blair scrawled “just return them”, adding: “This is precisely the point. We must not allow the ECHR to stop us dealing with it.”
The Times‘s article told us of other technicalities, such as borders:
Blair was also told that it was unrealistic to declare Heathrow “extra territorial”, which would have allowed the government to claim that asylum seekers had not entered British territory.
Powell said that Blair could tackle the problem of immigration officials not knowing where asylum seekers had come from by introducing surveillance cameras to film passengers as they stepped off planes. “If properly implemented, these measures would enable us to put people straight back on the planes they came from if their claims were unfounded.”
Can you imagine the outrage if the Conservatives had ever suggested such a thing?
Other papers at Kew were declassified, some of which concerned Princess Diana.
One set, dating from 1993, shows her ignorance of the Emerald Isle, as The Times revealed:
Princess Diana showed “obvious ignorance of or disregard for constitutional niceties” in relation to Northern Ireland, according to a note from the Irish ambassador in 1993.
Diana had referred to Northern Ireland as a part of Ireland, according to the note that was written before a visit by Mary Robinson, president of the Republic of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, to Buckingham Palace. The meeting, in May 1993, would mark the first time a serving president of Ireland visited the United Kingdom and visited Queen Elizabeth II.
A folder with briefing material for the president includes a note by Joseph Small, the Irish ambassador in London. The correspondence that was placed in the National Archives in Kew has been opened to the public now that a 30-year period has elapsed.
“Whenever we meet Prince Charles, he invariably says that he would love to visit Ireland,” the note dated May 21, 1993, said. “He is, of course, a regular visit [sic] to Northern Ireland. Princess Diana has also been there. Early last year she said to me, with obvious ignorance of or disregard for constitutional niceties, ‘I was in your country yesterday!’”
She was never the sharpest knife in the drawer.
However, the Irish president Mary Robinson’s meeting with Queen Elizabeth II in 1993 was not a first. Apparently, Queen Elizabeth I was the first to meet with a female Irish leader:
Robinson’s visit to London was planned for May 26 to May 28, where she was to receive the degree of doctor of civil law by diploma from the University of Oxford, become an honorary fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, and present the Irish Post Awards that celebrate the Irish community in Britain.
On the second day of the trip, Robinson was to “pay a courtesy call” to the Queen after receiving an invite. Among the topics noted for possible discussion between the two was Northern Ireland, bombing atrocities in the region and in Britain, cross-border issues and general relations between Ireland and the UK. Also noted were Robinson’s appreciation of “her response re Somalia” and her “concerns” regarding Sudan and Yugoslavia and the “British UN military involvement”.
The meeting was scheduled to last about 40 minutes, where tea and light refreshments were to be served. Robinson’s husband, Nicholas, also attended the engagement. The Duke of Edinburgh was in Liverpool attending the anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic.
An observer wrote to the president’s office before the visit and noted some parallels with “the last meeting between an Irish woman leader and a British monarch”. The writer compared it to the Queen of Connaught, Grace O’Malley, visiting Queen Elizabeth I at Greenwich Castle exactly 400 years earlier, in 1593.
“Grace, like yourself, was also a Mayo woman,” Dr Donald Martin from Killybegs in Co Donegal wrote, noting that the language spoken at the time was Latin. Robinson’s special adviser replied to say that the president had read the letter with “great interest”.
I wonder if David Starkey knows about that encounter.
And, finally, in another posthumous revelation about Princess Diana, her desire to visit an AIDS clinic, a drug rehabilitation centre and a leper colony in Egypt in 1992 went unfulfilled.
Princess Diana was prevented from visiting drug addicts, lepers and Aids patients during a visit to Egypt over fears that it would portray the country in a bad light, official documents have revealed.
The Princess of Wales was shown the Great Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza during a solo trip in May 1992, a few months before her separation from Prince Charles was officially announced.
Correspondence that has been opened and placed in the National Archives at Kew shows that Diana had wanted to use the visit to promote causes that were close to her heart.
The Foreign Office (FO) wrote in a confidential document at the time:
We are not clear about the likely reaction of the Egyptian authorities to our proposal to visit an Aids hospital or drug rehabilitation clinic.
“Drug addiction has been recognised as a problem for a number of years and we have been encouraged recently by a more open attitude towards Aids. However, they are both still sensitive issues.”
The Egyptian government clearly opposed the idea:
Dr Leila Emara, private secretary to Hosni Mubarak, then president of Egypt, later confirmed that the proposed itinerary was unacceptable. “She advised strongly against pursuing the possibility of an engagement to do with Aids,” a report said.
“Dr Emara implied she was encountering serious resistance. I recommend that we accept this advice.”
A proposed alternative, of a visit to a leper colony, was also vetoed by Diana’s hosts. Instead, she visited schools for blind children in Cairo, a polio rehabilitation centre, a centre for the disabled in Aswan, a mosque and the Egyptian Museum.
The FO was also concerned about the weather wreaking havoc with Diana’s beauty with regard to perspiration marks:
Foreign Office officials set up photo opportunities for first thing in the morning, in an apparent attempt to prevent images of her perspiring appearing in newspapers.
“The official statistics for Cairo have a maximum shade temperature of 40C,” they noted. “Quite apart from the implications for HRH’s personal comfort, such climatic conditions provide an opportunity for an ill-disposed press party to make mischief.”
The visit was carefully choreographed:
It was agreed that the princess would be accompanied by a retinue of 13 staff, including a private secretary, a lady in waiting, a press secretary, a doctor, an information officer, a lady clerk, a dresser, a butler, a hairdresser, a yeoman [servant in the royal household] and a personal protection officer. Arrangements were also made for 500 Union flags to be flown over so that they could be handed out to Egyptian children for photo opportunities …
The Foreign Office concluded that Diana had received “rapturous welcomes” and acted with “serenity” throughout the trip, which had enhanced the UK’s reputation in the region.
It is surprising how much Mubarak opened up to the princess, who was clearly not a specialist in geopolitics. One can assume only that she was not alone and that Mubarak used the opportunity to express his concerns to someone else in attendance:
Records from the trip note that Mubarak spoke candidly about politics and fellow leaders when he met privately with the princess on May 12. Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, was “a murderer and a terrorist” Mubarak asserted, while King Hussein of Jordan was a “lonely” individual whose failure to condemn the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had left him “totally isolated”.
Mubarak told her that Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan despot, was “unreliable but could be influenced” and disclosed that he had advised him to dispose of Abdessalam Jalloud, his “dangerous” former prime minister and political rival, by having him launch a suicidal attack on Israel.
“He described how he had suggested to Gaddafi that Jalloud should sail on a heavily armed warship against Israel and end up on the bottom of the Mediterranean,” the report noted. “If Gaddafi went, we would all be much worse off.”
The report added: “Mubarak said that the Arabs had little experience of democracy. Egypt was the only Arab country in which there was effective freedom of opinion” …
Mubarak was ousted in the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and died in 2020 aged 91.
Mubarak was on point with regard to Gaddafi.
What a revelation these declassified documents have turned out to be.
Returning to migration and asylum claims, let us hope the Conservatives read the Blair government’s papers with interest.
Yesterday’s post — the first part in this series — looked at the late Queen’s perspectives on Brexit and on being a Prime Minister. It also included a profile of her first cousin and close friend Margaret Rhodes.
Today’s entry discusses more aspects of the people and things in her long life and historic reign.
No new Royal yacht
To his credit, Boris Johnson was smitten with the Queen.
It was he who came up with the idea of naming London’s long-awaited Crossrail link from Berkshire to Essex the Elizabeth Line, which the monarch officially opened in May 2022.
He desperately wanted the Royal Family to have a new yacht after then-Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly decommissioned Britannia during the first few months of his tenure at No. 10 in 1997.
On May 30, 2021, the Mail reported that Boris had big plans, but the Royals were less keen (emphases mine):
The successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia will not be named after the late Duke of Edinburgh as Prime Minister Boris Johnson had hoped.
Costing up to £200 million, the boat will be used to host ministerial summits and diplomatic talks as part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to build links with other countries following Brexit.
It will be the first national flagship since Britannia, which was decommissioned in 1997, but the new vessel will be a ship rather than a luxury yacht.
The old vessel is currently berthed in Edinburgh, Scotland.
It was hoped that the ship would be named after the Prince Philip, who died in April at the age of 99, but the PM’s plan was rejected by the royals.
A senior Whitehall inside had said the ship would be named after Prince Philip, who played a role in designing the original Britannia, if Buckingham Palace agreed to the plan.
But, a royal source said the suggestion was ‘too grand’ and added ‘it is not something we have asked for.’
The Royal Family will not be using the new ship for personal travel or holidays, as they previously did with the former Royal Yacht Britannia, but will be able to use it to undertake overseas visits at the request of the government …
When it was decommissioned the monarch, who it has been reported was happiest on board the yacht, was seen shedding a tear in public.
Buckingham Palace has not been involved in the decision to commission the ship but a source said ‘we respect it’.
Construction of the new ship is expected to begin as soon as 2022 and it will enter service within the next four years.
The tendering process for the design and construction of the vessel will launch shortly, with an emphasis on showcasing British design expertise and the latest innovations in green technology.
It is expected to be in service for about 30 years, and will be crewed by the Royal Navy.
Mr Johnson said: ‘This new national flagship will be the first vessel of its kind in the world, reflecting the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation.
‘Every aspect of the ship, from its build to the businesses it showcases on board, will represent and promote the best of British – a clear and powerful symbol of our commitment to be an active player on the world stage.’
However, timing is everything. In 2021, the UK, as so many countries were at the time, was recovering from the pandemic, physically and economically. What might have sailed smoothly without coronavirus suddenly hit a political iceberg.
The plan went no further in 2022 because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak scuppered the plan altogether for that reason. On November 7, 2022, The Guardian reported:
Rishi Sunak has sunk plans by Boris Johnson’s administration to build a new royal yacht, sparking criticism about the £2.5m of taxpayers’ money already spent on the “vanity project”.
As Whitehall braced for cuts expected in Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement next week, the project – intended to promote post-Brexit trade – was abandoned in favour of defence capabilities.
The scheme, championed by Johnson when he was prime minister, was likely to cost up to £250m, with additional annual running costs of up to £30m.
The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who had previously supported the idea and described critics as “doomsters”, told the House of Commons it had been dropped on Monday.
He said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s “reckless disregard of international arrangements designed to keep world order” meant it was more important to deliver “capabilities which safeguard our national infrastructure”.
Wallace confirmed he had “directed the termination of the national flagship competition with immediate effect”, in order to prioritise the procurement of a multi-role ocean surveillance ship (MRoss).
The MRoss would “protect sensitive defence infrastructure and civil infrastructure” and “improve our ability to detect threats to the seabed and cables”, he said.
Sunak’s spokesperson said the prime minister thought it was “right to prioritise at a time when difficult spending decisions need to be made”.
Labour welcomed the news that the government was scrapping Johnson’s “taxpayer-funded vanity project”.
The Queen’s dresser, Angela Kelly
The Queen and her personal dresser, Angela Kelly, developed a close personal relationship over the years.
In a January 5, 2020 article about her, The Sun told us how this occurred:
The pair first met in 1992, when Angela was working as a housekeeper for the British Ambassador to Germany.
The Queen, 93, and Prince Phillip, 98, visited Sir Christopher Mallaby at his home, while in Germany on an official visit.
As they left, the pair said goodbye to the household staff, and the Duke of Edinburgh asked Angela a question which would change her life forever.
He quizzed Angela over who was Sir Christopher’s next official visitor.
But Angela, revealing all in her tell-all book The Other Side of the Coin, the Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe, said she refused to answer him.
She explained that the information was confidential – even to the Queen.
The Duke pressed her again, saying: “Surely you can tell Her Majesty the Queen?’ he said.”
Angela said that as she had signed the official secrets act, she was forbidden from telling them.
The exchange had taken place in front of the Queen – and it made a lasting impression on her.
As Angela said goodbye to the Queen, she told her she’d remember this moment for the rest of her life, to which the monarch replied: “Angela, so will I.”
Two months later, the Queen invited her to work at Buckingham Palace as her assistant dresser.
The pair stayed together until the Queen died in September 2022.
Kelly revealed the anecdote in her 2020 book, The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe.
Because Kelly and the Queen had the same sized feet, the monarch used to ask Kelly to break in new shoes for her. Kelly also saw off a demanding Prince Harry about tiaras for his marriage to Meghan Markle. The Queen bawled him out in private later.
It is understood that Kelly and King Charles do not see eye-to-eye, and the dresser felt obliged to move out of her home on the Windsor estate recently.
One of the sticking points allegedly revolves around Kelly’s writing more books, including an updated version of The Other Side of the Coin, which the King believes revealed too much after the death of his father in 2021.
On May 29, The Mirror reported that the Queen gave her written permission to write more books:
The late Queen is protecting her right-hand woman from “beyond the grave” after handing her a trump card, a friend has claimed.
Angela Kelly, the former monarch’s dresser and confidante, famously published two books about her work after being granted extraordinary permission from her boss to do so.
It was understood she had the late Queen’s blessing to pen a third book, although recent reports have suggested King Charles scuppered those plans after getting Ms Kelly to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) in exchange for a new grace-and-favour home in Yorkshire.
It is claimed the agreement banned Ms Kelly from using words such as ‘Palace’ and ‘King’.
However, it is now being reported that Ms Kelly has told friends she is holding a trump card over the King – who is said not to be a fan of hers – with the late Queen reportedly having given her a letter granting her express approval for three books.
And a source now says the letter is a “formidable weapon” for Ms Kelly, who is being protected by her former boss from “beyond the grave”.
The source told the Mail On Sunday : “It’s certainly a formidable weapon in her arsenal to have a letter like that from Queen Elizabeth II in her possession. It’s quite something because it seems she is protecting her favoured assistant from beyond the grave.
“It is pretty important because it includes the Queen’s wishes, and no one would want to ignore those” …
It was believed she was going to be allowed to stay at her grace-and-favour home in Windsor, however, last month, she appeared to confirm this was not the case.
She took to Instagram to say she would be leaving a property on the Windsor estate and also seemed to confirm that her work phone had been disconnected.
In recent days, Ms Kelly, who is originally from Liverpool, was spotted emotionally packing up her home in order to move north to be closer to her family.
However, as pictures emerged of Ms Kelly packing her belongings from her home in Windsor into a removals lorry, she took to her Instagram stories to share videos with several cryptic quotes …
It comes after reports the King felt that an updated version of Ms Kelly’s book, The Other Side Of The Coin, which was released last year, went “too far” in terms of revealing intimate details about the Royal Family.
It detailed what the late Queen did after the funeral of her beloved husband Prince Philip in April 2021.
“I helped her off with her coat and hat and no words were spoken. The Queen then walked to her sitting room, closed the door behind her, and she was alone with her own thoughts,” Ms Kelly wrote.
A source previously told the Daily Mail: “His concerns were solely about protecting both the dignity of the Queen and the Crown.
“Nothing has changed with his mother’s death. If anything, he is more determined to defend her reputation and her legacy.”
The Mail‘s report has several photos of Kelly, more on the NDA and this additional information:
The King agreed to buy Ms Kelly a house to live in that will revert to the Crown upon her death. She previously had a grace-and-favour home on the Windsor Estate.
She surprised some in the Royal Family by writing two books during the Queen’s life. She published Dressing The Queen in 2012.
The Queen was so supportive of her writing that she attended the launch of Ms Kelly’s 2019 book, The Other Side Of The Coin: The Queen, The Dresser And The Wardrobe.
But the second edition, after Prince Philip died, angered Charles, who felt it was too intimate.
Friends have said Ms Kelly, who was nicknamed AK-47 at Buckingham Palace because of what some saw as her abrasive approach, was considering giving lucrative talks on cruise liners – a career move that could be affected by the NDA.
Today, Friday, June 9, 2023, The Express reported that there was some misunderstanding about Kelly’s future home and that she could have stayed on the Windsor estate:
Queen Elizabeth II’s dresser was not forced out of her home in Windsor and instead chose to leave to be closer to her family, a royal expert says. Angela Kelly worked for the monarch for around 30 years but her time within the royal household ended when the Queen died last September.
There had been talk that she was forced to leave Windsor but the Daily Express’s Royal correspondent Richard Palmer, who was speaking on our Royal Roundup earlier today, said this was not the case.
He says she could have stayed in her home for as long as she wanted and that King Charles has bought her a house in Derbyshire, so she can be closer to her family.
Mr Palmer said: “She’s got children and grandchildren in the north of England and my understanding is she wanted to spend more time with them.”
He added: “The key thing, I was told, was that she could have stayed in Windsor. She could have stayed in that house in Windsor that she’s had.
“Having retired, she could have had it for the rest of her life. So she wasn’t forced out of her home.
“And then it subsequently transpired – well, it’s certainly been reported – that the King has actually bought a house for her.
“It’s not been made clear [where the money for the house came from]. I think it will have come from the Duchy of Lancaster money, what they call the privy purse.”
He added: “I think the house will revert to the Crown when she’s gone. So he’s bought her a retirement home up there.
“I think there’s a little bit of tension because she was very close to the Queen.
“But I’m not sure it’s as vicious and as tense as it’s been portrayed.”
Ice cubes
On a less contentious note, the Queen was careful to ensure that conversation flowed at Royal residences.
To this end, she requested that round ice cubes be the norm.
On November 27, 2019, The Express explained the reason for this:
Author Karen Dolby, who wrote Queen Elizabeth II’s Guide to Life, told Fabulous Digital: “The Queen likes her ice cubes in her glass to be round so they don’t chink quite as much as square ones.”
The royal author added that the monarch has all the drinks she consumes in her residences served with round ice cubes.
The Queen’s former chef, Darren McGrady, had previously revealed the monarch’s favourite drink is gin and Dubonnet.
The monarch likes her drink prepared with two parts of Dubonnet, one part gin, two cubes of ice and a lemon slice, the Daily Telegraph had previously revealed.
The Queen took after her mother, Queen Elizabeth, her taste in drinks, as the Queen Mother was also said to like gin and Dubonnet – served with a slice of lemon under the ice.
Speaking about the Queen, Mr McGrady said she doesn’t consume alcohol every day.
He continued: “Just in the evening.
“She certainly doesn’t drink four glasses a day.”
Another drink the monarch likes is wine, and she sometimes has a glass of German sweet wine with her dinner.
Chin chin!
More to follow next week.
It is difficult to know where to begin, continue and end with Queen Elizabeth II after her 70+ year reign.
So many anecdotes remain.
Here are but a few of them.
Brexit referendum
I wrote yesterday about where we are with the ‘bonfire of EU regulations’ — not as far as Leave voters had hoped. Brexit was also on Her Majesty’s mind at one stage.
On June 21, 2016, two days before the referendum, The Sun reported that the Queen wanted dinner guests to give valid reasons for remaining in the European Union (emphases mine):
THE Queen asked VIP guests at a private dinner: “Give me three good reasons why Britain should be part of Europe.”
Royal biographer Robert Lacey revealed she asked close friends and family their views on whether we should be in or out of the EU.
He said yesterday: “The Queen has no vote but I think she may feel we should be Out.
“That’s only my guess as to her thoughts — but she does like robust debate.
“She likes a debate around the table like all of us round the country and she’s been debating Brexit with close friends and family.
“But from what I’ve heard, she’s been very careful to be scrupulously neutral.”
Mr Lacey said the Queen was questioning dinner guests, thought to include Prince Andrew and Princess Anne, at a private dinner a few weeks ago …
Lacey explained that she would not have asked the question of guests outside of her closely-knit private circle.
This caused MPs on both sides of the Brexit divide to opine.
In the end, we never really knew what she thought on the subject. This was part of the Queen’s seemingly magic aura. Everyone could privately impress his beliefs upon her, believing she was on their side. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn’t. Her opinions died with her, never to be revealed.
On being Prime Minister
Having reigned through 16 Prime Ministers from Winston Churchill through to Liz Truss, the Queen was accustomed to political change, which she surely had throughout her reign.
When Boris Johnson was elected Conservative Party leader in 2019, The Star reported that Her Majesty admitted her perplexity about such high political ambition:
Allegedly, Her Majesty told him: “I don’t know why anyone would want the job.”
The source of the quote was none other than Boris himself, who should have known that no one discusses what the Queen says in private conversation.
His staff certainly knew:
His staff then reportedly chastised him, and said “not to repeat those things so loudly”.
His predecessor but one, David Cameron, made a similar gaffe in saying that, in 2014, the Queen purred a sigh of relief when the Scots voted ‘No’ to independence. He, too, was severely criticised at the time, albeit not by Her Majesty, who remained silent.
Honours medals ‘Made in France’
Over the past several years, in France, much has been made of the fine products produced there and not overseas.
To date — admittedly, I might have missed it — I have not read or heard one news item that says that some of the monarch’s medals to Britons are currently made in France.
This started early in 2016, to the consternation of British military veterans and more than one Conservative MP.
On March 1 that year, The Telegraph reported:
A decision to award the contract to manufacture 20 British honours to a foreign firm for the first time has provoked anger among veterans.
A French company is set to soon make a host of honours that are presented to military heroes or distinguished citizens, including the Distinguished Service Order, the star of the Knights of the Order of the Bath and the badge of a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Arthus Bertrand, which makes France’s Légion d’honneur medal, has been named in Cabinet Office papers as among a group of “successful suppliers” …
However, it sparked criticism from Colonel Bob Stewart, the Conservative MP and a holder of the DSO for his service during the Bosnian conflict, who described it as “plain wrong”.
“My argument is rather emotive but I think that a medal awarded to a UK citizen should be made in the UK – personally I’m very glad that my DSO [Distinguished Service Order] was made in Britain,” he told the newspaper.
“Can you imagine the French allowing the Légion d’honneur to be made in Germany? When this country awards medals to its soldiers, sailors, airmen and citizens they should be made in the UK.”
Julian Lewis, Conservative chairman of the defence select committee, also told The Times: “One is used to seeing ‘made in Hong Kong’ on souvenirs from great British institutions, but the foreign manufacture of medals and honours might be a step too far, no matter what the value-for-money logic.”
The French-manufactured medals are for the following honours: the Order of the Bath, the badge and star of the Order of St Michael and St George,the medal of the Distinguished Service Order and the Citizens of the British Empire.
Margaret Rhodes, the Queen’s first cousin
Margaret Rhodes was the Queen’s first cousin and one of her best friends.
When she died in 2016, The Telegraph posted this obituary:
Margaret Rhodes, who has died aged 91, was a first cousin of the Queen and a goddaughter of George VI; in 1947 she had been a bridesmaid at the then Princess Elizabeth’s wedding to Philip Mountbatten, and for 11 years she was a lady-in-waiting to her aunt, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
Late in life Margaret Rhodes enjoyed runaway success with her memoirs, The Final Curtsey, written with the help of the journalist Tom Corby and published in 2011. Although these were slight and haphazard, and not without factual inaccuracies, they caught the public imagination and shot to No 1 in the bestseller lists …
The book gave a light, sometimes hearty, description of her life as a young Scottish aristocrat, with insights into the character and personality of the Queen, and charted her own far from trouble-free course through life. It was altogether an exceptional publishing triumph, especially since numerous publishing houses had turned it down over several years.
Margaret Rhodes was born in London as the Hon Margaret Elphinstone on June 9 1925. She was the youngest daughter of the 16th Lord Elphinstone and his wife, Lady Mary Bowes-Lyon, second daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. Thus she was a first cousin of the Queen and Princess Margaret, and she was so much a part of their lives that the Queen Mother sometimes referred to her as her “third daughter”.
Margaret had two older brothers, John Elphinstone (the 17th Lord), who was imprisoned in Colditz during the war, Andrew Elphinstone (who just predeceased his brother), Elizabeth, who was unmarried, and Jean, who married John Wills and served for many years as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. So close to the Royal family was Jean that the family found it appropriate that she collapsed at lunch at Clarence House, dying in hospital soon afterwards.
Margaret was raised at Carberry Tower, the Elphinstone seat near Edinburgh, frequently visited by royalty. In her early life she was placed under the care of Clara Knight, who later became nanny to the two princesses. There were many holidays at Glamis and at Birkhall (where the then Duke and Duchess of York spent their summers). She was a childhood playmate of Princess Elizabeth. As Margaret revealed: “When we were very small, it was mostly playing at being horses. It involved a lot of neighing and cantering and galloping.” In her book she wrote: “I seemed then to live in a very safe world.” When the Second World War broke out and the two princesses were kept at Birkhall for safety, Margaret was sent over to keep them company.
During the war she lived first in Chelsea and later at Buckingham Palace, spending time with the princesses at Windsor Castle and holidays at Balmoral.
When Margaret reached majority age during the Second World War:
She joined the WRNS, but was moved to MI6. Only 18 years old, she worked at an office euphemistically called Passport Control near St James’s Underground Station. Her department coordinated the work of secret agents in the Near East.
After the war Margaret was one of eight bridesmaids at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in November 1947. Soon afterwards she met Denys Rhodes when they worked together for the European Movement set up by Duncan Sandys, which founded the Council of Europe. Since 1945 he had been married to the actress Rachel Gurney, with whom he had a daughter. They sought a divorce but ran into numerous complications. Eventually an annulment was granted and Margaret was able to marry him at St Margaret’s, Westminster, on July 31 1950, in the presence of the King and Queen and with Princess Margaret as her bridesmaid.
Margaret Rhodes described her husband in her book as “an attractive pauper”. She commented: “I suppose, in my parents’ view, he was not the most suitable bridegroom”, and he was never as popular with the Royal family as she was. The Rhodeses settled in Devon, creating a fine garden.
Her husband was a novelist. When his health took a turn for the worse, the couple moved near the Queen, to:
the Garden House in Windsor Great Park in April 1981 in response to the Queen’s invitation: “Could you bear to live in suburbia?”, but Denys Rhodes died the following October.
Margaret Rhodes lived near her first cousin for the rest of her life:
Margaret Rhodes lived in the house the rest of her life and in 1991 was appointed a Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen Mother, undertaking fortnightly duties. She served for 11 years until the Queen Mother’s death, after which it became the Queen’s habit to go to the Garden House after church on Sundays instead of to Royal Lodge.
Margaret was the close companion of the Queen Mother during the last three weeks of her life …
Finally, on March 30, Margaret was present when her aunt died at 3.15 in the afternoon. Hardly was this over than Peter Sissons of the BBC telephoned her to ask for details. His interview was generally deemed to be too intrusive …
The sadness of the next days was briefly alleviated when she was assigned the job of registering her aunt’s death. “Right, what was the husband’s occupation?” asked a fierce lady registrar. “King”, she replied, feeling that the Queen Mother might have enjoyed that. Later she spent some time sorting the Queen Mother’s papers on behalf of the Queen and deciding what should be placed in the Royal Archives.
Margaret Rhodes spoke as she found:
In recorded television tributes to the Queen Mother, she expressed her dislike of Caithness, with its trees blown almost horizontal, and just before the Queen turned 80, she declared: “I’m perfectly certain she will never retire as such. It’s not like a normal job and, to the Queen, the vows that she made on Coronation Day are something so deep and so special that she wouldn’t consider not continuing to fulfil those vows until she dies.”
Of Princess Margaret she wrote: “It was hard to resist her, but she did have the most awful bad luck with men. However, the Almighty usually gets the right person to be born first.”
She was survived by her two daughters and two sons.
As I’ve said before and will say again, truly, we have seen the end of an era.
More tomorrow.
One year ago today saw the beginning of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
As she was in such poor health, she was only able to make balcony appearances at Buckingham Palace.
However, she was with us in spirit.
Christian faith
One of the events was a Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The Queen was a woman of faith. It seemed that, as she grew older, she gave us more religious reflections in her Christmas addresses.
On March 1, 2016, six weeks before her 90th birthday, Fox News reported on the foreword to a book about her (emphases mine):
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II reflects on Jesus’ central role in her life in a new book ahead of her 90th birthday, calling Christ “the King she serves” in the title.
“I have been — and remain — very grateful to you for your prayers and to God for his steadfast love,” the British monarch writes in the foreword to The Servant Queen and the King She Serves, which is to be released in April.
“I have indeed seen His faithfulness,” she adds.
Thousands of churches will reportedly be giving away copies of the book, which is being published by HOPE, Bible Society and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, according to the Church of England.
“As I’ve been writing this book and talking about it to friends, to family who don’t know Jesus, to my Jewish barber, I’ve been struck how very interested they are to discover more about the Queen’s faith,” said Mark Greene, executive director of LICC, who is the co-author of the book.
“The Queen has served us all her adult life, with amazing consistency of character, concern for others and a clear dependence on Christ. The more I’ve read what she’s written and talked to people who know her, the clearer that is,” he added.
The following year, one of her chaplains, the Rt Revd Gavin Ashenden, felt pressure from Buckingham Palace to resign. He went further and, in 2019, left Anglicanism for the Catholic Church.
On December 16, 2019, Church Militant reported:
An internationally renowned Anglican bishop and former chaplain to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is leaving the Anglican Church to become a Catholic.
Bishop Gavin Ashenden will be received into full communion by Shrewsbury’s Bp. Mark Davies on the fourth Sunday of Advent at Shrewsbury Cathedral, England.
The outspoken prelate became a global media celebrity after he objected to the reading of the Koran at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Koranic chapter on Mary, read from the lectern at the service of Holy Communion, on the Feast of the Epiphany 2017, explicitly denied the divinity of Jesus.
Under pressure from Buckingham Palace, Dr. Ashenden resigned his royal chaplaincy in order to be free to challenge the rising tide of apostasy in the Church of England.
Later that year, Ashenden was consecrated a missionary bishop to the United Kingdom and Europe by the Christian Episcopal Church to provide episcopal cover to traditionalist Anglicans leaving the Church of England …
Ashenden explained to Church Militant that for some time he believed he had “the advantage of working out his faith in a broad church as an Anglican,” until Anglicanism capitulated “to the increasingly intense and non-negotiaible demands of a secular culture.”
“I watched as the Church of England suffered a collapse of inner integrity as it swallowed wholesale secular society’s descent into a post-Christian culture,” he noted …
Did Ashenden’s comments about the reading at the cathedral in Glasgow reach the Queen? How much influence did she have on the decision or did the prelate in charge of the Royal chaplaincy more or less make the decision himself with just a nod from her? We’ll never know.
Ill health
Returning to the Queen’s faith, the UK was shocked when Her Majesty missed the 2016 Christmas Day service at Sandringham because of ill health. On January 3, 2017, ITV reported:
The Queen’s health continues to generate headlines all over the world as she still has not been seen in public since getting a heavy cold.
But Buckingham Palace says she is continuing to recuperate and is dealing daily with documents she receives from the government.
The Queen was last seen on our televisions in a pre-recorded speech on Christmas Day.
But it was her non-appearance at church that day that sent shockwaves throughout the world.
It is thought to be the first time in 28 years that the Queen had missed the Christmas Day service at Sandringham.
Four days after Christmas a fake BBC Twitter account sent alarm bells ringing with the false report that the Queen had died.
But when the Queen did not show up at the New Year’s Day service either – fears grew despite Princess Anne telling well-wishers her mother was feeling better.
Visitors at Sandringham today were pleased the 90-year-old monarch is resting up. But it is likely the world will remain anxious until the Queen appears in public again, looking hale and hearty.
In 2022, in the run-up to the Platinum Jubilee, the Queen had not been seen in public since a Women’s Institute engagement near Sandringham in February and May, when she opened the Elizabeth Line in London.
Before then, on May 11, her absence prompted Kevin Maguire, the Daily Mirror‘s associate editor, to say on GB News that her ‘royal perks’ should be removed. Dan Wootton and Calvin Robinson, who hadn’t yet been ordained, reacted most strongly:
A lot of people, as can be seen from the reactions to the following tweet, did not understand why GB News was asking the question Maguire was to answer that evening:
When asked what he had ever done for his country, Maguire pompously replied, ‘I do my duty talking to people like you’. I rather like the reply about removing salary and perks from Northern Ireland’s MLAs who refuse to meet at Stormont. They had been out for a three-year period not so long ago, then reconvened, then dissolved again over Brexit-related issues. It’s no big deal for MLAs, because they get paid salary and expenses (for what?):
Christmas broadcasts
Millions of people tuned in at 3 p.m. on Christmas Day in the UK to watch the Queen’s pre-recorded addresses to the nation. My far better half and I missed only one; we were out of the country at the time.
Millions more tuned in from Commonwealth countries where her Christmas messages were also broadcast.
A selection of these messages follows. Faith features in many of them.
In 1960, she opened by greeting the Commonwealth and sending good wishes from herself and her family for Christmas and the New Year. She expressed her gratitude for all the letters and telegrams that she received from people all over the Commonwealth on the birth of her second son (Andrew). Those messages ‘made me feel very close to all the family groups throughout the Commonwealth’. She was looking forward to visiting India and Pakistan then Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Gambia in 1961. Then she said that 1960 was a year of less than pleasant events, although she mentioned no specifics. She said that we can influence the world through our personal behaviour, clinging ‘most strongly to all those principles we hold to be right and good’. Only that could ‘halt and reverse a growing tendency towards violence and disintegration’. She said that one sign of good news was the way in which Nigeria achieved independence that year, and she was happy that it remained part of the Commonwealth. She was also happy about the growing co-operation among those countries. There was no religious message that year:
Her 1975 address is just as relevant today as it was nearly 50 years ago. At the 1:30 mark, she spoke of people being ‘dominated by great impersonal forces beyond our control, the scale of things and organisations seem to get bigger and more inhuman’ and of inflation, ‘the frightening sickness of our world today’. She then spoke of the happiness of Christmas and our Lord’s life on earth, saying that His love and example has ‘made an enormous difference to the lives of people who have come to understand His teaching’. She added, ‘His simple message of love has been turning the world upside down ever since’. She then examined His commandment to love one another as we love ourselves, saying, ‘It is a matter of making the best of ourselves, not just doing the best for ourselves’ and ‘If we do this well, it will also be good for our neighbours’. She added, ‘Kindness, sympathy, resolution and courteous behaviour are infectious’. That year’s theme — terrorism — came at the end. The point was that, together, we can ‘defeat the evils of our time’:
1997’s was very newsy and began with Westminster Abbey, where she and Prince Philip celebrated their golden anniversary. Princess Diana’s funeral took place there, too. Windsor Castle was ready to reopen after the devastating fire from 1992. She welcomed her dear friend Nelson Mandela to the Palace. She spoke about the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting that year. Wales and Scotland were preparing for devolution. Unity and kindness were big themes near the end. She ended by saying that St Paul spoke of the first Christmas as the kindness of God dawning upon the world (8:26). The world needs that kindness now more than ever, the kindness and consideration of others. She said it was important for people to show ‘kindness and respect for one another’. She added that Christmas is a reminder that God is with us today, but, as she had discovered that year, He is always present in the kindness and love from our friends and family:
Her 2015 message topped the television ratings for Christmas Day. The Telegraph reported:
The Queen’s speech topped the Christmas Day television ratings, as nearly 7.5 million viewers tuned in to watch her festive broadcast across the BBC and ITV.
The message, in which Her Majesty reflected on atrocities across the world in 2015, was watched by 6.1m people on the BBC and 1.3m on ITV.
The last ever episode of Downton Abbey drew the highest viewing figures of any single programme, with an audience of 6.9m.
The ITV show, in which much-loved characters got their happy endings, attracted a 30% share of all viewers last night.
In 2017, she said (6:27) that it was Jesus Christ’s love and selfless example that has influenced her own life of service:
In her last address — 2021, the year of Prince Philip’s death — she said that the teachings of Jesus Christ had formed the bedrock of her faith. She added that His birth meant a new beginning for the world, citing the carol, ‘The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight’ (6:15):
Patience
In March 2022, a small piece of needlework went up for auction.
Princess Elizabeth stitched it when she was only five years old. The Mail has a photo of the postcard-sized embroidery sampler. The precision stitching is remarkable for a small child:
A delightful embroidered card made by the Queen as a child is tipped to fetch £5,000 at auction.
The then five-year-old Princess Elizabeth painstakingly stitched an image of a baby in a green and pink pram to give to royal physician Sir Frederick Still in 1932.
She also signed her name ‘Lilibet’ on a letter thanking Sir Frederick for her ‘new dolly with a squeak in the tummy’.
The little princess’s stitching was far better than her handwriting.
The article continues:
The deeply personal items are part of a collection of royal memorabilia that will go under the hammer at David Lay & FRICS in Penzance, Cornwall, on Thursday.
It also includes letters sent to Sir David by the Queen Mother, who built up a close relationship with the physician during his years in service to the Royal Family.
Among the most touching is a letter dated December 26, 1930 that was dictated by the then four-year-old Princess Elizabeth to her mother.
It reads: ‘Dear Doctor Still. I loved my dolly that had a squeak in her tummy. Thank you for my lovely dolly, and we laughed at the squeak so much. Did you have a nice Christmas? From Lilibet.’
The young princess signed her own name and her mother added the postscript: ‘A dictated letter!’
In 1927 the Queen Mother wrote to Sir David to thank him for looking after Princess Elizabeth while she joined King George VI, then the Duke of York, on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, leaving her young daughter at home …
Dr Still, who died in 1941, worked at Guy’s Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Evelina Hospital of Sick Children.
The Londoner, often referred to as the ‘father of British paediatrics’, rose from humble beginnings to become Physician to the Royal Household and was knighted in 1937.
No doubt patience developed from an early age served the Queen well during her time as an Army mechanic during the Second World War:
Perseverance
The Queen had not only patience but also perseverance.
Both were put to the test in 1992, which she famously described as her ‘annus horribilis’.
Royal biographer and Mail columnist Robert Hardman covered the events of 1992 in his book Queen Of Our Times: The Life Of Elizabeth II which appeared in March 2022:
It was a bold assignment. On the morning of October 22, 1992, the Royal car pulled up outside the Kreuzkirche church in Dresden, to be greeted by an uncomfortable silence. Next came a few boos. Then came the first egg …
… strong emotions were in play as the Queen embarked on her 1992 state visit to Germany. It was her first since the fall of the Berlin Wall, reunification and the collapse of Communism across Eastern Europe. Hence her visit to Dresden.
However, Her Majesty managed to turn around the mood:
Her speech at the German president’s banquet touched millions, as she proclaimed: ‘The Iron Curtain melted in the heat of the people’s will for freedom’ …
That a trip of this sensitivity and magnitude should have barely registered in British minds at the time – or since – is testimony to the relentless and enduring awfulness of 1992.
In terms of their scale, suddenness and variety, the calamities which befell the Monarch in the course of that dismal year still seem incredible.
Her problems began in January, which cast a pall over any celebrations for her 40th year on the throne:
In a memo to the Prime Minister, John Major’s private secretary, Andrew Turnbull, added a handwritten note: ‘Prime Minister to be aware of the Queen’s attitude to her 40th anniversary.’
Just two ideas met her approval.
One was former premier Jim Callaghan’s proposal for a dinner given by her Prime Ministers. The other was for a luncheon given by the City of London. That lunch would go down in history for a single phrase: ‘Annus horribilis.’
Fergie was the first problem:
The trouble had started in January, when newspapers discovered photographs of the Duchess of York on holiday with an American oil executive, Steve Wyatt. Their existence reinforced widespread gossip that the Yorks’ marriage was close to collapse.
The Duke of York ‘hit the roof’ and the couple began consulting divorce lawyers.
The next disaster was Charles and Diana’s marriage:
Meanwhile, the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was also starting to unravel in public.
In February, the Princess posed for the cameras in front of that eternal symbol of love, the Taj Mahal, while all alone. The messaging was clear.
The next PR issue was Anne’s divorce from her first husband:
… in April, the divorce of the Princess Royal was finalised. She had been separated – amicably –from Mark Phillips for some years. The Princess stuck doggedly to her duties through it all.
The Queen took it in her stride:
The Queen was very sad about her children’s marital problems – but not shocked. As she put it to one courtier: ‘You know, I’ve decided I’m not old-fashioned enough to be Queen.’
Then came Andrew Morton’s book, Diana: Her True Story.
Fergie re-entered the scene during the summer:
… the Daily Mirror recorded one of the highest sales in its entire history with intimate photographs of a topless Duchess of York on yet another holiday, this time with her ‘financial adviser’, John Bryan.
The Duchess was staying with the Queen at Balmoral, together with her daughters, when she came down in the morning to find members of the family agog at ten pages of unvarnished ignominy.
As did Diana:
The Sun, produced an equally devastating … recording of an innuendo-charged conversation between the Princess of Wales and James Gilbey, an old friend who had been one of the sources for Morton’s book. Could things get worse? Yes – but the Queen continued to hold her nerve.
The Queen made sure that, despite their marital woes, the Prince and Princess of Wales fulfilled their obligation of undertaking a tour of Korea for the Foreign Office.
Once they returned home, tensions resumed:
Just days after their arrival home, Charles and Diana had a row which would push their marriage to the point of no return. Their sons were about to have an exeat weekend from prep school.
The Prince had arranged for the couple to present a united front over a family-oriented shooting weekend with friends at Sandringham.
With only a week to go, however, the Princess announced that she wanted to take William and Harry elsewhere, thus tearing up the Prince’s plans.
It was starting to feel like the end of the road for both parties.
At the end of that week, the Prince resolved the time had come to commence separation plans and to call in his lawyers the following week.
Around that time, Windsor Castle caught fire on the morning of Friday, November 20:
… the first clouds of smoke were suddenly seen billowing out from the state apartments of Windsor Castle.
A major maintenance project was in progress, shielded from view by some heavy drapes. The fire began in the Queen’s private chapel.
‘Behind the curtains, which were obviously closed, were spotlights that lit up the altar and the ceiling,’ the Duke of Edinburgh explained to me, after the restoration. ‘After a bit, the lights got hot and set fire to the curtains, and the flames went up’ …
Miraculously, there were no serious injuries or deaths and only one painting was lost – Sir William Beechey’s colossal 1798 portrait George III And The Prince Of Wales Reviewing Troops.
The Duke of Edinburgh was overseas at the time, but the Queen quickly drove down from London. She had a very specific mission in mind.
‘She went into her own apartments to take a few precious things to safety, because only she knew what they were and where they were,’ says Charles Anson, her press secretary at the time. As a result, she suffered a small amount of smoke inhalation on top of a nasty cold.
Four days later came the 40th anniversary lunch at the Guildhall in the City of London:
With her throat still hoarse from both her cold and the smoke, she began: ‘Nineteen Ninety-Two is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘annus horribilis’.’
Though this would be the phrase remembered for ever more, the main point of the speech was not to dwell on her own misfortune (or ‘One’s Bum Year’, as The Sun put it). Rather, it was to ask for a little more understanding from the Monarchy’s critics.
There was a big furore about who should foot the bill for the extensive repairs needed at Windsor Castle:
Even the Conservative press called for the Royal Family to ‘listen’ and to offer up some sort of financial sacrifice. The Monarchy would end up providing the money.
Another big furore was about the Queen not paying income tax. With the kerfuffle about Windsor Castle, the Queen decided to pay it. This was a huge development:
What the critics were unaware of was that the Queen and her officials had, for more than a year, been planning a voluntary end to a historic but complex Royal tax exemption, agreed by her father after the Abdication crisis of 1936.
‘Anything in the way of a dictum her father had left her was very important,’ says her former private secretary, Sir William Heseltine.
John Major also says he was against any such reform. However, stung by the latest row about fire repairs, the Queen wanted to bring the plan forward.
So, just two days after her Guildhall speech, Mr Major told Parliament that the Queen and the Prince of Wales would, in future, voluntarily pay tax at the regular rate.
That the Queen was now prepared to go against her father’s wishes – and indeed her Prime Minister – on such a sensitive point defines this decision as one of the most important judgment calls of her reign.
The Queen was exempt from inheritance tax, as are present and future monarchs. So I heard on GB News last night. My reader dearieme has more:
As I understand it, the position now is that there is no inheritance tax bill for anything left monarch-to-monarch. So what she left to Charles is tax-free; anything she left to her other children, or her grandchildren, is taxed in the normal fashion.
In December, Charles and Diana separated.
That same month, Princess Anne remarried:
There was a brief glimmer of happiness for the Queen at the end of that week, as the Royal Family gathered at Crathie Church, Balmoral, for the most modest Royal Wedding in history.
The Princess Royal had insisted on a low-key ceremony for her second marriage, to Commander Tim Laurence. Following a reception of soup and sandwiches, the couple enjoyed a 36-hour honeymoon on the estate while the other guests flew home.
The entire affair is believed to have cost less than £2,000.
The year ended with The Sun leaking the contents of her Christmas address:
When the broadcast finally appeared on Christmas Day, the nation heard her acknowledge her woes, without dwelling on them. ‘As some of you may have heard me observe, it has, indeed, been a sombre year. But Christmas is surely the right moment to try to put it behind us.’
Some of the subsequent years also proved difficult.
1997 was particularly bad:
… the events of 1992 were the prelude to a succession of grave dynastic challenges over several years, including the Princess of Wales’s fateful 1995 Panorama interview – ‘there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded’ – the eventual divorces of both the Waleses and the Yorks, the decommissioning of the Queen’s beloved Royal Yacht and, above all, the tragic loss of Diana in 1997.
It was Tony Blair’s idea to decommission the yacht Britannia. To think, he had only been elected in May that year!
Hardman tells us that it was not Tony Blair’s idea but the Palace’s in dealing with Diana’s death in a way that would resonate with the people:
Though it has become received wisdom that Tony Blair and his new Labour administration somehow ‘saved’ a dithering Monarchy in the febrile days after the Princess’s death in that Paris car crash, a very different, more balanced picture now emerges 25 years on.
Within hours, a key team inside the Palace, led by the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Airlie Lord Airlie, and the Comptroller, Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm Ross, were already drawing up the main elements of Diana’s funeral, which would be one of the most watched Royal events in history.
Lord Airlie recalls his very first instruction to Ross and his colleagues: ‘I said, ‘The one thing is this – don’t look at a file. This has to be de novo.’ In other words, this had to be done quite differently.’
He wrote a memo to the Queen outlining a general plan.
‘For instance,’ he says now, ‘the importance of catching and reflecting the public mood of ‘the people’s Princess’, and ensuring that the ceremony was not overwhelmed by officialdom. I felt, too, that the procession of the coffin to Westminster Abbey should break with tradition and be somewhat radical.’
The key elements were that the event should be public, not private, and as unique as Diana herself. Invitations to the Abbey should range widely and not be governed by what was done at previous Royal funerals. The very next day, he sent all these points to the Queen at Balmoral.
‘The answer came back, saying, ‘Go ahead.’ So that let Malcolm Ross and his chaps get on with the job, which they did brilliantly.’
All this had already been agreed by the time the first emissaries from Downing Street, including Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell had so much as set foot inside Buckingham Palace to discuss the nation’s farewell to the Princess.
2002, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee year, was bittersweet as her sister and her mother died within two months of each other, in February and April, respectively. Even before those sad events, the Queen was concerned whether people would want to celebrate her 50th anniversary:
Could her Golden Jubilee replicate the astonishing success of the 1977 Silver Jubilee?
‘There’s no doubt she was not confident about it,’ a former senior staff member told me. ‘She had been knocked by those many years of trials and tribulations.’
No sooner had the celebrations started than Princess Margaret died, aged 71. The Queen was as sad as she had ever been.
Always protective of free-spirited, mercurial Margaret since the nursery, she had spoken to her almost every day of her life. Weeks later, she lost her mother, too.
An estimated one million people turned out to watch the Queen Mother’s coffin make its final journey from Westminster Abbey to St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
I paid my respects at Westminster Hall.
Robert Hardman continues:
Yet, just days later, after a bare minimum of Court mourning, the Queen embarked on her Golden Jubilee tour of the UK.
The crowds were colossal and deeply appreciative wherever she went.
For many, however, the spirit of that Jubilee summer was summed up by the sight of Queen guitarist Brian May playing a national anthem riff on the Palace roof.
Yes! As I mentioned in another post this week, my better half and I were at dinner near the Palace the night of the concert. I went up to the venue’s terrace and heard Elton John. There was a real buzz in the capital.
It was a superb Jubilee year.
The next difficult year was 2021 when Prince Philip died during our semi-lockdown for the pandemic. Guests were limited to close family. The Queen sat alone, wearing a black mask.
Still, our monarch’s faith, patience, perseverance — and resilience — got her through those troubling times in her reign. She showed us such an excellent example of how to live — and serve — based on biblical principles.
It is hard to believe that Queen Elizabeth II died only seven months ago and that it was one year ago that her Platinum Jubilee celebrations were just about to begin. That first weekend in June 2022 was a memorable one.
This post focuses on the Queen in film.
Royal Family
In 1969, a controversial documentary aired not only in the UK but in other countries around the world: Royal Family.
As I mentioned before, I saw it when I was growing up in the United States and found it fascinating.
This was the first time that Britain’s Royals were seen up close and personal. In fact, one wonders if any other royal family ever allowed the cameras in for hours and days at a time.
Some commentators panned the programme at the time. Not surprisingly, that narrative prevails today. Yet, it was well received here and in the United States, although the media did wonder if there would be any negative repercussions for the family as a result.
I was glad to see that The Mail carried an excerpt on the subject from Royal biographer — and Mail columnist — Robert Hardman’s book, Queen of Our Times, on April 5, 2022. The article also includes two still photos from it — not to be missed. Emphases mine below:
The Royal Family took part in the film, which was a combined effort between the BBC and ITV, in a bid to show they were just like their subjects, which quickly became a British phenomenon.
It was watched over two weekends to rave reviews in June 1969, but was last shown three years later after reports Buckingham Palace feared it ‘let the magic out’ about the royals.
However in new book Queen of Our Times, Daily Mail Columnist Robert Hardman argued many in the royal household actually raved about the film, even nicknaming it ‘Carry On Reigning’.
He wrote: ‘Half a century on, some commentators have suggested that the family quickly came to regard it all as a terrible mistake, never to be seen again – a view reinforced by The Crown. Those within the Royal Household remember the complete opposite.’
Hardman has covered the royal family extensively for the Daily Telegraph and, since 2001, writes for the Daily Mail.
And as opposed to the film being banned from appearing on screen because it had offended the Queen, Hardman said it hadn’t been shown because of copyright issues.
He wrote: ‘From the outset, the film was only ever supposed to have a limited timespan before being locked away.
‘Royal Family was not news footage, like the coronation or a state visit. Rather, it was seen as a personal snapshot of its time.
‘The Queen retained the copyright and did not want the material being quarried or adapted for years to come.’
The idea for the documentary, which aired in June 1969, came from the Palace’s new royal press secretary William Heseltine, rather than the Duke of Edinburgh, as the Netflix hos claims.
Heseltine wanted to encourage public support for a monarchy that was increasingly seen as out-of-touch.
The programme was met with praise and proved so popular that it was aired again that same year and once more in 1972.
1972 was the year of the Silver Jubilee, which generated much more excitement and enthusiasm than the media predicted. (No surprise there.)
The article continues:
… [it] hasn’t been broadcast in full since but short clips from the documentary were made available as part of an exhibition for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee 2012.
However, for the most part the original documentary remains under lock and key with researchers having to pay to view it at BBC HQ, only after getting permission from Buckingham Palace first.
‘You’re killing the monarchy, you know, with this film you’re making,’ the legendary anthropologist and wildlife expert David Attenborough wrote furiously in 1969 to the producer-director of the controversial and ground-breaking television documentary, Royal Family.
‘The whole institution depends on mystique and the tribal chief in his hut,’ continued Attenborough, then BBC 2 controller.
‘If any member of the tribe ever sees inside the hut, then the whole system of the tribal chiefdom is damaged and the tribe eventually disintegrates’, he said.
I had no idea that David Attenborough, considered to be a living saint for reasons which escape me, was a BBC controller. No wonder the broadcaster makes such a big deal out of him. It is good to see he was absolutely wrong about Royal Family.
Read his words again. They further reinforce the notion that the British public are nothing more than plebs. Now we know he has believed that for over 50 years. Furthermore, the older he gets the more it seems that he loathes humanity in general. Everything wrong in the world is the fault of everyday people going about their everyday business. He thinks we are common; that is plain to see in his interviews.
The Queen obviously liked him, though, as we’ll see below. She gave him a second knighthood in 2020: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list ‘for services to TV and conservation’.
Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen
On the last Sunday in May 2022, the BBC aired hitherto unseen family film footage of the Queen’s life, beginning with her childhood.
Our appetites were whetted on May 7 that year when The Telegraph reported, complete with stills from Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen:
The footage, unearthed within more than 400 reels of film watched by programme-makers, shows the Queen as a young woman, at the heart of a happy family before the weight of her public responsibility took hold.
It includes scenes of her gazing at an engagement ring just given to her by Prince Philip, before news of their betrothal was shared with the waiting world …
Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen will “offer audiences the chance to witness rare private moments from the monarch’s life”, the corporation said, “telling the real story of her life as a Princess – through her own eyes and in her own words from across her reign”.
It will be narrated largely by the Queen herself, using clips and newsreel audio from her speeches to explain what viewers are seeing.
The 75-minute programme includes footage of the baby Princess Elizabeth being pushed in a pram by her mother, through to her Coronation in 1953 at the age of 27.
All the videos are believed to have been filmed by the Royal Family, firstly by the Queen’s doting parents and later Prince Philip.
… footage from Balmoral, taken in 1951, captures the King’s final visit there before his death, while home film reels show the Queen’s grandfather George V – known to her as “Grandpa England” – sailing off the Isle of Wight in 1931 …
In viewing more than 400 reels of film, producers discovered lost footage from behind-the-scenes at state events, believed to have been privately commissioned by the Royal Family and given to the Queen.
They also listened to more than three hundred of the Queen’s speeches across eight decades of public life.
In common with all royal videos since the 1920s, the homemade recordings had been stored carefully in the Royal Collection vaults of the British Film Institute, with no promise of being aired.
The Platinum Jubilee presented a worthy moment to air them to the public.
The Times had a delightful Twitter thread on the home movies:
If I remember rightly, the BBC rebroadcast the programme after the Queen died last September.
Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts
Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts came out at the end of May 2022, also in time for the Platinum Jubilee.
Unfortunately, its maker, Roger Michell, died in September 2021 before its release.
On May 26 last year, veteran columnist Simon Heffer reviewed the film, which appeared in cinemas, for The Telegraph. Heffer gave it four out of five stars:
Michell, renowned for Notting Hill and who died suddenly and too young last September, pillaged newsreels, films, television news and other documentaries to provide an eclectic, 90-minute, chapter-by-chapter remembrance of Her Majesty’s life, and all the “parts” she has played.
And they are all there: from riding ponies as a child to pottering around in great old age with her contemporary David Attenborough. It is a warts-and-all picture, as directorial integrity must dictate. There is a chapter entitled “Annus Horribilis”, in which the debacle of the Prince of Wales’s marriage to Diana Spencer, the doomed life of the Duke of York, and the accidents-will-happen story of the Princess Royal’s first marriage are interlaced with film of the Windsor Castle fire that seemed at the time, and still, to sum up the mess “The Firm” had got itself into.
It is a mess that comes of trying to run a monarchy in a post-deferential age of 24-hour news while simultaneously rearing a family in the public eye. And it is not just the appearance of the Duke of York that reminds us that this particular chapter is not over: the Sussexes have a walk-on part too.
Speaking of the Sussexes, Meghan would not have wanted the life of a Royal:
Watching the episodic, non-chronological story of the Queen’s life and reign, one is above all aware of how stalwart she is: the endless walkabouts, the myriad presentations of bouquets by winsome children, the relentless factory visits and, above all, the tourist-inducing pomp and ceremony. The effort of all that cheerfulness would kill most people. Anyone who sneers at the notion that hers has been a life of duty can’t have seen this film. In its unconventional, demotic depiction of Her Majesty the film humanises her and makes her seem, frankly, all the more magnificent.
Michell’s film also portrays the deference people showed our late monarch:
Of course things have changed: it is hard to imagine a man smacking a peer of the realm for being mildly rude about the Queen, as someone did to Lord Altrincham in 1957 (Michell included the clip).
I wonder if anyone would defend our present and future monarchs in that way.
Heffer continues:
… we are carried along, paradoxically by the hopping backwards and forwards in time, realising what “continuity” really means; the little girl running around in the garden with her parents and sister 85 years ago is still our Head of State today.
One also realises that, for all her constitutional functions (and the political class plays, fortunately, a small part in the film), the Queen’s main function is to relate to her people: and the film shows how well she has done that. There are amusing snippets of people being told how to address her (“Your Majesty” the first time, “Ma’am” subsequently), where to stand when she is near, and generally what to do; but one realises this is not about making the Sovereign feel comfortable, it is about her vital role of making those she meets feel special. And it appears she does.
Michell did not include the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral at which the Queen sat alone in black, wearing a mask, in April 2021.
Heffer concludes that we learn as much about ourselves over the past 70 years as we do of the Queen:
… he has left us a profoundly moving portrait, made the more so by his poignant choice of music – everything from George Formby and Gracie Fields to the Beatles and Stormzy, reflecting some of the diversity of the culture of those over whom the Queen has reigned. It is first and foremost a picture of her, but it is also a picture of us; … it reminds us not just of her profound decency but also, oddly enough, of ours.
Incidentally, in 2022, the Queen made very few public appearances because of ill health. Her penultimate grand opening was at The Royal London Hospital in April that year. The final one was opening the Elizabeth Line in May.
Of the hospital visit, the Mail reported the following. Note how she replied to everyone with a kind, caring remark. The pandemic was first and foremost on everyone’s minds, including the Queen’s. She, too, had succumbed to the virus:
This week the Queen – who will celebrate her 96th birthday at the end of next week [April 21] – marked the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Unit at The Royal London Hospital, of which she is patron, talking to staff and one former patient.
Wearing a floral dress with a pearl necklace, she said the staff’s work was ‘splendid’.
Nurse Charlie Mort said: ‘The amount of bravery that both the patients and my colleagues showed throughout the entire pandemic was amazing and the amount of kindness we were shown was inspiring. I think we will all be bonded together because of it, forever.’
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it, what can be done when needs be,’ the Queen said.
Imam Faruq Siddiqi, hospital chaplain, said families ‘felt a sense of hope’ when they knew he was visiting their loved ones. ‘Although I didn’t hold any miracles, I hope I was able to bring some sort of comfort to them through my presence and prayers,’ he said.
The Queen replied: ‘It obviously was a very frightening experience to have Covid very badly, wasn’t it?’
Mr Siddiqi said: ‘I think what made it worse was being by themselves.’ ‘Exactly. So they were alone, too,’ the Queen remarked.
Mireia Lopez Rey Ferrer, senior sister, said that the intensive care unit had been ‘unrecognisable’ with so many patients.
‘As nurses we made sure they were not alone,’ she said.
‘We held their hands, we wiped their tears, and we provided comfort. It felt at times that we were running a marathon with no finish line.’
‘It must have been a terrible time for all of you,’ the Queen said. ‘Not seeing your own families and also working so very hard… That [was] the unusual part of it wasn’t it, not being able to meet your relatives and being isolated.’
Asef Hussain, a former patient, explained how he and his family had contracted Covid in December 2020. His father and brother were also treated at the unit for Covid before they passed away.
Mr Hussain, joined by his wife, Shamina, said his brother was admitted first and died that day. He was taken to hospital himself after struggling to breathe and was put to sleep for seven weeks.
‘Once I woke up I saw the brilliant work the nurses, the doctors – the whole team here were doing. They supported me and my family in a fantastic way.
‘Unfortunately while I was asleep my father passed away from Covid as well,’ he said.
‘Are you better now?’ the Queen asked. ‘I’m getting there, I’m recovering, I’m much better,’ Mr Hussain said.
Mr Hussain’s wife explained how she prayed for his recovery on Zoom calls with family around the world. ‘Praying for him, oh wonderful,’ the Queen said.
She added: ‘I’m glad that you’re getting better. It does leave one very tired and exhausted doesn’t it, this horrible pandemic? It is not a nice result.’
The monarch also spoke to the team behind the building of the new unit and burst out laughing when Jeff Barley, project director, told her he plundered his ‘black book’ to find people to help him.
The Queen replied: ‘That is marvellous isn’t it. It is very interesting isn’t it, when there’s some very vital thing, how everybody works together and pulls together. Marvellous, isn’t it.’
Mr Barley hailed the ‘little bit of Dunkirk spirit’ involved, prompting the Queen, smiling, to say: ‘Thank goodness it still exists’, amid laughter. The plaque was then unveiled and held up to show the monarch.
The Royal London Hospital has served the residents of East London for the past 280 years. It was granted its royal title by the Queen during a visit in 1990 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its opening on the Whitechapel site.
On May 17, the Queen opened the Elizabeth Line, a magnificent crossrail project linking Berkshire to Essex via London. Londoners were thrilled that her health held up. As Guido Fawkes wrote, it was a ‘surprise appearance’.
She did much better than Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did when he had problems paying for a soft drink in a photo opportunity:
Does a Royal peek-behind-the-scenes programme work? Only when the Queen handled it.
Unfortunately, we know too much about most of her descendants already. One way or another, they did away with any mystique they could have had over te years.
Prince William and Princess Catherine would do well to imitate Granny’s example. At the moment, we know just enough about them without knowing too much. However, I would suggest waiting about 10 or 20 years, because right now we are hearing too much from and about the Sussexes.
As the Queen knew well, timing is everything.
As Platinum Jubilee celebrations were just about to start one year ago, it seemed apposite for me to continue to remember the Queen.
Yesterday’s post pointed out that she was the most portrayed person in all of history.
Although the Queen led a charmed life for all her 96 years, she had a sense of Royal duty from the time she was 10 years old when her uncle Edward VIII abdicated.
On September 8, 2022, Politico had an interesting obituary with specially commissioned portraits of the late monarch. Given that Politico is not at all associated with love of the monarchy, the portraits were sensitively done.
Excerpts follow from the article, emphases mine.
Regal silence
There is no question that the Queen’s demeanour helped her to make her 70 years as Head of State dignified and memorable. She was:
a revered figure who donned crowns, opened parliaments and asked people who they were and what they did at garden parties. It was she who stared out Mona Lisa-like from banknotes and who became head of state to 150 million people, from Papua New Guinea to Canada, and one of the most famous people of her time …
Lauded globally — she stood alongside the Dalai Lama and the pope as one of those rare definite articles who seemed to be above scrutiny. So much so that even die-hard republicans would temper their calls for an end to the monarchy by saying: “But the queen has done a fantastic job.”
She succeeded at that job, in no small part, by making a virtue out of silence. She stubbornly refused to be interviewed, examined or subjected to scrutiny. While younger royals broke the fourth wall of monarchy, the queen remained quiet and immutable.
Indeed, it was by keeping her official alter ego as vague as the unwritten British constitution, and her private persona hidden away altogether, that Elizabeth II became the most successful sovereign since Victoria, bringing relevance to a feudal institution that was 200 years past its sell-by date.
But because of that, in writing the story of her life, it is almost impossible to find out who she really was beneath the hats and robes and jewels.
The queen was an abstraction: a role, like any other — and it was the person behind her, Elizabeth Windsor, who expertly played the part …
This is the life of Elizabeth Windsor.
Life at 145 Piccadilly
Politico tells us of Princess Elizabeth’s birth:
She was born by caesarean section on April 21, 1926, to her mother, also Elizabeth, the Duchess of York. As was then the custom, the Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks, was present — just in case she was swapped for someone who was not of royal birth.
As Princess Elizabeth, she was third in line to the throne, with her uncle Edward the presumed heir apparent.
Her parents, the Duke and Duchess of York, had no ordinary London residence:
Official biographers like to make much of her “ordinary childhood” and the very normal-sounding York family address at 145 Piccadilly in the heart of London. In truth, the address was no common or garden terraced home. It was a substantial palace, with 25 bedrooms, a ballroom, a library and an enormous garden.
Royal Central has more:
Following her birth on April 21 1926 at the home of her maternal grandparents at 17 Bruton St Mayfair, the baby Princess Elizabeth moved to the house that her parents, the Duke and Duchess of York, had taken at 145 Piccadilly W1. This would be the house in which she would spend the first years of her childhood, as well as White Lodge in Richmond Park. These were the residences where the young princess would live together with her parents and her younger sister Princess Margaret Rose, who was born four years later in 1930. In 1932, the Duke and Duchess of York began to use Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park as a private country residence, when Princess Elizabeth was aged six. During this period of her childhood, Princess Elizabeth also spent time at the country homes of her paternal grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary, and her maternal grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne.
The white terraced, stone-faced residence had a large garden and a semi-basement kitchen. Princess Elizabeth is said to have been taken out by her nanny from this house, for a stroll in the pram through nearby Mayfair to Hyde Park. An old British paramount newsreel recording from 1935 shows the Duke and Duchess of York at 145 Piccadilly, arriving and leaving the property. Among the photographic collection of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, is a photograph of Queen Elizabeth together with the corgi dog Jane taken in the grounds of 145 Piccadilly in around 1936, the fateful year which saw both the abdication of Edward VIII and the accession of her husband the Duke of York to the British throne as King George VI.
The site has been home to the InterContinental London Park Lane for nearly 50 years. The hotel’s history page tells us:
Historical accounts recall a white terraced building, indistinguishable from those on either side of it. There was a semi-basement kitchen, ‘like the giant’s kitchen in a pantomime with its immense shiny copper pots and great fire-range’, Lisa Sheridan.
An extensive garden at the back, shared with other houses, added an element of community. Elizabeth lived in a suite of rooms at the top of the house, consisting of a day nursery, a night nursery and a bathroom linked by a landing, with wide windows looking down on the park. It was not unusual for her nanny to put her in her pram and take a two-hour stroll through Mayfair into Hyde Park.
Other stories relating to Elizabeth’s childhood at 145 Piccadilly told of the Princess allegedly playing games by fetching a small toy, such as a teddy bear or a ball, and dropping it from the nursery landing down the stairwell onto visitors as they arrived at the house.
The best modern day representation of the late Queen’s childhood at 145 Piccadilly can be found in the multiple Oscar-winning film, The King’s Speech. Scenes of the young family trying their best to enjoy London life in the heart of Mayfair during the years of the Depression were actually filmed at 33 Portland Place, but the so-called ‘shabby chic’ interiors are said to be in keeping with the style of the house at that time …
Years later:
The hotel was opened by His Grace the 8th Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley on 23rd September 1975.
Returning to Royal Central:
According to the website ‘Westend at War’, the building was destroyed by a high explosive bomb on 7 October 1940. The same website quotes the source Westminster in War (William Sansom, 1947) to explain that in 1940, the site at 145 Piccadilly was being used as a chief office for a “relief and comforts fund”. The permanent record that was made out by the ARP on this date describing the damage that the house had sustained, is today kept in the Westminster City Archives.
The former 145 Piccadilly is at No. 1 Hamilton Place, the site of which is occupied today by the upscale InterContinental London Park Lane Hotel. The hotel was constructed between 1968- 1975 under the direction of Sir Frederick Gibberd. Close to the five-starred London Hilton and the Four Seasons hotels, it overlooks Hyde Park Corner, together with the Wellington Arch and statue of the Duke of Wellington. Apsley House, also known as Number One, London is located on Hyde Park Corner and is the London home of the Dukes of Wellington. The InterContinental London Park Lane is proud of the royal connection with the location on which the hotel stands and has been welcoming guests ever since it opened.
Scene Therapy has photos of young Princess Elizabeth with her two first corgis as well of photos of 145 Piccadilly as it was when she lived there.
We discover that it was a modest residence by Royal standards of the day:
In 1926, Princess Elizabeth of York was born in her maternal grandparents’ Mayfair townhouse at 17 Bruton Street. A year later, the new family moved a few blocks away to Piccadilly; one of the most exclusive addresses in the capital. Piccadilly is a busy central London road that stretches from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner, with famous establishments lining the route such as The Ritz, The Royal Academy and Fortnum & Mason. Throughout the 19th century and into the early 1900s, Piccadilly was also home to some of the most elite townhouses in the country, with residents including the Rothschilds, the Duke of Wellington, Lords and Vice-Admirals. The handsome homes that made up ‘Piccadilly Terrace’ featured spacious rooms with high ceilings and large windows set across 4-5 floors including servants quarters, all with views of Green Park.
For senior royals to reside in a townhouse, however grand, was considered rather unusual. At the time, however, Britain was suffering significant austerity thanks to The Great War and subsequent Great Depression, so King George V requested his family reign-in their spending and consider more ‘modest’ abodes. So The Yorks lived at 145 Piccadilly during the week and retired to The Royal Lodge on the Windsor Estate at weekends.
145 Piccadilly featured an abundance of panelling, mouldings and ornate plasterwork, with drawing room details gilded in gold and double doors encased in arched doorways. The interiors are packed with antique furnishings including a large 17th Belgian tapestry hung at the rear of the drawing room featuring a woodland scene woven by Marcus de Vos, and a ceramic and gilt-bronzed mantel clock by Balthazar à Paris, both now housed in the Royal Collection Trust. Other furniture and objects from 145 Piccadilly can now be seen in various royal residences across the UK, such as the portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother that stands at the rear of 145’s drawing room, which can now be seen hung in the library ante-room at Prince Charles’ Clarence House.
The houses that made up Piccadilly Terrace featured the full range of floors expected of a smart aristocratic residence including an attic floor, usually home to servants’ sleeping quarters, a chamber floor for principle bedrooms and nursery rooms (such as the Day Nursery and Night Nursery as seen included in the images below), a drawing room floor, which housed private rooms including a boudoir and spacious library, the ground floor, home to reception rooms, and a basement where staff rooms, kitchens, pantries and other utility rooms featured.
… Though 145 Piccadilly was considered ‘modest’ by royal standards, the interiors proved to be more befitting of the London homes of other aristocrats such as the nearby Apsley House or Spencer House, which both still stand today. 145 and its adjacent homes on Piccadilly Terrace were damaged during WWII before eventually being torn down …
Returning to Politico, we learn of the nannies:
Photos of the era depict Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret being doted on by their mother and father, but in truth, they were brought up by an army of servants and rarely saw their parents. Childcare was left to two nannies: Clara Knight, a strict disciplinarian who instilled fear and good manners, and Margaret MacDonald.
Margaret ‘Bobo’ MacDonald
Incredibly, Margaret MacDonald remained by the Queen’s side for life:
MacDonald was the only person outside of the royal family who was allowed to call Elizabeth by her family nickname Lilibet, and she shared a bedroom with her charge until she was 11 years old. Lilibet’s first word, “Bobo,” was addressed to MacDonald — and the nickname stuck.
Every morning, MacDonald brought Elizabeth a cup of tea, laid out her clothes and ran her daily bath. Effectively prohibited from marriage — to have done so would have cost her the job — MacDonald dedicated her life to the queen until her death in 1993.
“In her later years Bobo held a unique position in Buckingham Palace, having her own suite, no duties, and enjoying a closer personal friendship with the queen than practically anyone else, including some of the queen’s closest relatives,” wrote Douglas Keay, author of “The Queen: A Revealing Look at the Private Life of Elizabeth II.”
But we know nothing more. The loyal servant never gave an interview, never discussed her relationship with her mistress and died with her secrets intact.
Marion ‘Crawfie’ Crawford
Marion Crawford was the opposite of Bobo MacDonald with regard to discretion.
Crawford was the princesses’ governess.
Most people will know her story, as she was one who fell from grace for disloyalty.
Politico summarises what happened:
Crawfie was the Yorks’ very own Mary Poppins, steering her charges through the change in their circumstances when their uncle abdicated and their father unexpectedly became king. If Bobo was a surrogate mother, Crawfie was an older sister, role model and friend.
But by 1947, neither Elizabeth nor Margaret had need of a governess, and aged just 39, Crawfie was retired.
Two years later she accepted an offer to write a book called “The Little Princesses,” which caused a sensation when it was published in 1950.
Despite having approved the project, the queen mother declared that Crawfie had “gone off her head,” and the woman who had devoted the first part of her life to the monarchy was unceremoniously ghosted.
The incident was all the more remarkable given the book was a wholly affectionate memoir and showed the royal family in a very good light. Her fate was probably sealed by one or two turns of phrase that hinted at the king’s bad temper during the war.
Nonetheless, “to do a Crawfie” became royal slang for treachery. Deprived of her grace and favor, Crawford disappeared from official records and narratives in a manner that would have put Soviet propagandists to shame.
The impact on Crawfie cannot be understated. She attempted suicide twice. Later in life, she moved close to the Balmoral estate in the hope that she might one day chance upon her old charge and that amends could be made. But the moment never came. When she eventually died in 1988, the royal family sent not so much as a wreath to the funeral.
We don’t know how this affected Elizabeth. Nor do we know how much of a role she played in perpetuating Crawfie’s misery. But this brutal and callous dispatching of such a close confidante and loyal friend speaks volumes about the family that is sometimes referred to as “The Firm.”
The lifeblood of the monarchy is self-preservation. Nobody is indispensable. Nobody is bigger than the machine. Throughout the queen’s reign, that ruthless self-preservation — so at odds with her image — would rear its head again and again.
It seems as if Politico missed Tatler‘s 2020 article about Marion Crawford and her husband, which is much more nuanced. It comes complete with photos and its author, Wendy Holden, tells an amazing story:
… the original scandal of the Queen’s life – also chronicled in a book that lays bare royal secrets – doesn’t exist in the Windsor Cloud. For 70 years, it successfully ‘disappeared’. Few accounts of the time afford it more than a footnote. The protagonist’s name, though, remains a byword for betrayal.
The unimaginable bounder this suggests was none other than a young Scottish teacher. Marion Crawford was governess to Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, aged six and almost two when she arrived in 1932. She stayed for 17 years. ‘Crawfie’, as they fondly called her, was not only their teacher, but their constant confidante and companion.
Crawfie guided the girls through the drama of the abdication of their uncle, the upheaval of their parents’ accession and the trauma of the Second World War, when she took them to Windsor Castle’s dungeon bomb shelters as Heinkels roared above. Later, she was there when Elizabeth met Philip. Yet, at the end of her service, the royals cut her off. The reason? A harmless memoir, The Little Princesses.
I came across it by accident in a second-hand bookshop on a rainy day. It immediately became the inspiration for the royal-themed novel I’d always wanted to write. The Governess, my new book, fictionalises Marion Crawford’s time with the Royal Family. It shines a new light not only on the Queen’s little-known childhood, but on the lively young teacher who helped make her the monarch she is today …
The Duchess of York poached her sister’s servant:
It could have been so different. Crawfie never intended to teach royalty – rather, the other end of the social scale. Her vocation, she felt, was in the slums of Edinburgh. ‘I wanted desperately to help… but,’ as she puts it in The Little Princesses, ‘something else was coming my way.’ That would be the famously charming Queen Mother (then Duchess of York), whose sister Crawfie worked for during the holidays. Spotting the young teacher’s potential, she poached her, persuading Crawfie to come for a trial ‘to see if you like us and we like you’.
Even though Crawford had spent the day travelling from Scotland to Windsor, she was expected to start work on arrival:
Crawfie, with her progressive ideas, was certain she wouldn’t like them. It didn’t help that she arrived at Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, late at night. Since Lilibet (as they called Princess Elizabeth) had insisted on staying awake, an exhausted Crawfie, straight off the train, was obliged to stagger into the nursery. Here, a child was sitting up in bed, yanking on dressing gown cords tied to the bedposts. ‘I’m driving my horses round the park,’ she winningly explained.
It was love at first sight for them both. And so Crawfie stayed, but with caveats.
It was Crawford who showed them how the other half lived. She took the princesses on all manner of distinctly un-Royal visits:
She thought the Royal Family stuffy and wanted to bring normality and fun to her pupils’ sequestered lives. Defying court protocol, she took them on the Tube, shopping at Woolworths, swimming at public baths and even helped set up a Buckingham Palace Girl Guide group. This exposure to the ordinary has proved invaluable to the Queen.
Despite these daring things, everything went well.
Then, after Crawford’s retirement in 1947, as the princesses were old enough not to need a governess anymore, there was an intersection of the Queen (as the Duchess of York became), an American magazine, and Crawford’s husband with the governess stuck in the middle:
What became The Little Princesses seems originally to have been the Queen Mother’s idea. The then Queen Elizabeth thought it would benefit post-war relations if pieces about her eldest daughter appeared in the American press. A palace courtier was chosen to write articles and the now-retired Crawfie, who knew Princess Elizabeth better than anyone, was ordered to tell him all she knew. He, not she, would have the byline and be paid by the magazine, the Ladies’ Home Journal. But Crawfie’s husband, George Buthlay, felt his wife should write her own account and sent her to Queen Elizabeth to ask permission. It was flatly refused and Crawfie prepared to shelve the project. But Buthlay had other ideas – for Crawfie to write a memoir.
It was the beginning of the end, a very painful one for Crawford, who never recovered:
Though different versions of the story have been put forward, the definitive account seems to be this: together with the Ladies’ Home Journal’s unscrupulous editors, Buthlay told his wife that Her Majesty would see the manuscript – that nothing would be published without royal approval. All lies; the book came out regardless, initially as magazine articles. The Royal Family was furious, considering it an act of treachery, and poor Crawfie was cast into the outer darkness.
She fled to Aberdeen and bought a house right on the route that the Royal Family took annually to Balmoral. But her hope that they might one day stop and forgive her proved unfounded. She became depressed and lonely – it had been too late, on retirement, to have children of her own. Crawford left a poignant note on attempting to take her own life: ‘I can’t bear those I love to pass me by on the road.’
That the Windsors maintained their animus until Crawfie’s death in 1988 seems extraordinary, especially as breaches of royal privacy, many self-inflicted, have been numerous since. But at the funeral of the woman who had served them so devotedly, not a single royal flower was sent.
In my opinion, be it ever so humble on matters Royal, the Queen Mother was still very much alive and well when Crawford died. From what I understand, the Queen Mother, as jovial as she appeared in public, ran the family’s private affairs with a rule of iron. I think she would have put her foot down at giving Crawford any honour at all. The Royal Family used to be like Las Vegas. What went on behind closed doors stayed there.
What I find puzzling it that, if or since The Little Princesses was published in 1950 and the Queen Mother was so cross, how was it that Crawford and her husband ended up attending a garden party at Holyrood Palace (Edinburgh) in 1952? The Tatler article has a photo of them getting into a chauffeur-driven car to the event.
Nevertheless, it appeared that the Queen had a change of mind late in life:
The material released to mark the Queen’s 94th birthday in April included a few seconds of film in which Crawfie and the princesses are dancing the Lambeth Walk.
Perhaps the scandals besetting the monarchy in recent years have given the Queen a new perspective on an old hurt. Nearly nine decades after that first meeting in the night nursery, has Her Majesty finally forgiven Crawfie?
Prince Philip
Marion Crawford was there when the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth met the man of her dreams.
Politico tells us:
In 1939, in the shadow of war, the 13-year-old princess met her Prince Charming during a visit to Dartmouth naval college.
Philip, then aged 19, was exotic Eurotrash. An exiled Greek prince who had grown up in Paris, he was estranged from his family. His three surviving sisters had married into the Nazi regime. His father was living the life of an aging playboy in Monte Carlo. His mother had been declared insane.
In Britain he found a home. In Elizabeth he found devotion.
She was smitten from the get-go:
In a letter to a cousin, she declared that she had met a “Viking God,” and for the rest of the war the two exchanged letters.
Like almost everything else in the queen’s private world, we know nothing of what they said to each other.
The Queen was less than impressed, so the princess enlisted help from elsewhere in the family:
The queen mother distrusted Philip and nicknamed him “the Hun,” but Elizabeth got her way, finding in Louis Mountbatten, Philip’s uncle, a Machiavellian ally. In 1947 the couple were engaged.
That year, the princess wrote a letter, describing her feelings for her fiancé:
In a rare gushing letter to the author Betty Shew written that same year, we get a tantalizing glimpse of Elizabeth’s feelings. Over four excitable pages. Elizabeth talks about nightclubs and dancing and how they were once pursued thrillingly by a photographer through the streets of London. It’s the letter of a woman who is deeply in love.
The wedding in November 1947 was modest for post-war Britain, but it was still lavish by any standards today:
Their wedding that November was a matter of national celebration. Billed as an “austerity wedding,” it was really nothing of the sort. The union was an excuse for nationwide festivities. Thousands of people descended on London for the event. There were 2,500 presents — including a shawl woven by Gandhi and a diamond and platinum Cartier necklace from the Nizam of Hyderabad.
The war had given the royals a new raison d’etre as a “national family,” and the marriage of the beautiful young princess to the handsome young prince seemed to encapsulate fresh beginnings and a new hope of a better world to come.
Early married life
Princess Elizabeth became a naval wife for a time, but not just any naval wife:
They had two children (Charles and Anne) in quick succession and between 1949 and 1951 lived in Malta, where Philip was serving as a naval officer on HMS Chequers.
Once again, official biographies portray this era as a period of “normality.” It’s not entirely true. They lived in a six-bedroom mansion, and in addition to Bobo, had an army of staff.
More approachability
During the Queen’s reign, the Royal Family began opening up in the 1960s, not least with a multi-episode documentary which I saw when growing up in the US. My parents and I were fascinated and amused in equal parts.
Politico says it was a disaster, but I wonder if the chap who wrote the article was even alive then. The Investiture of the Prince of Wales took place around the same time, which my mother and I got up early to watch. Both programmes helped to demystify the Royals.
At the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, even though the media tried to play down the Royal Family and the Sex Pistols came out with ‘God Save the Queen’, her subjects broke out the bunting and organised street parties. The monarch sent her heartfelt thanks.
Diana and Fergie
What can one say about the wives of Charles and Andrew?
With regard to Diana, I have read in several places then and now that the Queen Mother had a hand in that marriage.
Politico says:
In 1981, the crowds turned out again, this time to watch Prince Charles marry Diana Spencer, and people turned out to wave again. From the fawning coverage, it looked like a fairy tale, but for the royal family, it was the beginning of a tragedy.
The couple had only met a dozen times and had been pushed together in near desperation, and the relationship quickly dissolved into a battle between Diana and The Firm.
The Duchess of York was no angel, but she and Prince Andrew are still together, despite their divorce.
Later jubilees
How wonderful it was to celebrate the Queen’s Golden (2002), Diamond (2012) and Platinum Jubilees (2022). Those of us alive at the time should consider ourselves blessed.
Politico points out that the Golden Jubilee was a departure from the norm. I was having dinner not far away on the night of the concert and could hear the music on the venue’s terrace. It was electric:
… the event was turned instead into a “people’s party,” complete with Brian May playing the national anthem on Buckingham Palace’s roof.
… the queen — having been the nation’s sweetheart and the nation’s mother — was reinvented as the nation’s grandmother …
Even in her teatime years, the Queen continued to surprise us:
As she advanced into her 80s, the outward image of an unsmiling monarch seemed to loosen up a bit. There was a stunt with James Bond actor Daniel Craig at the opening of the 2012 Olympics, when she appeared to jump out of a helicopter, and she made a funny viral video with her grandson Harry in the run-up to the Invictus Games in 2016.
Her Christmas Day messages became softer in tone …
And who can forget her sketch with Paddington Bear last year at the Palace?
An enduring enigma
Politico concludes that we knew the Queen, yet we didn’t know her at all. That was by design:
At the end — the life of Elizabeth remains an enigma.
We know this much about her: She was in essence a countrywoman, of a certain type familiar among the British upper classes. Dry and stiff upper lipped. Raised in singularly cosseted surroundings from which she never strayed far. She adored horses and people who loved horses, and dogs and people who loved dogs.
Interestingly, one of the last films the Queen made, in April 2022, was with her horses at Sandringham. ITV showed the footage a year ago during the Platinum Jubilee weekend. The Mail had the story, complete with photos and a short video:
The monarch, 96, described one of the horses as an ‘extraordinary girl’ and is heard to say she wonders what goes through the creature’s head.
The clips, filmed at the Royal Stud in Sandringham in April, will be shown in a special feature as part of ITV‘s Saturday Platinum Jubilee coverage …
In the clips, the monarch, wearing a black coat and with a floral headscarf wrapped around her head, observed various horses and foals, alongside her trusted bloodstock and racing adviser John Warren …
Gently stroking the coat of one of the horses, the Queen is heard to say: ‘Well it must be three or four years when she came down into Windsor yard, but behaved as though she’d always been there.’
Admiring the horse, she added: ‘Extraordinary girl, aren’t you?’
Another clip showed the Queen asking a horse ‘would you like another one?’, before picking a carrot from a bowl and feeding it.
Later, observing two horses walking alongside each other in the yard, the Queen is heard to say: ‘I often wonder what goes through her head’ …
Her Majesty’s fondness of horses began when she was just four after her grandfather, King George V, gave her a little Shetland pony.
By the age of six she had fallen in love with riding, becoming an accomplished equestrian in her teenage years and has continued to ride for pleasure throughout her life.
From her first appearance at the annual Trooping the Colour to 1986, the monarch would attend the ceremony on horseback.
She first attended the Royal Windsor Horse Show as a horse-mad teenager in 1943. Together with Princess Margaret, the 17-year-old showed off her equestrian prowess by winning the Pony & Dogcart class.
The Queen owns several thoroughbreds for racing after she initially inherited King George’s breeding and racing stock following his death in February 1952.
In 1974, the monarch’s interest in horses was the subject of a documentary title, The Queen’s Race Horses: a Private View, which she herself narrated.
Returning to Politico:
She knew a lot about the things she had inherited and not much about anything else. She drove — fast — about her estates in a beaten-up Land Rover and dedicated her life to fiercely protecting the promulgation of the family firm.
But it was almost as if she was absent from her own story — her legend as rigorously curated and spun as that of any autocrat. To provide her United Kingdom with the monarch she felt it needed, she sacrificed an ordinary life and the other things most of us take for granted. But then the curious nature of hereditary monarchy never offered her another path.
Britain will consider itself lucky to have had such a stalwart head of state. Elizabeth Windsor played the role of queen with unflinching conviction for more than 70 years. In performing the part so well, she has left a hole that might yet prove impossible to fill.
Conclusion
What can we learn from the Queen’s conduct?
Discretion, which, according to an old British saying, is the better part of valour.
Silence, in not saying more than one should.
Order, in everything: attire, appearance and daily life.
Those things coupled with a deep personal faith comprised an extraordinary person.
If we all took these aspects of the Queen’s life to heart and cultivated them, the world would be a much better place.
One year ago, we were on the cusp of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, an event that will not recur for at least a century, probably longer.
This was Tatler‘s cover to celebrate that historic British milestone:
The artist was honoured to have been asked to create the portrait:
The Commonwealth was very important to the Queen and, during her reign, she visited nearly every Parliament building in those countries:
On April 6, in a 70-photo countdown to the Platinum Jubilee, the Royal Family selected one of the Queen with the Commonwealth Heads of State from 1964. It was taken at Buckingham Palace. The Commonwealth was dear to her heart. The Mail published the photo and a report.
The picture:
showcases a dinner party at Buckingham Palace with the Queen smiling as she was joined by Commonwealth Heads of State, including Prime Minister Robert Menzies of Australia, Donald Sangster of Jamaica and Milton Obote of Uganda.
Her Majesty is Head of the Commonwealth, which has grown from 8 to 54 members in the last 70 years.
Explaining the countdown, the Royal family’s Instagram page reads: ‘Over the next 70 days, as we countdown to the #PlatinumJubilee Celebration Weekend, we’ll be sharing an image a day of The Queen – each representing a year of Her Majesty’s 70-year long reign.’
Each of the 70 photos represent a year of the monarch’s seven-decade reign, and each post also highlights a notable moment in history from the same year.
Vogue‘s Platinum Jubilee cover featured a stunning 1957 portrait of her by the late Lord Snowdon. On March 24, The Mail included the photo in their report:
Queen Elizabeth II will appear on the cover of April’s edition of British Vogue for the first time ever in celebration of her Platinum Jubilee.
The cover features a 1957 image of her Majesty, taken by Lord Snowden, the former husband of Princess Margaret. The Queen wears the George IV State Diadem in the photo, which was taken around the time of her tenth wedding anniversary to Prince Philip.
There is no woman who has had her image reproduced as often as the Queen, because she was on all our stamps (even in silhouette), coinage and bank notes, too. That is also unlikely to recur for at least a century, if not longer.
March 17, 2010 was the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s first appearance on British currency. In fact, it was the first time any British monarch’s image had appeared on a bank note, something of which I was unaware.
The Daily Mail had a short but interesting retrospective of the various bank notes and her different portraits during that time:
Kings and queens have featured on coins for centuries, but it wasn’t until March 17 1960 that a monarch’s image was printed on paper currency.
Since then there have been five different portraits of the Queen used – some of them at the same time on different denominations.
The images were produced by Robert Austin (1960), Reynolds Stone (1963), Harry Eccleston (1970 and 1971) and Roger Withington (1990).
From 1970, the Queen’s face was frozen for 20 years, with Mr Eccleston’s image gradually introduced on every note – including the reintroduced-50 in 1981.
But in 1990 Mr Withington sketched the Queen, showing her for the first time as a slightly older-looking woman.
The banknotes and the portraits are included in the free A Decoration-And A Safeguard exhibition which opens at the Bank of England Museum, in London, today.
Another historic event that took place during her lifetime was the shift to new money. This was how the old system worked:
Here is a close up of old currency from 1967:
As Politico‘s obituary of her on September 8, 2022, put it:
The queen was an icon, in the literal sense. She inspired Andy Warhol screen prints, tea towels …
“God save the queen!” the Sex Pistols sang in 1977. “She ain’t no human being!” And they made a compelling point.
A punk image of her appeared on that Sex Pistols’ album cover, too.
Even from the very beginning, Elizabeth Windsor’s image went worldwide. When she was born to the Duke and Duchess of York, as they were at the time, official portraits of mother and child were taken almost immediately. Tatler, which was then a weekly, published them straightaway.
When the Queen turned 84 in April 2010, the Palace released unseen photos of her as a toddler. On April 20 that year, The Telegraph reproduced one of the images and reported:
The photographs form part of an exhibition of the work of the photographer Marcus Adams, which opens at Windsor Castle on Saturday.
The 56 images on display include pictures of the then Princess Elizabeth which were taken to be sent to her mother and father, the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, while they were on a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand.
Among the collection is a poignant letter from the Princess’s nanny, Clara Knight, which reflects how many landmarks of their young daughter’s life the then Duke and Duchess of York missed while they were on the tour.
The note, written on March 8, 1927, reads: “If Mummy looks into my wide open mouth with a little magnifying glass she will see my two teeth. Elizabeth is quite well & happy!”
Lisa Heighway, the collection’s curator, explained that, in those days, Royal children were not taken on long, official tours. They stayed at home with their nanny. However, times change, and a young Prince William joined the then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana on their tour of Australia.
On May 30, 2022, The Mail republished a selection of newly colourised candids of the Queen from her infancy through to young adulthood:
Newly colourised photos of the Queen as young woman have given a glimpse at Princess Elizabeth as you’ve never seen her before …
The photos have been discovered in the TopFoto archives, documenting moments throughout the Queen’s life from her birth in 1926 to 1952, just before she ascended the throne.
Another photo many readers will not have seen is this one from the 1960s:
Until 2022, the Queen distributed Maundy Money to pensioners in England every Maundy Thursday. On April 9, 2009, The Telegraph published a set of photographs from her visit that year to St Edmundsbury Cathedral, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. In case anyone was wondering:
Initially the sovereign gave money to the poor – and washed recipients’ feet. Foot-washing ended with James II in the 17th Century.
On April 8, 2022, The Mail reported that the cancellation was the first one of her reign. Sadly, it turned out to be her last as well:
The Queen has pulled out of the annual Maundy Day church service ‘with regret’, Buckingham Palace has announced.
In a first for her reign, the monarch, who turns 96 this month, will instead be represented by Prince Charles and Camilla at the event, due to be held on April 14.
The service will take place a St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle following a two-year hiatus due to the Covid pandemic.
It comes after the Queen, who suffers from widely-publicised mobility issues, pulled out of the Commonwealth Service last month amid concerns over her health.
In May 2022, a few weeks before her Platinum Jubilee, the Queen’s last grand opening event was that of the eponymous Elizabeth Line, which runs from Reading, Berkshire, through London to Shenfield, Essex, with a branch line going south of the Thames to Abbey Wood.
Conservative MP Greg Hands pointed out that the Queen was surrounded by male world leaders for many years. She is shown taking a short ride on the Elizabeth Line:
On September 8, 2022, The Times posted a splendid collection of photographs from her birth on April 21, 1926 through to her final one, taken just before she met Liz Truss to ask her to form a new government on September 6, 2022.
What do we learn from the Queen’s many photographs and portraits?
Who can better explain than the award-winning art critic Waldemar Januszczak, who wrote a critique of her images for The Times on May 29, 2022, and included a variety of photos and paintings. Emphases mine below:
Think of all those history-changing individuals — Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, Marilyn Monroe. Yet, according to the National Portrait Gallery, Elizabeth II has out-portrayed every one. She is “the most portrayed individual in history.” It’s an extraordinary fact.
The reasons there are so many portraits of her are many and varied. Her longevity has obviously been crucial. As we press our lips to the trumpets and toot our 70 platinum toots most of us will have lived our lives within her reign. The Queen has bookended our existence. She has always been there …
Since she was a small girl, beaming from the cigarette cards pressed into the British fag packet by WD & HO Wills, the camera has loved the Queen. At first it was that Shirley Temple thing she had. As a child she oozed a bouncy blonde confidence. Especially when Princess Margaret was in the shot as well and Elizabeth could adopt the presence of a mildly bossy elder sister.
Yet it was in her princess years, when the cherub of the cigarette cards blossomed into the seriously beautiful heir to the throne, that things really started to heat up between the Queen and the camera. Sociologists, historians and cynics will tell you that these were already years of exponential growth in the image industry — new magazines, new cameras, a new interest in the new. As an entity, the royal family had become actively aware of the need to present a fresh image of itself to its populace. Not just in Britain, but in every corner of the huge pink empire it ruled.
It’s all true. Everybody loves a princess. But any old princess would not have emitted the powerful gamma rays that Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor emitted …
… this particular princess could have been a film star. The line of her neck. The precise bunching of her hair, carefully parted, but with a hint of noirish unruliness. The society photographer Dorothy Wilding saw it too. It was one of Wilding’s perfect royal profiles, taken immediately after the accession in 1952, that became the image repeated on our national stamps.
Later still, Andy Warhol used one of the official state likenesses of her as the basis for a brightly iconic royal screenprint. From the start, Elizabeth Windsor had something about her that lenses go giddy over.
So, yes, the camera loved the Queen. But — and this is where it gets slippery — she evidently loved it back … as a young woman, Elizabeth knew what she had and was never entirely shy about putting it out there. She could smoulder. She could do the half-smile thing. She could look back at us alluringly over a naked shoulder.
The photographer who recognised this most precisely was Cecil Beaton. It started when he was telephoned out of the blue by Buckingham Palace. At the time, the years before and after the Coronation, he was the world’s best known fashion photographer. But a fashion photographer is not a royal photographer. Hiring him was an independent and pointed thing for the Queen to do.
With his rococo details, cascading cloths and bountiful bouquets, Beaton gave the postwar world the fairytale princess it desired. When she became Queen the regalia changed, but not the mood. For him she was always a monarch of the Cinderella dynasty. What Beaton knew from the start, with his fashion training, is that a supermodel had ascended to the British throne.
I have met her only once, while making a film about the art in the Royal Collection. Invited for tea at Buckingham Palace, I was struck by her complexion. She was in her seventies, but her face was as smooth as a piece of Meissen porcelain. Her eyes — butterfly blue at the centre, snow white at the edges — still looked new, as if they had just come out of a Harrods box.
Unfortunately, most of the Queen’s painted portraits were quite dismal:
Most of the painters she has turned to have come from that bleak institution: the Establishment School of Untalented Lackeys. The results have been bad likenesses or very uninteresting ones. The fashionable Italian Pietro Annigoni had perhaps the best go in 1955 when he painted the recently crowned monarch in a traditional manner — the post, post, post-Renaissance style. The results were close enough to one of Beaton’s royal photographs to remain charming. Just.
Annigoni’s is my favourite. Warhol’s is my next favourite. Both are in the article.
Januszczak surmises that the Palace wanted to downplay the Queen’s regal aura by commissioning less-than-stellar portrait artists:
What happened, I think, is that the confidence and charisma of the princess years were brushed aside by a Palace strategy that demanded a more humble, less privileged royal portraiture. In an effort to ingratiate themselves with the Joneses, the Windsors began to downplay their aristocracy.
I could not agree more, and it is a shame. The Queen deserved far better, which makes the portraits of her youth so enticing. We want to go back to them all the more. Their beauty and composition draw us in. Can we look at them only once? No. We return for a second and a third look.
More on the Queen to follow tomorrow. How I wish she were still alive.
Last week, I wrote about society photographers Richard Young and Dafydd Jones.
The first famous high society photographer of the 20th century was Cecil Beaton. Unlike Young and Jones, however, Beaton was of his world and in it.
Early years
Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was born in London’s leafy Hampstead on January 14, 1904.
His grandfather had founded a timber merchants firm and Cecil’s father Ernest, an amateur actor, worked for the company. Ernest and his wife Etty had four children. Their other son, Reginald, died prematurely in 1933.
Young Cecil and his siblings had the best of everything, including a nanny. She had a Kodak 3A camera which she taught him how to use. Fascinated, Cecil began taking pictures of his sisters and mother.
When he became proficient, he began sending his photographs to society magazines.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Education
Cecil attended Heath Mount School, still in Hampstead at the time, then went to Harrow in north west London. Although he had little interest in school, he ended up at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read history, art and architecture. By then, he was making contacts at Cambridge as he continued to photograph. He also designed theatre costumes. It was during those years that he had his first photo published in Vogue and two photos of his sister Nancy in Tatler. He went down from Cambridge in 1925 with no degree. However, London beckoned, so he returned to the capital and never looked back.
The 1920s and the Bright Young Things
In the 1920s, Beaton’s world intersected with that of a former classmate of his, Evelyn Waugh, who used to bully him at Heath Mount School. As a young adult, Waugh had his novel Vile Bodies published. It featured high society characters ‘the Bright Young People’, also called the Bright Young Things.
A 2020 Tatler article, ‘Stars in his eyes: Cecil Beaton and his Bright Young Things’ describes that world and his role in it, complete with photographs (emphases mine):
Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties’ – this was how Evelyn Waugh depicted the era of the 1920s, when the elite of the younger generation, determined to throw off the gloom of the Great War, dedicated themselves to entertainment. As Waugh portrayed them in his novel Vile Bodies, the Bright Young People (or Bright Young Things, as others called them) were funny, frenzied and frivolous, capering from party to party. Among them, and, like Waugh, an astute recorder of the period, was the photographer Cecil Beaton, whose portraits of the era’s leading lights make up the dazzling cast of Bright Young Things, a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
Unfortunately, the exhibition had to be cancelled because of the pandemic. This Tatler article has a set of photographs from it.
Beaton and Waugh never did become friends:
Beaton had been at prep school with Waugh, who bullied him cruelly. Beaton later described Waugh as ‘a very sinister character’, while Waugh pilloried Beaton in Decline and Fall as the society photographer David Lennox, who ‘emerged with little shrieks from an Edwardian electric brougham and made straight for the nearest looking-glass’.
Beaton was hardly standing on the sidelines with his camera. He played a lead role in these parties:
Before long he was embedded in a world of aristocracy, theatre and, perhaps most significantly, a circle of exuberant young people intent on immersing themselves in the most extravagant and imaginative forms of self-indulgence …
Within this world, Beaton was both observer and recorder, as well as eager participant, appearing in pink satin and heavy make-up as a 17th-century dandy, as the Madam of a brothel, and in a coat covered in broken eggshells and roses.
Among the many of Beaton’s friends whom he photographed at this period was the very wealthy, very camp Stephen Tennant, son of one of the renowned Wyndham sisters. Tennant adored dressing up and being photographed by Beaton in outrageous poses – in flowing court dress as Queen Marie of Romania at the Impersonation Party, or heavily rouged as the poet Shelley at the Pageant of Hyde Park. After Tennant complimented him on his work, Beaton wrote in his diary: ‘I felt puffed with pride that he so gushed at me.’
Another sumptuous occasion was the Great Pageant of Lovers through the Ages, which took place in 1927 at the New Theatre in the presence of Princess Mary and Princess Arthur of Connaught, with Tennant as Prince Charming in a pink wig and Beaton as Lucien Bonaparte in an ornate satin coat with long tails. Also present were two of the most celebrated actresses of the era, Gladys Cooper, who went as Helen of Troy, and Tallulah Bankhead, as Cleopatra.
In Beaton’s view, he had by now achieved the perfect balance at the centre of two interconnected worlds – society and the theatre. A subject of his who combined both was Lady Diana Cooper, daughter of the Duchess of Rutland and one of the most famous beauties of her day. Her face, as described by Beaton, ‘was a perfect oval, her skin white marble. Her lips were japonica red, her hair flaxen, her eyes blue love-in-the-mist.’ He once photographed her as the Madonna in The Miracle, a play directed by Max Reinhardt, which required Lady Diana, serene and holy, to stand throughout most of the performance motionless in her niche on the wall.
… accurately describing himself as ‘a scheming snob’, Beaton adored being at the centre of this wild and frivolous world. He made friends everywhere …
Also part of the fray were the very wealthy Bryan Guinness and his beautiful wife Diana, one of the Mitford sisters. The young Guinnesses soon became one of the most fashionable couples in town, generous hosts who entertained lavishly …
It was at the very end of the decade, the season of 1929, that the Guinnesses gave an extravagant 1860s party, which, as it turned out, was to be almost the last of the period dominated by the Bright Young People. The spark had already begun to fizzle out and times were changing. In November, Beaton, by now highly paid and much in demand, left for his first visit to America, where in the years to come he was to pursue a remarkable career in Hollywood and New York. His horizons were expanding, his reputation continuing to grow, both as a photographer and as a designer of stage sets and costumes.
Beaton hosted the next big blow out party himself in 1937. At his Fête Champêtre were his friends from the Bright Young Things days a decade earlier. Ever the dandy, he had four changes of attire and the party did not end until 7 a.m. the following day.
The party took place at Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, which he leased between 1930 and 1945:
Here many of the original Bright Young People gathered for a magnificent garden party, photographs of which appeared in Life magazine. The marquee was decorated with flowers and ribbons, the waiters wore animal masks and 30 supper tables were designed to look like ballet dancers.
Beaton entertained frequently and lavishly at Ashcombe House, which is a huge Georgian estate.
His photographs showed up in an important estate collection in 2021. He often took photographs of Dame Edith Sitwell, one of them being in 1926. Dame Edith lived at Weston Hall, which went up for sale that year. Its varied contents later went to auction.
In October 2021, Tatler reported on the contents:
For three centuries, the Sitwells have dominated the literary and artistic landscapes, with generation after generation of writers, eccentrics and creatives amongst their number. Since the 18th century Weston Hall in Northamptonshire has been the family seat, until it was sold earlier this year. Now, its contents are making up a landmark auction at Dreweatts, charting not only the fascinating history of this important family, but also of England itself.
Joe Robinson, Head of House Sales at Dreweatts and taking up the mammoth challenge of cataloguing the works, said, ‘Weston Hall was a fascinating encapsulation of not just the Sitwell family history, but also the social history of Britain over the last few centuries. With the extensive collection of works having been preserved in the house for so long, it has been thrilling to go on a journey of discovery with the family, to uncover so many hidden treasures with such wonderful provenance. The stories behind the works truly enrich the pieces and when you purchase a work from this sale, you know you are buying a true piece of history.’
A veritable treasure trove, highlights of the collection include many artworks that were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in 1994, in a show titled The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s. One such piece is a carved fluorite dress ring featuring two mythical beasts that belonged to Edith Sitwell, one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s. There are multiple other pieces of Edith’s jewellery and clothing included in the sale, who was known for her avant garde fashion sense and sometimes shocking behaviour …
Fans of celebrated society snapper Cecil Beaton will also no doubt be keen to get their hands on a whole cache of rare photographs of the family, up for sale for the first time. One of his most famous portraits was of Dame Edith Sitwell wearing an ostrich feather hat, pictured below, while others included are of Georgia Sitwell, the wife of writer Sacheverell Sitwell, taken circa 1927.
Food critic William Sitwell wrote in The Telegraph at the time that he spent many happy days at Weston Hall and remembers Dame Edith’s many party costumes left for the younger family members in a dressing up box.
He told Tatler:
This sale offers countless individuals and collectors the chance to own items and collections that are part of the fabric of English history. It’s extraordinarily diverse, representing the wide interests and experiences of my family and our ancestors. After the sadness of leaving Weston it will be heart-warming to think that works of art and furniture, which are like so many close friends to myself and my family, will find new homes and become part of new, wonderful collections.
Beaton also snapped the Mitford sisters, who were part of the Bright Young Things. In 2021, one of Nancy Mitford’s novels, The Pursuit of Love, was made into a television mini-series. Tatler reported on the Mitfords’ descendants and introduced the sisters to a new generation. There was no escaping Cecil Beaton or Evelyn Waugh:
Recognised for their beauty, eccentricity, conflicting political views and sharp intellect, the Mitford sisters were undoubtedly the ultimate It Girls of the 20th century. Everyone was captivated by ‘The Six’; whether it was Evelyn Waugh who spent over two decades writing 500 letters to Nancy, Cecil Beaton who captured Diana in theatrical costume time and time again, or youngest sister, Deborah, who later became Britain’s most loved Duchess as The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.
Royal photographer
In July 1939, Beaton’s life took a seemingly improbable new turn.
One day he received a phone call out of the blue. The Victoria & Albert Museum tells us of his diary entry:
The telephone rang. “This is the lady-in-waiting speaking. The Queen wants to know if you will photograph her tomorrow afternoon” … In choosing me to take her photographs, the Queen made a daring innovation. It is inconceivable that her predecessor would have summoned me – my work was still considered revolutionary and unconventional.
That Queen was Elizabeth, George VI’s wife and mother of Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.
I read about that in Tatler. Beaton thought it was a prank call and slammed down the phone on the lady-in-waiting. She patiently rang back to arrange an appointment.
The V&A exhibition has a stunning photograph of the then-Queen Consort in Buckingham Palace Garden as well as subsequent ones of the Royals:
The opportunity to photograph Queen Elizabeth, Queen Consort of King George VI, in 1939 was the high point of Beaton’s career to date. Published two months after the outbreak of the Second World War, his images presented a sense of continuity with a magnificent pre-war Britain. Several wartime sittings of the Queen and her family would reinforce his vision of a seemingly unshakable monarchy and witness the transformation of Princess Elizabeth from girl to young woman.
Beaton created sumptuous backdrops when the photo shoots took place indoors:
The flowers that appear in many of Beaton’s portraits were often picked from his own garden. Cascading arrangements of roses, carnations, lilies and hydrangeas filled the space between a photographic backdrop and the sitter, and were an essential prop in the creation of his idealised pastoral scenes.
Beaton was enamoured of the Royal ladies. Wikipedia says:
Beaton often photographed the Royal Family for official publication.[17] Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was his favourite royal sitter, and he once pocketed her scented hankie as a keepsake from a highly successful shoot.
War photographer
Not many of us probably know that Beaton also became a celebrated war photographer, so much so that he is partially credited for America’s entry into it. Wikipedia says that, in between his Royal photo shoots:
… the Queen recommended him to the Ministry of Information (MoI). He became a leading war photographer, best known for his images of the damage done by the German Blitz. His style sharpened and his range broadened, Beaton’s career was restored by the war.[16]
… During the Second World War, Beaton was first posted to the Ministry of Information and given the task of recording images from the home front. During this assignment he captured one of the most enduring images of British suffering during the war, that of 3-year-old Blitz victim Eileen Dunne recovering in hospital, clutching her beloved teddy bear. When the image was published, America had not yet officially joined the war, but images such as Beaton’s helped push the Americans to put pressure on their government to help Britain in its hour of need.[5]
After the war ended, Beaton bought a stately manor, Reddish House, in Wiltshire, more about which below.
In September 1951, once it was politically acceptable and socially safe to party again, Beaton was one of the guests at Le Bal Oriental in Venice. In a 2020 article, Tatler described it, complete with photographs:
Venice was abuzz with decadence and glamour on 3 September 1951, as the beautiful and the damned gathered for eccentric aristocrat Count Carlos de Beistegui’s high society gathering Le Bal Oriental – the first since World War II.
Guests were invited six months prior, in order to give them enough time to design their decadent costumes, with the theme inspired by a fresco in his home, the Palazzo Labia. The Banquet of Cleopatra by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was the chosen artwork; it depicts a wager between Cleopatra and Mark Antony as to which one could provide the most expensive feast. A worthy inspiration for a dress code, no doubt.
The guest list itself was superlative: the brightest stars and hottest young things of the era. Fashion designer Christian Dior attended in a costume designed by surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, while Dalí wore one by Dior. Cecil Beaton took the photographs, while director and actor Orson Welles held court alongside society beauties including Countess Teresa Foscari Foscolo and Patricia Lopez-Huici de Lopez-Willshaw, as well as Aga Khan III.
Then there were the details. Arrival by gondola, after a five-day journey across Europe for many, with cheers from waiting Venetians; 70 footmen dressed in the exact liveries worn at the Duchess of Richmond’s famous ball held the night before Waterloo; thirty guests attired in Pierre Cardin (it essentially launched his career); a 6am end time and a host wearing 16-inch platform shoes.
There is a self-portrait of Beaton:
Cecil Beaton standing on the balcony of the Palazzo Labia dressed as a clergyman
Very convincing it is, too, as by that point Beaton had grey hair and looked seriously distinguished.
Costume design for My Fair Lady
Beaton was somewhat of an artsy polymath. He could act, sing, photograph — and design costumes as well as stage sets.
My Fair Lady put him firmly in the spotlight.
A 2022 Tatler retrospective of the play and the film, complete with photographs, tells us:
Thursday, 15 March 1956: The opening night of My Fair Lady on Broadway. Cecil Beaton had spent month after exhausting month designing and supervising the costumes for a production he was hugely enthusiastic about but not yet entirely convinced by. The run-up had been challenging. Both revolving stages malfunctioned, the sets were flimsy, the curtains got caught up and wouldn’t come down, and the dress rehearsal was a disaster. Blizzards kept audiences away from the try-out evenings. Rex Harrison, playing Henry Higgins, was plagued with fear and self-doubt, manifesting itself in monstrous displays of egotism. Beaton found him ‘beneath contempt’, and only by a miracle, he said, did he prevent an ugly confrontation, while an exasperated 20-year-old Julie Andrews, playing Eliza Doolittle, rehearsing the last-act fight with Harrison, threw her slippers in his face with such force the entire chorus applauded her from the stalls.
Beaton need not have worried. He recorded the opening night in his diary: ‘Every joke was appreciated, every nuance enjoyed and the various numbers were received with thunderclaps. The success was beyond all expectation.’ It was also, he added, ‘an electric evening…I am grateful and overwhelmed.’ Curtain call after curtain call. So frenzied was the reception – in the days following, the police were drafted in to keep order at the box office – he now recognised My Fair Lady for what it was: the greatest triumph of his life so far, the high point of his career, though ‘it has taken such a long time to achieve’, he said wistfully. It won him his second of four Tony awards.
By the time the run ended in 1962 after nearly 3,000 performances, My Fair Lady was the highest grossing Broadway show in history. The London production at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which opened in 1958, ran for five and a half years and was reckoned to be the most expensive then staged in the West End.
Beaton had worked on The Chalk Garden sets and costumes in 1955, but loathed it:
Enid Bagnold’s curiosity, part melo- drama, part comedy of manners, opened on Broadway to rave reviews but by then Cecil had fallen out with just about everyone connected …
When he was dropped from the London production, it opened a window for him on what would become My Fair Lady. If Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe had not come into his life, he said, he would surely have given up on the theatre.
Beaton, having been born halfway through the Edwardian (Edward VII) period, was a natural fit for My Fair Lady:
As a boy, Beaton had collected glitter-coated postcards of the leading ladies of Edwardian opera and theatre, one of his greatest heroines being the musical comedy star Zena Dare, whom delightedly he got to dress when, at 70, she took on the role of Mrs Higgins for My Fair Lady’s West End run. His childhood informed his outlook on life; the observations made at an early age remained constant, he would say, while around him the world would change.
His costumes for My Fair Lady were rooted in his memory bank of Edwardiana, memorialising the world of music hall comedy, his mother’s formal dresses, his Aunt Jessie’s ostrich-feather hats, fin-de- siècle fashion plates – and, famously, for the black-and-white Ascot scene, he reinterpreted the ‘Black Ascot’ of 1910 held in mourning for the late king.
Beaton was exacting and resourceful:
In all, Beaton designed more than 150 costumes and kept a punctilious eye on their construction, irritated when a cartwheel hat had to be refashioned three times. Julie Andrews recalled they were so over-scaled that the wearer was often obliged to enter a room sideways – if, that is, they could see at all from beneath the exaggerated brims.
Beaton was exacting and resourceful. Some curtains from his former country home, Ashcombe, had once been appliquéd with 10,000 or so pearl buttons. Taken out of storage, the buttons were detached and sent across the Atlantic to do service for the Pearly Kings and Queens attempting to get Alfred Doolittle to the church on time.
When Beaton’s fastidiousness combined with first-night nerves, it was a combustible mix. After the first try-out before the Broadway opening, he was apoplectic with Andrews who had, in all innocence, worn a picture hat back to front. In her dressing room, unsure if everything had gone right, the first words she heard were not of reassurance, but from Beaton flinging the door open, grabbing the hat and shouting: ‘Not this way round. That way round. How could you get that wrong?’ However, the reviews were ecstatic and Beaton was now a Broadway celebrity in his own right, the consummate showman: ‘I felt I was on the crest of a wave and must enjoy the ride…’
The ride was by no means over. Two years later, in April 1958, with the main leads reprising their roles, the show opened in London. Beaton had remodelled several hats and made 20 new costume designs. He considered them far superior to the Broadway ones, though he was delighted to hear that in fashionable Manhattan, belle-époque-style chiffon blouses and delicately pointed boots were now all the rage. Always eager for self-publicity, Beaton wasted no time in getting his pictures of My Fair Lady’s leading players into Vogue and Ladies’ Home Journal. He accepted a commission to design a range of modern clothes based on his costumes, as well as a line of children’s swimwear, and held gallery shows of his sketches. Eventually he would mine it all for a standalone book, Cecil Beaton’s Fair Lady (1964).
Though Rex Harrison played up again, the momentum of Broadway was firmly behind London and My Fair Lady opened in a blaze of glory. At a special charity performance, attended by the Queen and Prince Philip, crowds lined the streets from Drury Lane to the Strand. It was more like a coronation than a premiere, remarked Lerner.
The film came next:
Andrews lost the part of Eliza to Audrey Hepburn. However, there was no doubt as to who would design the costumes and this time the sets too, ‘an explosive moment of excitement’, remembered Beaton – but it was not to last long.
For 10 months from the beginning of 1963, Beaton removed himself to Hollywood where, in the 1930s, he’d had great success as a photographer of movie stars. Despite a close friendship with Hepburn – ‘an angel of goodness’ – filming was an unhappy experience with echoes of his depressing time on The Chalk Garden. He quarrelled furiously with director George Cukor, whose approach he found undisciplined, his manner coarse. Further, his stage successes had emboldened him and he was unwilling to compromise. He also developed the habit, in breaks during filming, of taking the star off set to photograph her, sweet, pliable and willing, in each of his designs, her own and those of the extras. Already finding Beaton’s English vanities insufferable, Cukor was incensed at his presumption and at one point barred him from the set. Tempers simmered to breaking point. ‘Everyone’s nerves are explosive,’ commented Hepburn, ‘everyone’s on edge!’ Beaton tried to resign and in the end left the film earlier than planned. Meanwhile, Rex Harrison was positively beatific.
Regardless of what went on behind the scenes, it was another triumph for Beaton:
My Fair Lady earned Beaton two Oscars for costume and art direction. If the stage productions on London and Broadway made his name, the film guaranteed him immortality. ‘There is no formula for success,’ he once wrote. ‘The element of the unknown is always present to make or mar your effect; but when all the elements fuse and an entity is created, then all the heartburns seem to have been worthwhile.’
Royal photograhy continued
In the post-war years, the then-Princess Elizabeth called Beaton to photograph her first born, Prince Charles.
The aforementioned V&A article tells us:
On 14 November 1948 Princess Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Prince Charles Philip Arthur George. At her mother’s suggestion, the Princess chose Beaton to photograph her newborn son. Beaton would go on to take photographs commemorating the births of her other children: Princess Anne in 1950, Prince Andrew in 1960 and Prince Edward in 1964 …
Beaton photographed the infant Prince Charles on 13 December 1948, two days before the Prince’s christening. He commissioned a new backdrop for the occasion, which his assistants installed in the gold and ivory-coloured Music Room at Buckingham Palace. Beaton used a large 8 x 10 inch and smaller Rolleiflex cameras. He recalled that:
His mother sat by the cot and, holding his hand, watched his movements with curiosity, pride and amusement.
My favourite photograph is his official Coronation portrait of the Queen in 1953 with its magnificent backdrop of Westminster Abbey and sumptuous red curtain. The Abbey backdrop appears to be a large painting placed behind the Queen, although you would never know it from looking at the picture.
The Oldie magazine agrees with me:
Back at the Palace, the Queen was photographed by Cecil Beaton. She came in with her maids of honour, ‘cool, smiling, sovereign of the situation’. As she posed, he thought she looked ‘extremely minute under her robes and crown, her nose and hands chilled, and her eyes tired’.
To him, she was less forthcoming, but he extracted from her, ‘Yes, the crown does get rather heavy.’ She had been wearing the Imperial State Crown for over three hours, processing in the Gold State Coach through the rainy streets of London. Cecil Beaton went on to capture one of the most iconic images of the reign, way better than the official, tedious James Gunn portraits that lurk in embassies across the globe.
The V&A article has it in all its colourful splendour:
Cecil Beaton attended the ceremony, along with 8,000 other guests. He sat in a balcony close to the pipes of the great organ, recording his impression of the glorious pageant in animated prose and black ink sketches. After the ceremony he returned to the Palace to make final preparations for the official portrait sitting.
In this glittering portrait, the Queen wears the imperial state crown, a replica of that made for Queen Victoria’s Coronation. The Queen holds the sceptre with the cross in her right hand, balanced by the orb in her left. On her right hand she wears the coronation ring, a symbol that the sovereign is ‘wedded’ to the state. On both wrists are the armills, golden bracelets signifying sincerity and wisdom.
In the years that followed, the portraits that Beaton took of the Queen and her children are relaxed rather than stylised, a big departure for him:
Beaton’s approach to royal portraiture changed dramatically. All attention was now focused on the sitters, a stark white background replacing the elaborate Rococo-inspired backdrops of earlier years.
In 1968, Beaton was given an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. He decided to add a new portrait, one of the Queen. I read in Tatler that he was mildly frustrated that none of the poses were what he wanted. Finally, spontaneously, the Queen suddenly turned her head at an angle. Beaton’s timing was perfect, and another iconic portrait emerged.
The V&A article says:
He felt anxious before the sitting, writing in his diary:
The difficulties are great. Our points of view, our tastes are so different. The result is a compromise between two people and the fates play a large part.
As times had changed by 1968, Beaton selected pared-down portraits:
Beaton selected plain white and blue backgrounds, resolving to be “stark and clear and bold”. The portraits were a triumph.
But — and its a big but:
They were the last photographs Beaton made of Elizabeth II, although he continued to photograph other members of the family until 1979.
This is, in part, because the Royal Family had its own photographer, Princess Margaret’s husband Lord Snowdon.
However, Beaton also suffered a stroke in the 1970s. Despite adaptations made to cameras and other equipment, he became more anxious about his future. Wikipedia says:
… in 1976, [he] entered into negotiations with Philippe Garner, expert-in-charge of photographs at Sotheby’s.
On behalf of the auction house, Garner acquired Beaton’s archive – excluding all portraits of the Royal Family, and the five decades of prints held by Vogue in London, Paris and New York. Garner, who had almost single-handedly invented the photographic auction, oversaw the archive’s preservation and partial dispersal, so that Beaton’s only tangible assets, and what he considered his life’s work, would ensure him an annual income. The first of five auctions was held in 1977, the last in 1980.[citation needed]
Cecil Beaton died at Reddish House in January 1980, four days after his 76th birthday.
Reddish House has had various famous owners since then and went on the market again in 2020, when Tatler told us:
… the smart home was purchased by Beaton for £10,000 in 1947, with the photographer living there until his death in 1980. He moved there from his sprawling Georgian estate, Ashcombe, which was just down the road.
A consummate host, Beaton threw plenty of soirées in his down-sized abode, with guests as illustrious as the Queen Mother, Mick Jagger, Truman Capote, David Hockney and Lucian Freud. Greta Garbo even moved in for a spell – staying for six weeks …
Not only did he add more rooms on the eastern side of the house, he also extended the parlour southwards and added new fixtures and fittings. Upstairs, the house had been fitted for illegal cock-fighting – Beaton made use of the cages as a wardrobe for his costumes for the play, The Gainsborough Girls. He also planted the gardens, that remain today.
The article has photographs, including another self-portrait from 1968.
Cecil Beaton was one of a kind.
Tomorrow’s post will be about another great Royal photographer, the late Lord Snowdon.
Some think of coronations as being staid affairs or that any innovation is somehow recent.
However, that is not always the case.
Below are a few interesting facts about coronations from two magazine articles: Radio Times‘s ‘A royal flush’ by Lucy Worsley (6-12 May 2023, pp 32-33) and Tatler‘s ‘Crowning stories’ by Lucinda Gosling (June 2023, pp 104-111), part of which can be found here along with related pages from past coronation issues. These are referenced below by either RT or T and the page number.
1066
William the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day. His supporters shouted with joy so loudly that (RT, p. 32):
they alarmed the guards outside. The soldiers assumed that enemies must be attacking, and in defence they set fire to the buildings around the Abbey. It had to be evacuated while the King hastily concluded the ceremony.
1661
Souvenir mugs made their first appearance at the coronation of Charles II. (RT, p. 32)
1820
A Chelsea bun that survived George IV’s coronation uneaten can be found at the Museum of London. (RT, p. 32)
1838
Victoria was only 19 years old when she was crowned.
In her account of her Coronation Day, she wrote (RT, p. 33):
I was awoke at four o’clock by the guns in the Park, and could not get much sleep afterwards on account of the noise of the people, bands, etc.
One spectator inside the Abbey said (RT, p. 33):
The Queen came in as gay as a lark, and looking like a girl on her birthday.
During the ceremony, the elderly Lord Rolle tripped on the steps as he went to pay homage to the new Queen. Instinctively, Victoria leapt up to help him (RT, p. 33):
her spontaneous action earning her a round of applause.
Victoria earned more admiration from the public later that day. When the ceremony ended and she was back at Buckingham Palace, Victoria (RT, p. 33):
rushed to give her little dog Dash a bath.
1902
Victoria’s son Edward Prince of Wales succeeded her in 1901. He and Princess Alexandra were crowned King and Queen the following year.
In 1901, Tatler relaunched after some years in abeyance. Coronation fever was running high (T, p 104; emphases mine):
Each week, its gossip columns would drip-feed readers tasty coronation morsels. In August 1901, it was revealed that the wealthy socialite Emilie Grigsby was at the vanguard of Americans securing property in Mayfair ahead of the 1902 season. The Duchess of Wellington was reported to be planning coronation entertainment at Apsley House and had ordered the building of a capacious stand over the courtyard to give her guests a front-row seat to the procession. Violet, Lady Greville, writing in the 23 October 1901 issue, confessed her disappointment at discovering that coronets were simply ‘bought and ordered in a shop like fish or curry powder’ while, in its Society Gossip column in January 1902, The Tatler ruminated over the awkwardness arising from the insistence of the Duchess of Fife, eldest daughter of the King, that her husband walk beside her at the coronation, regardless of the fact that it might incur the ire of all the other dukes who outranked him.
Unfortunately, the coronation, originally scheduled for the end of June, had to be postponed to August 9 because the King had been diagnosed with appendicitis on June 24 and had to undergo surgery. (T, p 106)
He housed dignitaries at the capital’s finest homes, among them Dorchester House, Wimborne House and Harcourt House. Many of these people were already in London when news of the King’s appendicitis emerged. Some were able to afford to stay until August 9 (T, p 106).
No cameras were allowed inside the Abbey. (T, p 104)
The King gave a banquet for 500,000 of London’s poor (T, p 106).
Parents came up with creative names to mark coronation year births (T, p 104):
Corona (surprisingly less popular today), Coronius or Edal, made by combining the first letters from the names of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. Showing particular loyalty was the King’s private secretary, Sir Francis Knollys, who middle-named one of his offspring Louvima, a combination of the first few letters of the names of the royal couple’s daughters, Louise, Victoria and Maud.
1911
A similar social buzz took place in the months before George V’s and Queen Mary’s coronation on June 22 (T, p 108):
Among the personalities seen strolling in Hyde Park was Lady Dorothy Browne, one of Queen Mary’s train bearers. The Duke and Duchess of Sutherland were giving a magnificent ball at Stafford house and Mrs Ratan Tata was planning a garden party at York House in Twickenham for notable Indian visitors such as Princess Indira of Boroda. A ball at the Albert Hall featured 4,000 guests …
Tatler gave Mrs Tata a double page spread — ‘Mrs. Ratan Tata’s Garden Party’ — and included a photo of Princess Indira.
Not every woman was celebrating the new King and Queen, however:
Threatening to upstage the ball, and even the coronation, was the 60,000-strong Women’s Coronation Procession of suffragettes on 17 June.
Tatler devoted a double-page spread to the demonstration, ‘Seven Miles of Dissatisfied Womanhood: The Swelling Stream of Suffragettes Stems London Traffic for Hours’.
1937
Edward VIII abdicated, and George VI, formerly the Duke of York, was crowned instead, along with his wife Elizabeth, whom we later knew as the Queen Mother.
Before the abdication, however, Woolworths sold out of Edward VIII coronation mugs as soon as they hit the shelves. They are now collectors items. (RT, p. 32)
George VI’s was the first coronation to be filmed. (RT, p. 32)
This was the first coronation celebrated in Hollywood, thanks to stars from Britain and the Commonwealth (T, p 109):
It was reported that a coronation ball, attended by Olivia de Havilland, David Niven and Errol Flynn, was to be held at Hollywood’s Ambassador Hotel, combining tradition with transatlantic flair.
While the coronation ceremony went beautifully, things turned out to be less dignified afterwards (T, p 109):
The assembled peers and peeresses in the abbey made an impressive sight as they placed coronets on their heads at the moment the King and Queen were crowned. But afterwards, torrential rain meant many were left stranded for several hours in their miniver, velvet and family jewels as chauffeurs and coachmen struggled to find their passengers in the chaos.
1953
Here are two facts about Elizabeth II’s coronation that few know.
The late Queen applied her own lipstick as she wanted her make-up to be as low-key as possible. (RT, p. 32)
A film of the first televised coronation left London that day for North America (RT, p. 32):
A Canberra jet bomber stood by so that film of the event could be taken to the United States and Canada that very same evening.
More royal features to come later this week.
Churchmouse Campanologist 