A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II (23 page)

This had been the first notable occurrence in a decade that would bring mixed fortunes to Britain and its Royal Family. The events that defined it almost all took place in its first half: the
Falklands campaign – a short and distant, but full-scale war, in which her second son took part; the race riots in British cities and the interminable miners’ strike of 1984, a nasty
showdown between the trade unions and a government that sought to break their power. As in the 1970s, the news images that filled television screens were often ugly and disturbing – pickets,
riots and burning buildings – but this time there were also burning warships, hit by Exocet missiles. Terrorism
continued to be a plague – one bomb went off within
earshot of the Queen and killed members of her Household Cavalry. These were grim years, but at least the country was seeing a return to prosperity.

Once again, it was the House of Windsor that provided the brighter moments, the excuse to celebrate. The Queen’s two eldest sons were married in ceremonies that were watched by television
audiences throughout the world, and the women they brought into the Family changed public perceptions of royalty for a generation. There were Royal grandchildren at frequent intervals: Zara (1981),
William (1982), Harry (1984) and Beatrice (1988). The Royal Family now had more members than at any time since the reign of Victoria. Such interest was generated by these events that two new
magazines,
Royalty
and
Majesty
, began publication.

During these years, as during the decade that followed, the Queen’s life would largely be defined by the activities of her children. It was the 1980s that became a watershed between an
old-style monarchy and a new. The change was to cost it a good deal of dignity.

The focus for a great amount of public sentiment was Charles’s wedding to Lady Diana Spencer in July 1981. The Prince had reached the age of 32 without marrying and there was a certain
impatience both within his family and in the public at large. His father, who had married at 26, told him pointedly that unless he made a decision soon there would be no suitable brides left.
Charles had always been of an indecisive nature, but he was also happy with the informal friendships he already had, one of which was with the married Camilla Parker Bowles. Both his parents wanted
not only to see him settled but also to have the succession secured.

The Prince had had no shortage of girlfriends, most of them from upper-class English backgrounds, many of them seemingly suitable in temperament. One of these, Lady Sarah Spencer, had a younger
sister whom Charles met at a shoot
on her family’s estate. Even as a teenager, Diana projected considerable charm, humour and personality. She was athletic, tomboyish,
affectionate and possessed a winsome beauty that had not yet quite blossomed. Her family was well-versed in the ways of the Court (her grandmother was a close friend of Charles’s grandmother)
and she had lived for some years on the Sandringham Estate, thus enabling the press to suggest that she was ‘the girl next door’. She was sufficiently young not to have a
‘past’. She was not academic – her school record was lamentable – but she had less quantifiable attributes of grace and empathy that promised well. For months during the
winter of 1980–1981, speculation mounted that the 19-year-old was going to marry Charles. She was besieged by the media – followed in the street by press photographers – and she
endured the attention with seeming patience and good humour. Her trademark shyness, her habit of keeping her head demurely lowered, peering at the world through falling blond locks, made her an
instant icon.

In theory, Diana was a highly suitable future queen. She came from the landed aristocracy whose world was so familiar to Her Majesty. She appeared to enjoy the same country pursuits. Her
appealing modesty and her patent affection for children suggested that she would win the nation’s affection with ease (she did) and slip comfortably into a life of public duty (she
didn’t), but even before she was married a different personality was becoming evident.

Charles proposed during a dinner, and allowed her to consider her answer for some weeks while she made a trip to Australia. Their engagement was announced after her return, on 24 February 1981,
when a series of pictures was taken of the couple in the Palace gardens. At five feet 11 inches – the same height as her fiancé – she seemed doomed to wear flat shoes for the
rest of her life, but this seemed the extent of her problems. ‘With Prince Charles by my side, I cannot go wrong,’ she was quoted as saying. The wedding date was set
for 29 July 1981, and a public holiday was declared. Souvenir-manufacturers rubbed their hands. The nation got ready to celebrate. The preparations were so ubiquitous and the general
sense of mounting excitement so great that they threatened to produce a sense of overkill, and T-shirts were sold with the legend ‘What Wedding?’ printed on them. The Queen was both
happy and relieved. A spouse had been found for her son who appeared entirely suitable, and of whom both the Family and the Commonwealth were fond. Diana seemed to ‘tick every box’.

Yet with the engagement a powerful new element was to enter the House of Windsor, and the Queen may well have been somewhat irked at the attention this new member received from the press, for
she herself was now overtaken in media attention by her daughter-in-law.

The wedding was as glorious an occasion as it had promised to be. Held at St Paul’s – Prince Charles’s choice of setting – it was a magnificent set-piece of music,
architecture and costume. Vestments and uniforms dazzled, trumpets and choir, organ and soloists sent collective goose bumps through the congregation. The groom was in the dress uniform of a senior
naval officer, the bride – on whom the watching millions focused their attention – wore a dress of white silk taffeta with a train 25 feet long. It was not seen until she emerged from
her coach at the cathedral steps and, as she walked up the long aisle (a journey that took three-and-a-half minutes) it was shown to greatest advantage on television screens by cameras looking down
from the gallery. Viewers noticed how much Prince Philip and the Queen were smiling throughout. The day’s most memorable moment occurred later when, on the Palace balcony, the bride and groom
kissed in front of cheering crowds.

The service was the most popular Royal event since the Coronation. Some 600,000 people waited in the streets to see the procession, and 3,500 were in the Cathedral. A truly staggering number
– 750 million – watched it on television
throughout the world. This audience included a Soviet warship anchored just outside British territorial waters. It was also
reported that one man, who had taken a ferry to France to escape all the fuss, was furious when the vessel’s crew stopped engines in mid-Channel and settled down to watch.

However, Charles and Diana were not, by any stretch of the imagination, a well-matched couple. The gap in their ages was much greater than the 12 years that separated them. He had always been
old for his age, and the women whose company he most enjoyed tended to be mature and somewhat maternal. A product of the 1950s and 1960s, there had never been a time when he embraced the culture of
youth that was then sweeping away everything in its path. He has never cared for rock music and has never dressed like a member of his age group. Never attracted to the passing fads of his own
generation, he was unlikely to feel any empathy with hers. His traditional nature gave him a gravitas for which many are thankful, and which suits him well for the position he holds, but it meant
that he and Diana seemed more like a middle-aged father and his teenage daughter than husband and wife. She did not share his love of opera and high culture, nor did she like his friends, who were
of his age group or even older and who – by definition – shared his conservative tastes. There was absolutely no meeting of minds or pleasure in serious discussion, which for Charles
was very important. She demanded a level of attention that he was not accustomed to giving anyone, and she became strident, moody and argumentative. Obsessed with the notion that Camilla Parker
Bowles was still part of his life, she became possessive. Like his mother, Charles hated confrontation and preferred to wish problems away. Diana favoured having things out and goading him into a
response. He could not relate to someone whose level of cultural awareness was so far below his own, and he greatly resented the fact that his own personality and achievements were nudged aside by
a media that was interested only in his wife’s wardrobe and hairstyles.

Diana was horrified at what she saw as the cold formality of her husband’s family. No one, she complained, gave her the guidance necessary to fulfil her role. She was
expected to accustom to a world of state banquets, speech-making, inspection of troops and participating in walkabouts, without anyone – including her husband, to whom all this was second
nature – showing her properly how it was done. All this was understandably intimidating for a nursery-school assistant, even one with an aristocratic background. Her frustration often vented
itself in rage.

Her criticism was unfair. Charles was often touchingly concerned about the pressure to which she was subjected. Courtiers were on hand to explain what was necessary (she saw them instead as
always telling her what to do). Her parents-in-law, under no illusions that life would be difficult, stood ready to help her should she ask, though effective communications were somehow never
established between them. Help was not consistently given – all those around her were busy – and she was expected to learn more quickly than she perhaps felt was reasonable.

Diana had, before her marriage, naturally been used to all the freedoms of a well-off young woman in London. She simply could not accustom to the restrictions of living within the Household
– having her life planned for months or even years in advance, being expected to be on duty when she did not feel like it, being accompanied everywhere by a protection officer. Having a more
impulsive nature than the members of her husband’s family could ever have afforded, she felt trapped.

At the end of that year the Princess, who found it increasingly hard no longer to be able to run ordinary errands, was photographed going from her home at Highgrove to buy sweets. She was
sufficiently upset by this unrelenting attention for the Queen to call a conference of newspaper editors and request a gentler approach. She was persuasive and reasonable, but when asked by the
editor of the
News of the World
why
the Princess could not ‘send a servant to buy her Fruit Gums’, Her Majesty retorted: ‘That’s the most pompous
thing I have ever heard.’ Perhaps so, but it highlighted an important problem – that it was not possible to have privacy and celebrity at the same time.

The very notion of ‘celebrity’ is not what the Royal Family is about. Many people confuse being in the public eye with being famous, exciting and glamorous. Diana was quickly
described as having ‘star quality’, as if she were a Hollywood actress, and this concept will probably have irritated the Queen. It is not the purpose of Royalty to entertain or to
provide fashion tips. Her family’s function is to be constant, dutiful and, if necessary, dull. Their mission is to set a quiet example, to reflect the lives of her subjects, not that of the
international rich. Royals need no publicity, they do not draw attention to themselves, their clothes, their lifestyle. They are just there, doing their job regardless of changing fashion. They do
not want to be associated with the self-promoting, tinsel world of the cinema or the weather-cock nature of changing fashion. With Diana, the press decided she was both a celebrity and a Royal. The
distinction became blurred, and traditionalists were horrified by the tide of media attention that resulted. Diana undoubtedly won friends for the monarchy in her early years, but the image she
represented was not the one the Queen believed was right.

The cracks in her marriage did not appear at once, and for several years the Family enjoyed a level of positive press interest that was tantamount to a honeymoon. Since her engagement she had
had something of a makeover. With advice and assistance from the fashion press and from stylists, her clothing, hair and make-up became steadily more sophisticated, replacing the artless,
schoolgirlish look that the public had found so endearing. With her statuesque build, photogenic features and the high exposure of her position, she had everything necessary to be a fashion leader.
That she also smiled readily, had
a nice sense of humour and a genuine way with people (she spoke to strangers with more spontaneous warmth than the other Royals) made her yet
more popular. When in March 1983 she and her husband visited Australia, they took with them the nine-month-old Prince William. It was a joint decision – though Diana got the credit –
and proved immensely popular with Australians. It was believed, erroneously, that she had brought him against the Queen’s wishes. Nevertheless, the days when Royal infants were left at home
while their parents went on official tours were clearly over. This change was seen as evidence that Diana had brought a greater humanity to the House of Windsor.

Yet whatever she brought in terms of popular appeal, it had become apparent that Diana would not fit easily into the routine of the Family. The young woman who had looked so shy in photographs
proved to be stubborn and wilful. She admired the Queen enormously and said so often. She was impressed by the monarch’s stamina and unflagging devotion to duty, but she did not want to
emulate it. She committed numerous small gaffes – or deliberate floutings of etiquette – arriving late for meals, deciding to go to bed in the midst of an evening when guests were
present, and using ill-health and, especially, headaches (that catch-all excuse for avoiding anything unpleasant) to get out of official duties. Although she was both loyal and enthusiastic
regarding the charities she took up, she never learned the lesson that Royalty cannot do things – or cancel things – on impulse. The Queen, to whom illness was simply weakness and who
had never been seriously unwell, had little sympathy with Diana’s protestations. When, in November 1984, Diana attended the State Opening of Parliament, she famously sported a new, swept-up
hairstyle, designed to set off the tiara she wore. This received massive newspaper coverage and diverted attention completely from the Queen’s speech. Her Majesty was clearly deeply
irritated. She was to refer to her daughter-in-law as ‘that impossible girl’.