Her Majesty (10 page)

As old certainties and social norms recede, so the Queen is actually more open to suggestions than ever. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the older she gets, the
less
stuck in her ways she becomes. It is not necessarily what one expects of the longest living monarch in history. But, then, her age is often overlooked. That stock image of Queen Victoria is one of an elderly woman, forever in mourning clothes and a lugubrious state of retrospection. We have a stock image of the Queen, too. But while she
has now outlived Victoria by several years, we still see her as active and engaged. It is an image that has barely changed in thirty years. Given that the Queen seems to carry on doing the same old things at the same pace all over the world year in year out, she seems to be at a perpetual stage of life; a lady of a certain age but not an
old
lady.

Jim Callaghan wisely observed that, for better or worse, each generation forms a composite view of the face on the coins: ‘Every monarch makes his or her own niche in people’s minds and hearts and this Queen has done that.’

We see a purposeful woman in a headscarf, perhaps with dogs or horses; we see a woman with a shy smile and a handbag walking down streets full of over-excited mothers and tongue-tied children; we see a proud woman dwarfed by extremely tall men in uniform and bearskins; we see a solemn woman in crown and robes processing through Parliament.

They are all images which betoken that dependability, loyalty, common sense, calmness. They might, with another person, suggest grandeur, coolness, detachment, elitism. And what is a monarchy if not grand, aloof and faintly untouchable? Yet those are not the impressions left on the vast majority of people when they see the Queen. Rather, they feel like the young academic who had just met the Queen during her tour of a science exhibition in 2010. ‘I’d never given her much thought but it was a lovely opportunity to meet her,’ he said afterwards. ‘Then a few of us went for a drink and I realised I was shaking. My heart was pounding. And it dawned on me that I’d just done something extraordinary.’ Despite being an extremely bright, articulate young man in the front line of medical scientific research, he could not recollect a word of what he had said during the encounter, nor could he offer any rational explanation for his state of benign shock. It was most unlike him, he said, but he was not bothered. Because he had just met the Queen.

Most organisations or businesses run by the same person for nearly sixty years become static, if not ossified. So why has this one been gathering momentum in the other direction ever since the Queen reached what most people would regard as retirement age? It’s not only the result of what some call the ‘Diana effect’, although officials readily concede that one important legacy of the Princess was a greater informality and a recognition of the need for ‘emotional change’. It’s also down to a more general loosening of the royal collar.

‘She doesn’t want to do the same old thing any more,’ says a former Private Secretary. ‘She likes shorter greeting lines and fewer of them, more young people.’

She is smiling more these days, indulging her own interests a little more. If an awayday to the regions errs more towards horses and children than trade promotion, so be it. There is less of a beady eye on the clock – a far cry from the super-punctual Princess Elizabeth who took to prodding her mother’s Achilles tendon with an umbrella during the 1947 South African tour to keep the royal show on schedule. ‘She’s quite often late for things now, not that anyone’s complaining,’ says one veteran royal correspondent. Of course they’re not. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the aura has changed. The Queen has now acquired the status of national treasure. There is nothing contrived about this metamorphosis whatsoever. It simply began in early 2002 following the death of Princess Margaret, followed swiftly by that of the Queen Mother.

‘Finally,’ says a family friend, ‘she is seen as a grandmother.’ Sir John Major echoes a popular Household view: ‘At about the time the Queen Mother died, the Queen effectively became the “Mother of the Nation”.’ While the Queen Mother was alive, the Queen had been caught between the royal generations, the sensible, serious one trying to keep the younger members of the family under control while keeping a protective eye on the free-spirited mother. A delightful and good-natured sense of filial exasperation emerges from the latter stages of William Shawcross’s official biography of the Queen Mother. When the Queen installed a stairlift to assist her mother with the steps at home, she received no thanks. Instead, the Queen Mother would make a point of travelling downstairs on the contraption and walking back up. Attempts to cajole her into a golf buggy for walkabouts only worked after someone had the bright idea of painting the thing in her racing colours. Nor was there any respite from her spending. A particularly eye-watering bill from a racing trainer arrived on the Monarch’s desk with a little handwritten postscript: ‘Oh dear’.

In the eyes of the public and the media, the Queen Mother was the living embodiment of the ‘Blitz spirit’ and she could do no wrong. Yet the same sentiments did not extend to the Queen. She was respected and admired almost universally, of course, but there was not that same sense of indulgence. The Monarch was not a twinkly-eyed old granny. She was a world leader.

In the last few years, though, there has been an unconscious reassessment. We don’t necessarily think of the Queen as being very much older, just increasingly exceptional. ‘She doesn’t present herself as an old lady,’ observes former Lord Chancellor Jack Straw. Now that the First World War generation has disappeared and the veterans of the Second World War dwindle to a noble handful, it becomes ever more extraordinary to think that the Monarch who sits and mulls over the state of the nation
with David Cameron on Wednesday evenings used to do the same with Winston Churchill. When President Sarkozy of France and Britain’s Gordon Brown neglected to invite the Queen to mark the sixty-fifth anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, there was a public outcry. But it was not confined to Britain and it was not a row about ‘snubs’ or diplomatic niceties. It just seemed extraordinary to omit an invitation to the one surviving head of state who actually wore uniform during the Second World War.

The Queen’s visit to Virginia in 2007 to mark the 400th anniversary of the English arriving in Jamestown generated true euphoria. To have a monarch was exciting, naturally. But that wasn’t the point. The big deal was the fact that the Queen and Prince Philip had been guests of honour at the 350th.

Similarly, the packed United Nations Assembly which rose to its feet to salute the Queen in 2010 was not applauding her words. The main attraction was the fact that this particular speaker had already stood on the same stage to address the same organisation long before half of today’s delegates were born. Her reign not only spans twelve British prime ministers but also twelve American presidents and six popes.

Just like her late mother before her, though, the Queen does not welcome attempts, however well meaning, to curtail her engagements.

So, does anyone ever try to say: ‘Your Majesty, would it not be a good idea to take it easy?’ ‘We all do,’ Prince William replies with a smile. ‘We all try and sit down with her. My father and her children say it a lot to her. For the grandchildren, it’s a bit difficult for us to say, “Take it easy” when she’s so much older than us and has done so much more. We do hint at taking some things off her but she won’t have anything of it!’

What about the word ‘retirement’? ‘I’ve never heard it,’ says the Duke of York. ‘It’s not that it is “not open for discussion”. It’s just that it’s not necessary. There’s just a great deal of concern to make sure the Queen’s programme is managed in a suitable fashion.’

Today, people are often surprised by their own emotional response to the mere sight of the Queen. A typical example occurred as she arrived at the 2010 Wimbledon Tennis Championships after an absence of thirty-three years. ‘Oh God,’ announced a woman in the crowd, astonished by her own vulnerability, ‘I think I’m going to cry.’

‘I always believed that, much as she would miss her mother, the Queen would actually find life in public easier,’ says a former senior adviser. ‘In the past, you had the throne being squeezed by the dazzling young generation and the dazzling old generation. Now, the Queen has inherited the mother-of-the-nation role and William is looking like a paragon while
it is Prince Charles in the middle. It’s a very tough role. And I think the Queen found it quite tough sometimes.

‘Of course she misses her mother every day because they talked every day, they wrote letters to each other all the time. They were a tremendous double act but it wasn’t a comfortable role for the Queen, always to be told how marvellous her mother was.’

He sums up the Queen’s approach to the job today as follows: ‘There’s a serenity about her. But I think if you are of an age, you have a pretty old-fashioned faith, you do your best every day and say your prayers every night – well, if you’re criticised for it, you’re not going to get much better whatever you do. What’s the point of worrying?’ Ruminating on the way the Queen has reigned for more than half a century, Prince William believes that his grandmother has few grounds for regret. ‘For her, it must be a relief to know that she has furrowed her own path and that she’s done that successfully and that the decisions she’s made have turned out to be correct. You make it up a lot as you go along. So to be proven right when it’s your decision-making gives you a lot of confidence. You realise that the role you’re doing – you’re doing it well; that you’re making a difference. That’s what’s key. It’s about making a difference for the country.’

The Queen, on the other hand, sees nothing remotely remarkable in the way she approaches her role. Having spent some time accompanying her around Nigeria during a Commonwealth tour in 2003, Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary, could not help reflecting that the Queen was only five years younger than his own mother. At the end of one day, he remarked: ‘Ma’am, if I may say so, that was very professional.’ ‘Foreign Secretary,’ the Queen replied, ‘I should be, given how long I’ve been doing it.’

Recent years have been very good ones for the monarchy and the build-up to the Diamond Jubilee even more so. And herein, perhaps, lies the most important factor behind this new-found serenity. All bosses or commanders thrive when their organisations are successful. And the monarchy is not just back on track and prospering. It is breaking new ground.

Few members of the Queen’s family or her staff had seen her as enthusiastic about a royal tour as she was in May 2011 during the first state visit ever made to the Republic of Ireland. This was a diplomatic watershed, a genuinely historic exercise in reconciliation and friendship which achieved more in four days than years of political horsetrading. No one else could have pulled it off. This was, arguably, the Queen’s most important state visit since her tour of Russia in 1994 or the day that Britannia
sailed in to newly democratic South Africa in 1995. Here was a stirring reminder of the healing power of monarchy. And the Queen was visibly thrilled. It was almost as if she was saying: ‘
This
is the point of me.’ The fact that her hosts also included three famous racing studs on the royal schedule made it as near-perfect a state visit as one could contrive.

‘She was so excited about it and really looking forward to it. It was quite sweet,’ says Prince William proudly, pointing out that whereas he himself could ‘nip in’ to Ireland relatively easily, it had been off-limits to the Queen all her life. ‘Normally, with a lot of tours, there’s a certain amount of apprehension but also “I’ve done this before”. But this was like a big door opening up to her that had been locked for so long. And now she has been able to see what’s behind the door.’

But, he says, the Queen will have derived much greater satisfaction from the bilateral successes achieved during this visit than from satisfying any personal ambitions. There were certainly plenty of personal subtexts to this tour, not least the murder of Prince Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten, by the Irish Republican Army during a family holiday in County Sligo in 1979.
^*
Yet neither the Queen nor Prince Philip made any direct reference to it. ‘It’s “personal” v “duty”. There’s a big difference,’ says Prince William. ‘As far as she was concerned, in terms of the relationship between Britain and Ireland and the Troubles, it was time to move on from that. What’s happened has happened and no one wants to cover it up. We must make sure all the right things are done and that the right people are said sorry to or vice versa. But it was not about her losing Lord Mounbatten when she was younger. It was about the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is close relations between the state of Ireland and the UK.’

The Prince’s ready grasp of the diplomatic imperatives not only shows a wise head on young shoulders. It is another contributing factor to the Queen being, in the words of one bishop, ‘the happiest I have ever seen her’. She can now look far into the future with confidence. She is supported by the most experienced Prince of Wales in history but can also take great pride in the calibre of the next royal generation down the line.

Only a matter of days before the Irish visit, Prince William and Catherine Middleton embarked on life together as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Some of those at the wedding reception had never seen
such an effervescent Sovereign. One describes her as ‘positively playful’. ‘She was, literally, skipping,’ says another.

Six weeks before that wedding, Prince William travelled around the world at the invitation of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. They wanted a senior royal representative to meet victims of a series of natural disasters. The five-day trip was arranged at short notice and the Prince was back on duty soon afterwards. ‘I slept for quite a bit and then I went straight back in to work,’ says the Anglesey-based RAF search and rescue pilot. ‘Then she sent me the most wonderful letter saying “Congratulations” and “Well done, you did well down there” which meant a lot to me. It’s funny but when you get a letter from her or a bit of praise, it goes a long, long way, more so than anyone else saying “Well done” to you. It’s mainly because there’s such gravitas behind those words.’