Her Majesty (26 page)

The State Bentley can accommodate passengers of every dimension. Sadly, the same does not go for the driver. The designers built the front end of the car around the Queen’s head chauffeur, Joe Last, including the bulkhead which divides the front and rear of the car. It means that the driver’s seat cannot slide back any further. Last will retire after the Diamond Jubilee to spend more time with his Ford Focus. But his successor will need to be the same size. ‘We’ll be looking for a five-foot-eight replacement,’ jokes Alex Garty. Most of the seven chauffeurs are ex-Forces, like Last, or ex-police, like Garty, and they are a loyal bunch. ‘I’ve been here three years and we’ve never had a staff move,’ says Garty. Sometimes, his team will find themselves in the back (the Princess Royal, for example, often likes to drive herself). They also test drive potential additions to the royal fleet. Every car manufacturer craves a royal endorsement. The criteria, though, can be unpredictable. A vehicle may have great acceleration, for example, but what’s the hat room like in the back? All chauffeurs have been through regular anti-terrorist courses with both the Metropolitan Police and Devon and Cornwall Police who run whiteknuckle high-speed evasion courses over Dartmoor. When a London mob attacked the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in 2010, no amount of driving skill could make up for the fact that the car was blocked in by protestors. Much loved by the late Queen Mother, it is not nearly as robust as the State Bentley and sustained a broken window. Since that evening, the use of the older vehicles in the Mews has been under review.

In addition to the two State Bentleys, the Queen keeps three other official ‘state cars’ in the main garage at Buckingham Palace – a trio of Rolls-Royces from 1988,1977 and 1949 (the last, a Phantom IV, is known as the ‘Old Beast’). All are in the claret state livery with the Queen’s arms painted on the side. Next door, in a side garage, are three twenty-year-old Daimler limousines, often used for larger royal motorcades. They are also used for what are known as ‘Red Crown Jobs’. When the Queen sends a representative somewhere on her behalf, the car carries a red crown instead of a royal standard. In among these eight official cars is what happens to be the Sovereign’s own choice of unofficial vehicle – an
entirely anonymous green Daimler Sovereign. Nearly seventy years after learning to drive at the wheel of an army truck, the former ATS mechanic still likes to drive herself. She is no slowcoach either.

Wherever she goes, however, the Queen will be followed by bodyguards. Indeed, there can be few heads of state who have accumulated quite so many different bodyguards over the centuries. Compared to, say, the Pope, who survives with the Swiss Guard to defend him, the Queen is positively overrun with loyal defenders. Quite apart from the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry, the Queen is protected by the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms. All retired officers, they are a Henry VIII creation who turn up at state occasions in red coats and white-feathered helmets to guard the Queen with battle axes. They have a friendly rivalry with the Yeomen of the Guard who like to point out that they are the oldest of the lot, having been formed by Henry VII. All retired NCOs and warrant officers, the Yeomen wear scarlet doublets and each protects the Queen with a seven-foot halberd known as a ‘partisan’. North of the border, she is guarded by the Queen’s Body Guard for Scotland, the Royal Company of Archers, well-connected gentlemen of a certain age (in a green uniform) who protect her with bow and arrows, and also by the High Constables of Holyroodhouse (who wear a blue uniform and carry truncheons). While their loyalty is unsurpassable, their security value is less certain. Hence, there is a further strand of protection.

The real bodyguards are the men and women of the Metropolitan Police’s Royalty Protection team, or SO
₁₄
as it is known (each Special Operations unit has its own ‘SO’ designation). With a staff of around five hundred, Royalty Protection is divided between static protection (guarding buildings) and personal protection officers (what most people would think of as bodyguards). These days, SO
₁₄
forms part of a structure called Protection Command along with SO
_I
(Specialist Protection) which protects politicians and VIPs and also S06 (Diplomatic Protection).

In the late nineties, there was talk of streamlining the operation and merging the royal and political protection officers into a single unit. The idea was quietly squashed after senior Downing Street figures decided that they would rather retain their own police elite, thanks very much. It would certainly have been deeply unpopular in the ranks. Healthy rivalries exist between SO 14 and SO 1 over everything from exams and overtime to haircuts (which tend to be more extreme in Specialist Protection than Royalty Protection). But both pride themselves on doing the job without the combative, self-conscious machismo of some of their overseas colleagues. When it comes to genuine bodyguards, the less conspicuous the better.

It is the Master of the Household’s Department and the Royal Mews which are the most visible aspects of the modern Court. They provide spectacle, pageantry and service. But a state visit would be pointless without a context. Every part of the Royal Household will be involved when a head of state like President Zuma comes to stay. The Queen’s Private Secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt, will have sat on the Foreign Office Committee which agreed to issue the invitation in the first place. The Queen is always consulted on whom she has to stay even though, ultimately, it is not her choice. And she has had to put up with some pretty objectionable guests over the years. She was clearly uncomfortable with the government’s decision to invite the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu for a full state visit in 1978, so much so that she took drastic steps to avoid meeting him any more than necessary. While out walking her dogs in the Palace gardens, she spotted Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, heading down a path in her direction. As the Queen told a lunch guest some years later, she decided that the best course of action was to hide behind a bush rather than conduct polite conversation. No guests have annoyed her more than the famously corrupt and unhinged President Mobutu of Zaire and his wife – the aptly named Marie-Antoinette – who paid a state visit in 1973. Mobutu’s penchant for barmy titles and executing his opponents in front of large crowds must have made the small talk challenging. But what made the Queen angrier than some had ever seen her was learning that Mrs Mobutu had smuggled a small dog through customs. Worse still, the President’s wife was ordering it steak from the Palace kitchens. ‘The Queen was very, very angry,’ says Ron Allison, the Queen’s former Press Secretary. The trusted Deputy Master of the Household, Lord Plunket, was summoned by an incandescent Sovereign and told: ‘Get that dog out of my house!’ ‘I don’t know how he did it,’ says Allison, ‘but it was taken off to the kennels at Heathrow.’ The late Martin Charteris, Private Secretary to the Queen at the time, recalled: ‘She really was shaking with anger.’

However horrible the government’s friends, it is the Queen’s duty to be nice to them. As Sir Malcolm Rifkind explains: ‘She is a servant of the state, as we all are, and she has no illusions to the contrary.’

At any given time, there is always a queue of world leaders wanting to meet the longest serving head of state in the Western world. ‘Quite often, you get a message from a British ambassador that some head of government would like to visit the UK and expects to see the Queen,’ says Rifkind. ‘There is a recognised procedure for explaining, politely, that it is not possible at this moment in time.’

The Private Secretary will be the conduit for all these delicate
decisions. He will also help draft the Queen’s speech at the state banquet and, on overseas tours, be in attendance at all times. But the royal department which plans every minute of the itinerary and pulls the whole visit together is the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. Despite its name, it is not actually run by the Lord Chamberlain but by a man called the Comptroller. Whether it’s royal weddings and funerals, medieval ceremonies, arcane titles, ancient uniforms, fiddly protocol or the use of the Queen’s cypher on a commemorative mug, then it all goes through the surprisingly young and pragmatic team that runs the LCO. As well as the Royal Mews, it oversees investitures, the Yeomen of the Guard, all the Queen’s doctors, all the Queen’s clergy and the annual River Thames ritual of Swan Upping. The department handles the two hundred or so honorary royal office holders – from chaplains to homeopathic pharmacists – who appear on the Palace horizon from time to time. If anyone needs an answer to some imponderable issue of etiquette – how should one wear the regalia of the CMG with a dinner jacket? – then someone in the Comptroller’s domain will know.

Until a change in the law in 1968, it was also the Comptroller’s job to license all plays and theatres on behalf of the Lord Chamberlain, laying down specific rules on nudity, swearing and the depiction of royalty (God was not allowed on stage until 1966 and nudes had to be motionless, expressionless and ‘dimly lit’). In the febrile atmosphere of the late sixties, it appeared increasingly absurd that censorship of the West End stage should be left to a retired army officer at the Palace. The Comptroller of the day, Sir Johnnie Johnston MC, was of much the same opinion himself and there was widespread relief across the Household when the government was finally persuaded to abolish this royal role. Two decades later, during his shake up of the old Palace order, the Lord Chamberlain of the day, Lord Airlie, sought further change. He thought it would simplify things if the Lord Chamberlain’s Office had a different name since it had very little to do with the Lord Chamberlain himself. His idea was to rename it the ‘Ceremonial Department’ for the sake of clarity and common sense. The LCO was having none of it. It gives some indication of the independence and clout of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office that it can rebuff the Lord Chamberlain. ‘The title of “Comptroller” is a complete misnomer,’ says Sir Malcolm Ross, who had the title for fifteen years. ‘I think the last person who actually understood it was Queen Victoria. But it is so ingrained at the Palace that it would have caused even more confusion to change it.’

Like everything else at the Palace, the pattern of the state visit has changed a great deal in the last few years. World leaders are busier these
days so their visits are shorter. They want to cram in as much as possible. President Zuma is not only a dawn riser but wants to hold a business summit in the Palace Bow Room over breakfast. His wish is the LCO’s command. ‘We’ve got a concentrated bunch of big hitters,’ says Jonathan Spencer of the LCO, ‘and they’d much rather do it at the start of the day. Forget lunch.’

Unusual requests must be accommodated without so much as a raised eyebrow. Visiting US presidents now require a sound-proof communications hub so a blast-proof glass box is duly erected in the Regency Room whenever the Americans come to stay. When President Obama arrived in May 2011, the traditional state welcome had to be completely rewritten. His security advisers would not permit the usual greeting on Horse Guards Parade. Nor did they want their man travelling down the Mall in a horse-drawn coach with the Queen. Instead, he was driven into the Palace in his rocket-proof eight-ton presidential limousine and the welcome ceremony was staged on the Palace lawn.

The Obamas, like every state visitor, stayed in the Belgian Suite, Buckingham Palace’s grandest. It also happens to be where Prince William and his bride spent their wedding night. The suite – it’s actually a substantial two-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-stateroom garden apartment with a direct door to the Palace pool – was built to Edwardian standards. It has colossal baths and a splendid mahogany thunderbox adjacent to the main bedroom. But for one recent state visitor, however, it was inadequate. This particular head of state regarded baths as unclean and his substantial stature demanded rather more space than that afforded by the Belgian Suite’s shower cubicle. A spacious but temporary power shower room was installed (at the visitor’s expense).

Some of the most complicated issues are to do with protocol. Much as its critics portray the Palace as a minefield of superfluous rules and social booby traps, the monarchy is positively laid back compared to most heads of state. ‘That’s one of the great misconceptions. We have no rulebook, just guidance. We’re less protocol-orientated here than a lot of people,’ says Jonathan Spencer, pointing out that he has never come across any head of state who does not employ a ‘head of protocol’ whereas no such position exists in the Royal Household. ‘If you want to see serious protocol, unbelievable minutiae, you need to look elsewhere.’ He is too diplomatic to name names but old Foreign Office hands speak fondly of the Chinese, the Japanese and the French as Olympic-class protocol sticklers.

There are two remaining departments of the Royal Household which also play their own parts in every state occasion. The Privy Purse Office
manages the cost of every event, even working out which meals should be charged to the Foreign Office’s budget and which to the Civil List.

For every state visit, the Royal Collection will be involved, too. Its staff will put together an exhibition of art, letters, gifts and photographs – much of it from the Royal Library – illustrating the links between Britain and the visiting nation.
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Works of art from across the collection must be rounded up for the state banquet. They include vast candelabra, plates of silver gilt (silver covered in gold) and magnificent china such as the eighteenth-century Tournai service which will be used on this occasion. This is still a ‘working’ collection. These are not just museum pieces. Occasionally, they have to sing for their supper.

As the great day dawns, these treasures are stacked in boxes around the Palace Ballroom. Laying the table for a state banquet is one of the wonders of the hospitality world. And it takes days. Before a single one of the 1,026 Stourbridge glasses (each engraved with ‘EIIR’) or a single fork can be laid, the Yeoman of the Glass and China Pantry, Steve Marshall, must measure out all 171 settings with a ruler. It’s a U-shaped table and the Queen and her ten guests along the base of the U will each have twenty-two inches of space but those seated down the sides will have five inches less. Everyone will have six perfectly spaced glasses (champagne for the toast, white wine, red wine, water, champagne for pudding and port) and napkins folded to one of the Royal Household’s repertoire of designs. For tonight, a Dutch bonnet fold has been chosen.