Her Majesty (37 page)

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Lord Carrington’s strategy worked and, following talks at London’s Lancaster House, a ceasefire and independence followed. Zimbabwe’s subsequent decline into a kleptocratic dictatorship is another story.

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In 1984, an IRA bomb exploded in the Prime Minister’s hotel at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton and killed five people.

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The Lords has not lost all its hereditary peers – yet. In a last-minute deal to avoid parliamentary guerrilla warfare, the government agreed to let ninety-two stay on pending further reforms. There has also been a stay of execution for the Queen’s two hereditary officials in the Lords, the Earl Marshal (a post held by successive Dukes of Norfolk) and the Lord Great Chamberlain (the Marquess of Cholmondeley). Both roles are ceremonial and neither man plays any part in politics.

6

Her Image

‘
One doesn’t want to look like everybody else
.’

It was perhaps the most extraordinary piece of royal film ever shot – a genuine, gale-force royal domestic right in front of the camera. The Queen was not merely cross. She was losing it, hurling shoes and threats and sporting equipment and venting the sort of regal fury that, in another age, would have cost someone their head. The object of all this fury was the Duke of Edinburgh who, in the circumstances, made the sensible but uncharacteristic decision to run away. Little wonder this jaw-dropping scene has never seen the light of day. More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that, to this day, few people even know about this bizarre royal bustup. For that, the Queen can thank both an obliging Australian camera crew and one of the most gloriously curmudgeonly characters to serve in the Royal Household in her entire sixty-year reign. But Commander Richard Colville DSC, Press Secretary to both George VI and the Queen, certainly earned his keep that day on 6 March 1954. By then, the Queen was halfway through her eight-week tour of Australia. That, in turn, was just part of a six-month post-Coronation round-the-world voyage, the greatest royal tour in modern history. But, inevitably, on a journey of this scale, there were tensions along the way and they surfaced as the young royal couple enjoyed a weekend’s break from the introduction lines and the near-hysterical crowds which had characterised the tour.

They had come to stay on the shores of the O’Shannassy Reservoir in Victoria where the Metropolitan Board of Works had placed an executive chalet at their disposal. The lake had been freshly stocked with fish. The authorities had shipped in extra supplies of koala bears in case the resident population should prove reclusive. The Queen and Prince Philip had just two engagements over the weekend – a trip to church and a brief session with a camera crew which was in the course of filming Australia’s first full-length colour feature film,
The Queen in Australia
(it would play to packed cinemas for months after her departure). On this particular Sunday afternoon, the Queen was due to be filmed looking at some kangaroos and as many koalas as could be found. Senior cameraman
Loch Townsend had already arrived with his deputy, Frank Bagnall, and a sound recordist. They were starting to look at their watches. The afternoon light was fading. ‘Christ, when are they bloody well coming?’ muttered Townsend, at which point the door of the chalet flew open. Bagnall followed his professional instincts and turned on his camera. But what happened next was not in the script. Out dashed Prince Philip, with a pair of tennis shoes and a tennis racquet flying after him. Next came the Queen herself, shouting at the Prince to stop running and ordering him back. And still the camera kept on turning. Eventually, as Townsend later recalled, the Queen ‘dragged’ her husband back into the chalet and the door was slammed.

If the camera crew were wondering what to do next, they did not have long to wait. Angrier than a wounded buffalo, Commander Colville suddenly charged into view. Here was a man who thought it such a grave affront to royal privacy to film the Queen being driven through the gates of Balmoral that he had banned the BBC from doing so. On this occasion, he was Vesuvius in human form. Loch Townsend was a brave filmmaker who had been in action with his camera during the Second World War, but he was not about to enter mortal combat with the man British journalists knew as ‘The Abominable “No” Man’ – or, simply, ‘Sunshine’. Townsend, by his own admission, surrendered on the spot: ‘I said: “Calm down.” I went up to Frank and I started unscrewing the back magazine and he said: “What are you doing?” I said: “Exposing the film, Frank. You may have finished using your balls but I’ve still got work for mine.” I’ll never forget saying that. And anyway, I unscrewed it. There was about three hundred feet of film … and I said: “Commander, I have a present for you. You might like to give it to Her Majesty.”’ Colville disappeared with the film and, soon afterwards, a member of staff emerged with beer and sandwiches for the crew. It was not long before the Queen reappeared herself, calm, serene – and very grateful. ‘I said who I was and introduced Don and Frank,’ Townsend recalled. ‘And she said: “Oh thank you very much. I’m sorry for that little interlude but, as you know, it happens in every marriage. Now, what would you like me to do?”’

Townsend is no longer alive. He described this episode in detail to a resourceful historian writing a doctoral thesis called
The Glittering Thread
for Sydney’s University of Technology in 1996. Though never published, it remains an extraordinary record of the mayhem of the 1954 tour. Its author, Dr Jane Connors, who went on to become a senior executive in Australian national radio, interviewed Townsend twice about his experience. We shall never know the real background to the row, but what comes
through loud and clear is the dynamic between the monarchy and the media at the start of the reign. This was a tour during which a government delegation arrived at the Australian
Daily Mirror
demanding the surrender of a photograph of the Duke of Edinburgh with a drink in his hand. Yet within ten years, the Queen would be lampooned on British national television; within fifteen, she would have allowed cameras to film a family barbecue. Forty years after Loch Townsend was surrendering his film on pain of arrest, the heir to the throne would be screened around the world discussing the breakdown of his marriage. A year later, Diana, Princess of Wales, would be doing the same. By 2010, the Queen would be admitting television cameras to film
Masterchef
in the Palace kitchens and
Time Team
in the Palace gardens while the engagement of her eldest granddaughter would command the following headline in the
Yorkshire Post:
‘
QUEEN’S GRANDDAUGHTER TO WED EX-FISH AND CHIP FRYER FROM OTLEY
’.

For all her instinctive conservatism, this sovereign has steered the monarchy through more transition than any in modern times. And nowhere has that change been more dramatic or more painful than in the monarchy’s dealings with the press. At the start of the reign, the media was an occupational hazard which had to be endured, much like rain at Royal Ascot. At the dawn of the Diamond Jubilee, it is regarded as a necessary tool for the business of reigning. On the basis of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’, the monarchy now produces online films about itself.

The Queen and her family certainly do not read all the media, nor do they watch it all, believe it all or believe that others believe it all. However, it is hard to dispute the theory propounded by Sir Antony Jay, architect of the modern royal job description, and Sir Bernard Ingham, former Press Secretary to Margaret Thatcher, who have both likened the modern media to an impressionist painting. If you study it up close, it is unreal and distorted. If you stand back and absorb it as a whole, it offers a vivid representation of reality. A senior member of the Household offers a good example. The Crown Estate recently bought a commercial estate in Slough, including a fast-food restaurant. The following day, a national newspaper carried an image of the Queen wearing an imaginary McDonald’s hat and flipping burgers. Nonsense, of course. But not
utter
nonsense …

Today, very little happens at Buckingham Palace without the close involvement of the Press Office. It’s a small operation given the amount of coverage generated by the head of state of sixteen countries and her family. The Queen employs ten people to handle media arrangements for herself and the wider Royal Family – a similar operation to, say, the press office for the Rural Payments Agency. Another nine people work at
Clarence House and St James’s Palace dealing with the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. The entire operation is the same size as that of the press office for the Big Lottery Fund – or roughly half that of the Health and Safety Executive. Mostly in their thirties, the royal team include a former zoologist, a former spokesman for Manchester United, an ex-journalist or two and former press officers from the public and private sectors. The Queen’s three most recent press secretaries have all been women and were previously Civil Service high-fliers all previously worked in government. Both the new incumbent, Ailsa Anderson, and her predecessor, Samantha Cohen, were originally journalists. But unlike most of the public relations industry – whether in politics or in the commercial sector – they inhabit a unique space in which it is almost impossible to use the conventional tools of the trade. They cannot counter a criticism by pointing up a deficiency in a rival because there are no rivals. Spin and the darker arts of the publicist’s trade are out of the question. They are routinely challenged on what their clients regard as ‘private’ matters – by news organisations which view those clients as public property. Yet, compared to the Queen, there isn’t a PR client on the planet who has remained so durable for so long. Brand awareness is never an issue.

Most people have an entrenched view of most members of the Royal Family, for better or worse, because they have been aware of them for so long. Much of the job is on a loop. The engagements are often the same, year in year out (the only thing which varies at the annual gathering of the Knights of the Garter, for example, is the seating plan for lunch arranged so that no one sits next to the same person more than once a decade). But familiarity must not be allowed to breed contempt. After the nonchalance of the sunlit eighties led on to the hellish media storms of the nineties, there is now a fear bordering on paranoia about complacency. And it is certainly easy to be complacent. Since commissioning a private MORI poll in 1999, Palace officials have tracked British public opinion on the fundamental issue of a monarchy versus an alternative constitutional settlement. The figures have barely budged in more than a decade, aside from a minor increase in support during 2002, the year in which the Queen lost her sister and then her mother shortly before the Golden Jubilee. Through good and bad spells, the overall figure remains stubbornly at 70 per cent in favour, 20 per cent against and 10 per cent unsure. MORI has even tried substituting the word ‘monarchy’ for ‘Royal Family’ to see if the institution commands more or less support than its representatives. But it has made no discernible difference to the answers.

What the pollsters have determined, however, is that the monarchy’s
‘key driver’ (marketing speak for vital ingredient) is ‘relevance’. It is when people feel that the institution is not relevant to them, that it does not engage with them, that support drops away. And that is why the Master of the Household, Air Vice-Marshal Sir David Walker, and his team of chefs, footmen and doorkeepers are preparing to welcome 350 guests from the clothing industry to Buckingham Palace. The Queen is hosting one of her twice-yearly receptions for a particular strand of national life. On this occasion, it is the turn of the rag trade in all its forms – from haute couture to the Sweaty Betty fitness label to J&M Sewing Service, a Tyneside manufacturer of church garments. The idea is to ‘showcase’ excellence at every level. A team drawn from the Private Secretary’s Office, the Master’s Department and the Press Office have spent months consulting trade bodies, industry pressure groups, industry charities and government departments to ensure an even spread of guests from all over the country. Also here will be both the mainstream and the fashion media. Events like this, if not designed for television, are increasingly organised with the media in mind. BBC News 24 has been broadcasting from inside the Palace all day and will cover the event live. As a former communications director for the RAF, Walker understands the importance of media coverage at every level: ‘You don’t want to do these things and not get noticed. It’s not a case of “Haven’t we done well?” but of making an impact. The fact we’ve held a reception is then picked up by people far and wide who weren’t able to come but say: “At least the Queen has recognised what I do.”’

While Walker’s team have been sorting out the logistics – invitations, champagne, name badges, etc. – the Queen’s Press Secretary and her team have been combing the guest list for interesting case studies to pass on to the press. Sandra Hunt runs Clothing Solutions, a shoestring charity based in an old Yorkshire cotton mill where her team adapt modern clothes for disabled customers. It was an emotional moment when the thick white card arrived with security instructions. ‘When I got the invitation I read it three times and then rang the Palace to check it was real,’ says Hunt. Her two children were so excited that they have insisted on travelling down with her and spending the night in her hotel. The
Bradford Telegraph & Argus
has already carried a lengthy article about the plucky local charity organiser heading for the Queen’s party. The Palace takes the regional press very seriously. If the Queen spends a day in, say, Bedfordshire, it is unlikely to be covered in the national press. In the Bedfordshire press, there is unlikely to be any other story.