Her Majesty (39 page)

If it looks as though the writer has simply been ignored by a government department, the Palace will sometimes forward the letter on to the relevant office. A royal letterhead can sometimes have a miraculous effect on a Civil Service blockage. But, ultimately, there is little direct action the Palace can take. ‘I’ve only been here since 1998 but I think people’s expectations have changed over the years,’ says Bonici, who ran a gym before joining the Palace.

She holds up a letter, just in, from a girl who is a fan of the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips and wants the Queen to sponsor her riding lessons. It begins ‘Dear Elizabeth’ and includes a photograph of the girl’s pony. ‘She’s gone to a lot of trouble with that letter. It’s got a nice picture,’ says Bonici. ‘We’d say “Thank you, but the Queen gives her support to a number of charities and cannot support individual projects.”’

The correspondence team are well aware that whatever they write may end up framed on a wall – or in the local paper. London’s Sherlock Holmes Museum proudly steers visitors to a ‘royal letter’ which turns out to be little more than an official acknowledgement of a letter sent to the Prince of Wales. Jenny Vine has a simple rule: ‘I always try to think: “How would I feel if this ended up on the front page of the
Daily Mail
?” But people will often read into a reply what they want to read. We might say that it’s not a matter on which we can intervene and they will still write back and say: “Thank you, Your Majesty, for taking such a personal interest in helping me with this case” or something like that.’

It’s almost a modern variant on ‘touching for the King’s Evil’, the medieval belief that touching the Monarch would cure sufferers of scrofula. But even if writing to the Queen is not going to solve your dispute with your neighbour or the Inland Revenue, it can be reassuring to know that someone has actually taken an interest. ‘We read it all. It’s very important to read it all,’ says Bonici. ‘It might say: “My roof is leaking and the council won’t do anything” and then, right at the end, it might say: “I’m very sad because my husband has just died.” And if
you haven’t read that bit you don’t know the full story. And it’s very important to know that otherwise the Queen can’t send her condolences.’

So how has the Queen become this blend of agony aunt and Citizens Advice Bureau? George V was not badgered about street lighting. George VI did not receive letters complaining about his choice of church-going vehicle – and nor, presumably, would he have replied to them if he had. Through the ages, ‘good’ monarchs have been seen as God-given champions of the people, the ultimate ally of the ordinary against the overmighty, listeners to petitioners and so on. But modern Britain is not supposed to believe in all that; it was fine in the days of Elizabeth I but surely it’s not relevant in the reign of Elizabeth II? The modern Briton has more democratic, professional representation than ever – Scots, for example, have their own representatives in three parliaments (Scottish, UK and European) plus their district and community councils. If the Sovereign is so marginalised these days, why are we increasingly keen to make contact with her? Are all these politicians failing to pull their weight? And if the monarchy is just a soap opera, why are the public more vocal than ever in their opinions on the cost, conduct, appearance, importance and performance of the Royal Family? It’s yet another variation on the royal paradox: ‘I don’t care about the monarchy. But here’s what I think …’

Just as the Court has changed profoundly in every way under this monarch, so, too, has the court of public opinion. But at least there is a very clear dividing line when it comes to public relations. In that regard, the reign of Elizabeth II falls, very simply, into two parts: the Colville years and the post-Colville years.

Commander Richard Colville remains a fascinating choice as Press Secretary to the Monarch for two reasons. First, he regarded the press as little better than a communicable disease. Second, he remained in the job for more than twenty years. The fact that he lasted so long – only stepping down at retirement age – makes it clear that the Colville approach enjoyed the full endorsement of the Royal Family at the time. The Harroweducated son of an admiral, his entire career had been in the Royal Navy prior to his arrival at the Palace in 1947. The old joke of the day was that George VI had confused the Fleet with Fleet Street. It is more likely that the King was impressed by Colville’s Distinguished Service Cross (the Royal Navy’s equivalent decoration to the Military Cross), awarded in 1943. ‘He had a heart of gold but he was extremely rude [to the press] and was the last person who should have been Press Secretary,’ says a
member of the Royal Household from those years. ‘He was much liked by the rest of the Household. But his relations with the press – well, that’s a book on its own.’

‘He did the administrative side with terrific efficiency and won the respect of all those he had to deal with in that way,’ says Sir William Heseltine, the man who would succeed him and go on to become the Queen’s Private Secretary. ‘I was very attached to him but his approach to public relations was certainly a very negative one.’

In Colville’s eyes, all publicity was bad publicity. As he famously declared on one royal tour: ‘I am not what you North Americans would call a public relations officer.’ His basic rule was that any royal activity not specifically described in the Court Circular was not to be filmed, photographed or even discussed. This was an era of respectful, pliant media coverage. But Colville contrived to irritate the most supportive commentators. When the King, Queen and Princess Margaret were due to tour Australia in 1949 (a trip that would be cancelled due to the King’s health), the Australian Consolidated Press submitted a list of harmless questions about royal likes and dislikes. Amid all the excitement, these were entirely understandable and legitimate questions. After all, had the tour gone ahead it would have been Australia’s first sighting of a reigning monarch. The Palace’s terse response? ‘No information.’ Colville did, however, permit his deputy, Diana Lyttleton, to answer a question about Princess Margaret’s favourite dance tempos. ‘All kinds of dances, waltzes, reels and modern steps,’ came the reply. Even by the standards of the day, it was mind-numbing stuff.

This sort of grudging, nose-holding approach to the media was acceptable during the last years of George VI. Post-war Fleet Street could be relied on to censor itself on most royal matters. The nearest thing to a royal scandal were the jottings of the former royal governess, Marion Crawford. Having entered royal service in 1932, ‘Crawfie’ was devoted to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret for eighteen years, once tracking down a runaway Margaret during an air raid. She believed in opening their eyes to the wider world with rigorous, modern lessons and even trips on public transport. But after marrying Major George Buthlay a couple of months before the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1947, Crawfie decided to retire. The Royal Family provided her with a charming grace and favour home at Kensington Palace but Buthlay was a financial chancer. He kept urging his wife to seek more royal favours and belittled her for not securing a damehood or being appointed as a Lady-in-Waiting. Eventually, Crawfie was persuaded to write a lucrative memoir for an American publisher, at which point the Royal Family severed all contacts.
Her sugary observations bordered on adoration – ‘Lilibet’, she revealed, was ‘an enchanting child with the loveliest hair and skin’. Nor was she the first inside the inner circle to write about it. Even Queen Mary’s Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Airlie, had written a memoir. But Crawfie’s disclosures of life in the royal nursery were seen as a betrayal. Her short-lived career as a royal commentator collapsed after she wrote a gushing account of the Queen at the 1955 Trooping the Colour for
Woman’s Own
magazine. The article had gone to print before the parade was cancelled due to a rail strike. Crawfie’s credibility was blown. She moved to Aberdeen with her husband and died, a widow, in 1988. There were reports of an earlier suicide attempt. No royal flowers were sent to her funeral.

But ‘doing a Crawfie’ remains part of the royal vocabulary. Perhaps it was the neuralgic royal reaction to the harmless blabberings of the tragic ex-governess which shaped Commander Colville’s outlook on royal reporting. He was adamant that no event, however innocuous, should be treated as a public matter unless it was clearly defined for public consumption. If the media had hoped for a lighter touch and a fresh outlook (perhaps, even a fresh Press Secretary) after the accession of the Queen, they were in for a disappointment. In this area, the Queen was at one with her late father. The dispute over television coverage of the Coronation was a case in point. The Queen, her Press Secretary and the Prime Minister were opposed to letting the cameras in. The organising committee, chaired by Prince Philip, duly vetoed the idea, citing various technical problems without actually bothering to consult the BBC. A press campaign on behalf of the great excluded masses, backed by a large number of MPs, forced a rethink. But there was no change in royal attitudes to the media. A BBC controller was reprimanded by Colville for daring to suggest that the Royal Family had been pleased with the coverage of George VI’s funeral. The Director General of the BBC, Sir William Hayley, promptly issued an edict banning the
Radio Times
from even speculating about royal opinions on broadcasting.

As the Queen was preparing to embark on her great 1953–4 world tour, Colville was laying down the law around the world. The Government of New Zealand was briskly informed that there would be no prospect of an official state photograph of the Queen being taken during the tour. No matter that she was their Queen, too, and that it would be the Queen’s first visit to New Zealand. No matter that she would be there for several weeks. ‘I am sure that the Queen will not wish to have such a photograph taken,’ Colville wrote to officials in Wellington. ‘Since Her Majesty will have been subjected to quite sufficient photography daily, I do not think we should add further sessions.’ Australia’s state broadcaster, ABC, was
given the bizarre instruction that it was not to broadcast any of the Queen’s speeches to non-Australian ears. So, while the rest of the world would read the Queen’s speeches in the papers, they would be not be allowed to see or hear them. ‘It is not Her Majesty’s or His Royal Highness’s wish that any of their speeches should be beamed to such places as North America, Europe, etc.,’ Colville wrote to Oliver Hogue, the Australian government official in charge of the media.

‘Richard Colville had an old-fashioned aristocratic way of dealing with people,’ recalls Sir William Heseltine. ‘He insisted on calling people by their surnames but reporters in Fleet Street were not really very enamoured of being called “Smith” or “Jones” in authoritarian tones. One of the things that started Bellisario [Ray Bellisario was the original royal paparazzo] down the road to his deep antipathy to the organisation was Richard’s handling of him.’

Colville’s attitude during the good times made it harder to control things during the bad. During Princess Margaret’s doomed romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend, Palace requests for media calm were ignored. Indeed, upsetting Colville sometimes seemed to be the only way to elicit a response. During the Duke of Edinburgh’s long world tour of 1956–7, the American papers were so full of rumours that Colville took the extraordinary step of issuing a formal Palace denial of a ‘rift’ in the royal marriage. This was a mistake on a number of fronts. The British papers, which had ignored the story, were suddenly forced to explain what it was that they had been ignoring. Their restraint had done them no favours and, worse, had made them look stupid. And it did nothing to dampen speculation.

During the first fifteen years of the Queen’s marriage, the French press alone carried seventy-three reports that she and the Duke were to divorce. There was, however, one news organisation which could be relied upon to ignore all disobliging stories about ‘rifts’ or anything else. But, in time, even the super-loyal BBC would have to move with the times. Through the fifties, it did as it was told. When it was told not to depict Edward VII in a television drama, it obeyed. When it was told that it could not film the Royal Train for children’s television in 1958, it concurred. When the writer Lord Altrincham and the broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge both made disparaging remarks about the Queen in print, the BBC banned them from discussing royal matters on air. It was not a simple matter of deference. There were corporate motives, too. The BBC was keen to prevent the new upstarts of independent television (ITV began broadcasting in 1955) from muscling in on the royal scene.

But the BBC could not ignore the sense of social upheaval as the
sixties progressed. By 1963, the monarchy was deemed fair game for the new iconoclasts of television satire. In one famous sketch, a young David Frost ridiculed the fawning tone of royal coverage with a mock commentary of the Royal Barge sinking. Although it appeared on the BBC show
That Was The Week That Was
, the sketch was still deemed too risque for the London stage. (This was in the days when all theatrical productions still required the approval of Commander Colville’s colleagues in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.) As far as the Palace was concerned, if the press were unhappy about the level of access and information they were getting, tough luck. If the monarchy was failing to keep up with the times, so be it. There were no great royal crises. In any case, the marriage of Princess Margaret and the birth of her children had introduced a popular new strand to the royal story. Why bother changing things?

Some people attempted to warn the Palace of the dangers of Colville’s complacency. Kenneth Rose recalls: ‘I was so dismayed by this blank-wall approach that I wrote to Michael Adeane [the Queen’s Private Secretary] whom I knew as a friend and said: “Do you know the effect this has on public opinion and the press?” And he wrote back and said: “You may or may not be right but I’m afraid I can’t interfere. It’s not my department.”’ It was, in fact, his department. The Press Office is part of the Private Secretary’s Office. But as long as Colville was enjoying the support of his ultimate bosses, nothing was going to change. Colville was even criticised by the Press Council for his obstructive approach but it did him no harm with his employers. In 1965, he became Sir Richard after the Queen appointed him a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. And she had much to be grateful for. Royal coverage remained, for the most part, worthy and respectful. Amid all the noisy demands for a new world order, there was no overt hostility towards the monarchy. As far as the radicals of the sixties protest movements were concerned, the Windsors were a drearily bourgeois bunch to be placed somewhere between irrelevance and light comedy.