Elizabeth- the Queen and the Crown Read online

  Elizabeth

  Elizabeth

  The Queen and the Crown

  Sarah Gristwood

  Princess Elizabeth photographed at Clarence House in 1951, in a dress by Norman Hartnell. US President Truman, that same year, described her as ‘a fairy princess’.

  Contents

  Prologue: Coronation

  Part I: Apprenticeship, 1926–1956

  Chapter 1: ‘We Four’

  Chapter 2: War

  Chapter 3: Love and Marriage

  Chapter 4: New Elizabethans

  Portraits and Props

  Part II: Being Queen, 1956–1986

  Chapter 5: Work and Family

  Chapter 6: Changing Faces

  Horses and Dogs

  Chapter 7: Home and Away

  Chapter 8: The End of the Fairy Tale

  Palaces and Parties

  Part III: Change and Celebration, 1986–2016

  Chapter 9: Anni Horribiles

  Chapter 10: Fall and Rise

  Chapter 11: Millennial Monarchy

  Chapter 12: New Generations The Queen on Stage and Screen

  Epilogue: Legacy

  Bibliography

  Picture Credits

  Index

  Author's Note

  (Clockwise from top) The Imperial State Crown is cut down to fit Elizabeth. The Anointing, the most sacred moment of the Coronation. Children in the East End of London prepare to celebrate.

  It was, by any standard, a very big affair. Sixteen months of preparation, and Westminster Abbey turned into a building site as tier after tier of seats climbed almost to the roof. More than eight thousand guests, including the heads of state from seventy-three countries – so many, in fact, that the Royal Mews had to borrow extra carriages from Elstree Studios to transport them. More than two thousand journalists and five hundred photographers representing ninety-two nations; and so many soldiers, playing so complicated a part in the procession, that the ever-practical Elizabeth plotted out their positions using the young Prince Charles’s toys.

  At Edgington’s flag factory in Sidcup, Kent, artists put the final touches to the cartouches to be used in the coronation of Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953.

  Three million people lined streets decked with flowers from the Royal Greenhouses. Some twenty-seven million Britons watched the day’s events on television, many of them on a set they had bought or hired for the purpose. But therein lies a tale, for if a monarch’s coronation sets the tone for their reign, then there was debate about just what the tone of this event should be.

  When Elizabeth’s father, George VI, was crowned, just sixteen years before, the goal had been to present an image of tradition and stability. The Royal Family was desperate to put the abdication of George’s brother Edward VIII, and his raffish image, behind them.

  Now, the messages might be more mixed. Cautious voices in the royal establishment (the new Queen’s mother among them) felt it important that nothing should change. But others – notably the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip – understood that in the postwar world, the monarchy had to establish a different relationship with its nation. That the nation wanted to be part of this event . . . The modernizers’ views had prevailed, which is why, as a cold grey day dawned on 2 June 1953, a 120-strong team from the BBC was setting up cameras in and around Westminster Abbey.

  At the heart of the huge ceremony about to happen was one very small figure – the diminutive, twenty-seven-year-old new Queen. The Imperial State Crown had been cut down to fit her, and she had taken instruction from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, in the spiritual significance of the great ceremony she was about to perform.

  The decades ahead would be marked by her religious faith, her strong sense of duty, and her anxiety to follow the rules laid down for her. But even this early in her reign, she was no cipher. It had been she who insisted Prince Philip should chair her Coronation Commission. Even this early, she had begun to understand that those rules would have to change when necessary.

  Over the preceding weeks, she had been wearing the crown while sitting at her desk, to get used to its great weight. Prince Charles would recall her going in to say goodnight to him with it balanced on her head. She had practised her steps in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace with sheets tied to her shoulders, to simulate the coronation robes with their eighteen-foot train.

  One of the first concerns in planning the coronation, after all, had been that of dressing the Queen. The sovereign required a whole series of ceremonial garments for the coronation – much the same as had been required since medieval times. She would arrive at Westminster Abbey in the crimson Robe of State (or Parliamentary Robe). For the most holy moment of the ceremony, the Anointing, she would be divested of this, and of all her jewels and other grand accoutrements, which would be replaced by a plain white linen shift over her dress. Then came a tunic of cloth of gold, with the Stole Royal and the Imperial Mantle – and finally, for the procession out of the Abbey, she would wear the purple Robe of State, or Coronation Robe.

  Underneath all these ceremonial overgarments, however, Elizabeth would need her own Coronation Dress. For this she turned to designer Norman Hartnell, who was not only her mother’s longtime favourite, but also the man who had designed her own wedding dress. He produced eight different designs and the Queen chose the last, the silver embroidery of which featured not only England’s Tudor Rose but Scotland’s thistle, Ireland’s shamrock and the Welsh leek. (Hartnell begged in vain to be allowed to give Wales the prettier daffodil.) The Queen asked him also to add emblems of the Commonwealth nations, from Pakistan’s wheat to Australia’s wattle.

  Hartnell also supplied the white linen shift, but the commission for the Robes of State went to Ede & Ravenscroft, whose records describe a Coronation Robe of ‘best quality hand-made purple velvet’, trimmed with Canadian ermine and lined with English silk satin. The gold embroidery took 3,500 hours and the Royal School of Needlework used a rota of embroideresses, working continuously so that ‘never a seat goes cold’.

  For the drive to Westminster Abbey, the Queen wore the Diamond Diadem made for the coronation of George IV – containing no fewer than 1,333 diamonds! – and the Coronation Necklace made for Queen Victoria in 1858. The necklace had subsequently been worn by three consort queens at their coronation – mother, grandmother and great-grandmother to Elizabeth II.

  However, Elizabeth II was not a queen consort but a queen regnant – a queen who ruled in her own right. This was not the first time a queen regnant had been crowned in Westminster Abbey, but the process had not always gone smoothly.

  When Mary Tudor was crowned in 1553, four hundred years earlier, the usual rituals had to be adapted for the first woman to sit on England’s throne. She just touched the knightly spurs, instead of having them strapped to her heels, and as well as the king’s sceptre she was given the queen consort’s sceptre surmounted with the dove of peace.

  When her Protestant sister, Elizabeth I, succeeded Mary, almost none of Mary’s Catholic bishops was prepared to crown her. More than a century later, when Mary II was crowned with her husband, William, the Archbishop of Canterbury (who held by her supplanted father, James) likewise refused to perform the rite. Mary’s sister Anne, who reigned after her, was so obese she had to be carried to her coronation in a litter.

  Norman Hartnell’s design for the Coronation Dress featured emblems of all the realm of which Elizabeth would be Queen, from Scotland’s thistle to England’s rose.

  Queen Victoria – England’s fifth queen regnant – became the first to be succeeded by her own child. But her coronation had been something of a shambles, with neither queen nor clergy sure o
f the rite. The Coronation Ring had been made to fit the wrong finger and Victoria complained that it caused her considerable pain when the Archbishop of Canterbury tried to ram it home.

  The Coronation Glove presented to the Queen during the Investiture, made of white leather embroidered with gold thread, represents the gentleness with which a sovereign should exercise their power.

  In 1953, by contrast, extensive rehearsals made sure that everything would go according to plan.

  Elizabeth herself seemed calm that morning. One of her attendants said to her, ‘You must be feeling nervous, Ma’am.’ ‘Of course I am,’ the Queen replied, ‘but I really do think Aureole will win.’ Her horse Aureole was running in the Derby four days later, and the Queen’s answer is usually taken as a sign of her almost inhuman detachment. But surely it more likely sprang from a refusal, at this of all moments, to share her deepest feelings with anybody. Because what lay ahead would be utterly fundamental to the Queen’s sense of her destiny.

  The coronation of a monarch requires six different ceremonial stages. The Recognition sees the Archbishop of Canterbury – for this is, after all, a religious ceremony – present the new sovereign to the congregation on all four sides of the Abbey in turn. ‘Sirs, I here present unto you Queen Elizabeth, your undoubted Queen.’ It was Elizabeth’s own decision to answer their recognition with a half curtsy: the last time she would make that gesture to anybody.

  She was seated in King Edward’s Chair, used in every coronation since 1308 and containing the Scottish Stone of Scone, as the Archbishop of Canterbury asked if she would govern with law, justice and mercy, and defend the faith. She gave the Oath as she declared: ‘I solemnly promise so to do.’

  There followed the most sacred moment for the Queen – the one the television cameras were not allowed to witness: the Anointing. Divested of her symbols of status, in the simple white pleated shift, she was shielded by a canopy borne by four Garter Knights. The Archbishop anointed her on the hands, breast and head with holy oil, applied from the Coronation Spoon (the only part of the medieval coronation regalia to survive Oliver Cromwell’s purge in the seventeenth century).

  The four-year-old Prince Charles, safely seated between the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, was allowed to watch part of the ceremony.

  As the sovereign takes on his or her God-given mission, they become in a sense something more than mere mortal. But those present noted how, without her rich robes and her jewels, Elizabeth’s slim figure and rounded arms gave her a very human vulnerability.

  Next came the Investiture, culminating in the actual crowning, when the Queen was presented with the symbols of sovereignty. She received the spurs and the jewelled Sword of Offering, while the armills, the gold bracelets representing sincerity and wisdom, were clasped on her wrists, and she was robed again in cloth of gold. She was handed the Orb, while the Sovereign’s Ring was placed on the fourth finger of her right hand. She was presented with the Coronation Glove representing gentleness; with both the Sovereign’s Sceptre – set with the great diamond Cullinan I, the Great Star of Africa – and the Sceptre with Dove.

  Then, holding it aloft for a moment, the Archbishop placed St Edward’s Crown firmly on her head. As the whole assembly shouted ‘God Save the Queen’ (signifying that she could now rule by the ‘acclamation’ of the people), in a deeply emotive and almost balletic moment, all the nation’s peers and peeresses put their own coronets on their heads.

  The new sovereign had still to take Communion, and to receive the Homage of all the lords temporal and spiritual in turn. The Duke of Edinburgh had suggested that the lords should be joined by a representative of the Common Man, but this proposal had been overruled. The Duke himself was the first of the temporal lords to swear allegiance. Prince Philip had ridden to the Abbey beside Elizabeth in the huge piece of gilded fantasy that is the Gold State Coach, but there could be no question of his processing with her through the Abbey. Now on his knee, his hands between hers, he swore fealty, touched the crown, and kissed his wife’s left cheek. ‘I, Philip, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks. So help me God.’ He kept his word.

  There had been real concern as to how the Queen and her attendants would stand up to the long hours of ceremony. She said they needn’t worry about her. ‘I’m strong as a horse.’ But, just in case, the Archbishop had a flask of brandy under his cope. And members of the official party were given lunch – of Coronation Chicken, a dish invented for the day – before they left the Abbey.

  St Edward’s Crown is only ever used for the actual crowning of a new monarch. To leave the Abbey, the Queen instead donned the Imperial State Crown, set with the Cullinan II Diamond (the Second Star of Africa), the Black Prince’s Ruby – actually spinel – which Henry V wore at the Battle of Agincourt, and the Stuart Sapphire. The Gold State Coach, in a procession nearly two miles long, took two hours to travel a circuitous four-and-a-half-mile route back to Buckingham Palace, all in the pouring rain. Though freezing, the Queen was elated as the ride ended. ‘That was marvellous,’ she declared. ‘Nothing went wrong!’

  Three million people gathered in the streets of London to watch the Queen and Prince Philip drive to Westminster Abbey in the four-ton Gold State Coach.

  The four-year-old Prince Charles, seated between the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, had been in the Abbey to witness part of the coronation ceremony, though Princess Anne, not yet three, was considered too young. But in the excitement and relief of the return to the Palace, both children were seen gleefully playing with the Queen’s train and indeed the crown. The official photographer, Cecil Beaton, captured some intimate family moments as the Queen Mother tried to calm them.

  Celebrations went on almost until midnight as, time and again, the Queen was summoned to greet the cheering crowds from the balcony of an illuminated Buckingham Palace.

  Before the first of the Royal Family’s balcony appearances, Beaton took the portraits of the Queen herself that seem to capture the day. As a child, watching her father’s coronation, the young Princess Elizabeth had written romantically of how a ‘haze of wonder’ seemed to hang over the arches of Westminster Abbey. Now the backdrop for Beaton’s photographs suggested the same romantic haze of stonework, against which the young sovereign’s face stood out in dramatic clarity.

  The balcony appearances went on almost until midnight, the flypast followed by illuminations and fireworks, as again and again the crowd called for the royal couple. At 9 p.m. the Queen broke off to make a radio broadcast, relayed through loudspeakers to the drenched crowd in the Mall.

  ‘I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service,’ she said, ‘as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.’ It was the theme of the more famous speech Princess Elizabeth had made a few years earlier, on her twenty-first birthday. And it was a promise that – through good times and bad; through youth, maturity and old age – the Queen was determined to keep until her dying day.

  Cecil Beaton’s iconic image of the Queen in full Coronation regalia, uses the soaring arches of Westminster Abbey as a backdrop to suggest both the glamour and the solemnity of the day.

  (Clockwise from top left) Princess Elizabeth with her sister Margaret at the Coronation of their father George VI in 1937; at her wedding to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in 1947; and at the christening of Princess Anne in 1950, with the Queen Mother, Prince Charles and Queen Mary.

  ‘We Four’

  Elizabeth (like Queen Victoria before her) was not born the daughter of a king, or even a Prince of Wales. It lent a fairy-tale quality to both their stories. Indeed, when on 21 April 1926, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born at 17 Bruton Street in London’s Mayfair, the mere fact she could be born not in a palace, but in her mother’s family home, showed how few ever dreamt this baby would one day be Queen.

 
; Her father, ‘Bertie’, the shy and stammering Duke of York, was the second son of King George V, and the throne was naturally expected to pass not to him and his children, but to his elder brother, the charismatic Prince of Wales.

  Princess Elizabeth enjoyed a happy early childhood, surrounded by pets. Here she plays with her dogs at the window of Y Bwthyn Bach, The Little Cottage, a gift from the people of Wales.

  Perhaps a look at the recent history of the Royal Family might have given some hint at what lay ahead. George V had himself been merely the second son of Edward VII until the early death of his elder brother (the dissolute ‘Prince Eddie’) put him directly in line for the throne.

  But at the time of Princess Elizabeth’s birth, there was no reason to doubt that her uncle the Prince of Wales would shortly marry and have children. So although there was huge international interest in this new royal baby – although little Elizabeth would be taught to stand at the window in Bruton Street and wave across Green Park to ‘Grandpa England’ in Buckingham Palace – the first decade of her life was one of comparative normality.

  Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon leaves her parent’s house in Mayfair for her wedding to the Duke of York on 26 April 1923. Three years later Princess Elizabeth would be born in the same house – 17 Bruton Street.

  When her parents married in 1923, it had still been considered something of an oddity that any senior member of the Royal Family should be allowed to marry a commoner. But the First World War – which had seen the family change its name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor – had made the traditional marriage into the German Protestant principalities a less appealing prospect. And Bertie, like so many other young men, was besotted with the vivacious Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.