35

After Diana

IN THE EARLY hours of Sunday, 31 August 1997, the Queen was at Balmoral when she was awoken by a telephone call from her deputy private secretary, Sir Robert Janvrin, with the news that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been involved in a car crash in Paris. Just before four confirmation came through from the British Embassy that Diana had died. The Queen’s first thought was for her grandsons, William and Harry, who she insisted should be allowed to sleep undisturbed for what remained of the night.

Charles was shattered, but, typically, his main concern was what it would mean for him. ‘They’re all going to blame me, aren’t they? What do I do? What does this mean?’ Certainly any steps towards public acceptance of Camilla Parker Bowles would now have to be put on hold. A little after seven, still red-eyed but a little calmer, he went in to tell his sons that their mother was dead.

Although the royal family was as shocked and distressed as anyone by the news, it was typical that they concealed their emotions later that morning when they attended the usual service at Crathie Church, where the Princess’s name was not even mentioned in the prayers. Elizabeth II had never been in the habit of revealing her feelings and did not intend to start now, but to the public it seemed so uncaring. Tony Blair captured the mood of the moment when on the way to church in his constituency he made what was apparently an improvised speech, calling Diana ‘the People’s Princess’.

It had been the century of the Windsor women: Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Elizabeth II and Diana, whom large sections of the British public and the world had elevated almost to goddess status. The Queen and Prince Philip had realized immediately that the public grief at Diana’s death would be immense and that this called for something more than the private family funeral the Spencers wanted. While the Queen and Philip were anxious to stay at Balmoral where they could comfort their grandsons, Charles was despatched to Paris with Diana’s two sisters to bring back the body, which after a detour to the mortuary in Fulham would be taken to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, where it would lie surrounded by candles and covered in white flowers.

The Lord Chamberlain, Lord Airlie, and his team joined forces with the Prime Minister’s appointees, including Alastair Campbell, to plan the funeral. There was no precedent for the burial of an ex-Princess of Wales who was divorced and no longer an HRH, so they would have to improvise. All week, as the flowers piled up outside the palaces and the files of mourners queued to sign the condolence books, the phone lines between London and Balmoral were busy as the two teams liaised.

It is impossible for anyone who was not in London that week to fathom the mood: overwhelming grief that slipped into anger at the lack of a royal presence, which finally turned ugly. Balmoral is the place where the Queen truly relaxes, so much so that she slips into what they call ‘Balmoral time’. Even though television coverage was showing that something very strange was unfolding in the capital, the royals at Balmoral were slow to grasp it. At one stage during the week, an exasperated Charles complained to Mark Bolland, his deputy private secretary in London, that the whole family were locked in their rooms drinking.

Ever faithful to tradition and protocol, the Queen was adamant that she was not going to give in to demands to let the royal standard fly at half mast at Buckingham Palace. It had become an inflammatory issue with the media and the people and soon the Queen’s advisers were unanimously advising her to compromise. Usually so amenable to advice, they were surprised by the strength of her resistance and there were some bruising exchanges spoken in the heat of the moment. Finally, a compromise was reached whereby the Union flag would fly at half mast at Buckingham Palace, in lieu of the royal standard, which according to form would not be raised on the palace flagpole until the Queen’s return at the end of the week.

With newspaper headlines screaming, ‘Where is our Queen?’ and dark muttering in the streets growing ever louder, there was a real fear that the Queen and her family might be lynched when they returned to the capital. On the Thursday, Princes Andrew and Edward were sent out on a test run, walking down the Mall among the crowds. The gesture was welcomed and they were treated courteously. On Friday afternoon the car carrying the Queen and Prince Philip stopped outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, where they stepped out to inspect the messages on the flowers piled up there. Plainclothes officers merged with the crowd, ready to spring if the people turned on their monarch. The tension was broken by a little girl presenting the Queen with a bouquet. ‘Do you want me to place them for you?’ she asked. ‘No, Your Majesty, they are for you.’ The people began to clap. The relief was palpable.

At the eleventh hour, Elizabeth II had rescued the tottering monarchy from the brink. That she did so was thanks to advisers both in the palace and in Downing Street, but also to the residual affection and respect in which the people had always held her, conscious of her dedication and long service. As ever, the short speech that was televised live that evening was scripted for her, including the words ‘as a grandmother’, a nice touch which Alastair Campbell had thought to insert. It was one of the television crew’s ideas to film her against the open window, uniting her visually with the grieving crowd outside, although later a journalist commented that the piece looked like a hostage video with the speaker reading the words in front of her in order to save her neck. There was an air of compulsion about it.

Back now in full professional mode, she agreed that she and the whole royal family would walk to the palace gates next morning to be there as the funeral cortège passed on its way to Westminster Abbey. As the gun carriage carrying Diana’s coffin, with the poignant word ‘Mummy’ prominent on a card amid a wreath of white flowers, drew close, Elizabeth II bowed her head in respect. The sovereign had done everything expected of her.

It was only after the event that the Queen and Prince Philip realized that in Earl Spencer’s brilliant and emotive funeral oration at the abbey they had been thoroughly insulted. Still, it was over.

There remained the problem of what to do about Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. When the Queen had taken her son to task during the melt-down of his marriage to Diana, Charles had denied that he was having an affair with Camilla. The Queen was justifiably cross that she had been lied to and angry about the mess that Charles’s selfish behaviour had left, which reflected so badly on the monarchy. Unlike the divorces of the Queen’s other children, there was a constitutional implication to the end of Charles’s marriage and his continuing liaison with a married woman. Was he fit to be King? Could a divorcee be head of the Church if he did become King? Should the succession bypass Charles in favour of William? These were all reasonable questions.

After Charles’s divorce from Diana, Philip wrote to his son advising him to drop Camilla. The advice was ignored, with Charles subsequently stating categorically that Camilla was ‘non negotiable’. He was prepared neither to give up the throne, when the time came, nor to give up his mistress. Nothing he did, however, could persuade the Queen to acknowledge Camilla. ‘Never mention that wicked woman’s name to me again,’ she is said to have expostulated when he tried to arrange for the two to meet at his fiftieth birthday party. Determined to get his own way, Charles was prepared to encourage criticism of the Queen in the media if she did not accept Camilla.

Certainly while the Queen Mother was alive, there was no chance of Charles marrying Camilla, but after her death in 2002 there was a wind of change at the palace. Having been under her mother’s influence all her life, the Queen at seventy-six, in her Golden Jubilee year, was her own woman at last. Her natural conservatism and resistance to change had been reinforced by her mother, who was vigorously opposed to attempts to reform or modernize the monarchy. Opening Buckingham Palace to the public to raise funds for the restoration work at Windsor had provoked a major row with the Queen Mother. She was no less angry at the Queen’s agreement to pay tax, as well she might be, since in the course of her fifty-year widowhood she had been hugely subsidized by her daughter. Living in pre-war regal splendour with no idea of the cost of anything, the Queen Mother’s extravagance knew no bounds. So frugal that she has been known to go round turning off the lights in her palaces, scrutinize her dressmakers’ bills and have her breakfast cereals brought to the table in Tupperware containers, the Queen was prepared to indulge her mother, but she was irritated that she had indoctrinated Charles in the same habits.

The Queen is a pragmatist. She may not like Camilla and she certainly does not approve of marital infidelity, but if the country was prepared to accept it, she would not stand in the way of Charles’s marriage. He was, after all, well into his fifties. Ever cautious, the Queen would only ever act on advice. Prime Minister Blair is a Christian, an advocate of marriage. It is reasonable to assume that he would have advised in favour of regularizing the union. The Queen, who had spent so much of her life under the shadow of the abdication of 1936, gave her cautious approval. A registry office and a finger buffet, rather than the organic extravaganza Charles had planned, were the order of the day. There is time for Charles and his wife to win public acceptance during the Queen’s lifetime, ensuring his smooth succession when the time comes. The idea is for them to take on more of her duties, although she must worry about her son’s frequent voicing of his opinions.

Entering her eighties, the Queen is seen to smile more and she has plenty to smile about. Family affairs seem more settled than they have for twenty years and she has enormous pleasure in her grandchildren. Her health is good, apart from the occasional headaches and sinusitis she treats with homeopathic remedies, and she remains as indefatigable as ever. In her eightieth year she undertook nearly 400 engagements. On one day alone she attended the State Opening of Parliament, flew to Canada and attended an evening function there, with the wilting press in tow. She continues to travel widely, a source of pride to accompanying British ministers and diplomats, who value her practised ability to show interest in everything and disguise exhaustion and boredom.

By assiduous hard work and her people skills – showing almost a mothering instinct where it is concerned – she has preserved the idea and reality of the Commonwealth, when many British politicians might have consigned it to history. Australia, which has long been close to becoming a republic, has hesitated to do so while Elizabeth is its Queen. By her uncompromising majesty, she has conveyed no sense at all of Britain’s decline, or, in the context of the tightening European Union, of any loss of sovereignty.

At the time of Diana’s death, the message given out was that lessons had been learned. Now when the Queen visits a school, she will come in and sit down with the children, rather than stand at the door. But she has never been one for the spontaneous gesture, nor is she the touchy-feely type. Sitting on the bed of a sick patient during a hospital visit or hugging a child are simply not her. Nor, thankfully, does she exploit press opportunities. She is all the more respected for that.

Whenever the Queen travels, she personally packs a photograph of her father, George VI. Ever her father’s daughter, she has remained faithful to the past and slow to change the monarchy. She inherited a secure throne at a time when popularity for the monarchy did not need to be actively cultivated. The standing of the monarchy is lower now than when she came to the throne and no doubt she is partly responsible. The behaviour of her children and changing times are equally to blame. No previous monarch or royal family has been so visible or subject to such scrutiny. Contrary to the myth, the royal family is not perfect, but we can accept that if it is matched by the unfailing dedication to duty that this queen has shown.

The sixth queen regnant could become our longest-reigning monarch, if she exceeds her great-great-grandmother Victoria’s sixty-four years on the throne. At twenty-one Elizabeth made a vow ‘that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service’, and she has remained true to that promise. Perhaps one of the greatest yardsticks of her success is that there can be no question of Britain becoming a republic while she lives. For many of us she has always been there – the Queen – ubiquitous. She exists somewhere deep in our collective consciousness, a sole fixed point in a world that has changed beyond all recognition. It is impossible to imagine life without her.