The fabled bendy blue frontier of London’s River Thames – well, it’s coloured blue on the maps at least – is the dividing line that defines the everyday lives of many a Londoner. Especially those who are trying to grab a late-night cab to head for the hills – the distant Muswell (north) and Forest (south) variety.
When looking for royal history north of the river, the first thought that strikes the visitor interested in royal landmarks is this: ‘I seem to have discovered the spiritual home of the British republican.’ Royal fingerprints from the modern era – that is the two centuries since the start of Queen Victoria’s reign – are few and far between north of the river.
What conclusions can we draw from this? Is Hampstead really the ‘nest of reds’ that many a right-wing commentator would have us fear? Does Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, have the born Sarf Londoner’s aversion to Norf London? Is it because Prince William, famously an Aston Villa supporter, will only come to North London for football matches at Spurs or Arsenal? Or can we find an antipathy to the ‘ordinary’ people who live in such northerly enclaves as Tottenham?
I tend to think none of the above. Rather it is this: the common, everyday practices of the modern-day royals were set down in the 19th Century, particularly during the reign of Queen Victoria. By this point, the royal residences that we know and love today were already well established. Queen Elizabeth II also established many traditions early in her long reign – Sandringham in Norfolk for New Year being a good example. The royal story of the 19th and 20th Centuries has very much been one of consolidation in a time of great imperial upheaval. Little new ground – literal ground – has been broken in London in this period.
During the time of Diana, Princess of Wales we saw glimmers of a more modern approach. And much talk of a new era surrounded the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Not only that, but HRH The Prince of Wales, as we shall see later in this chapter, has responded in a most modern fashion to 21st-century social upheaval right here in North London.
What all this does leave us, however, is the tantalising and rewarding business of finding clues from the deeper past of the royal history of London. And those clues are plentiful and sometimes surprising, in both their tone and their location.
The Northern Line comes to a halt at Barnet – and so did the Wars of the Roses.
The Battle of Barnet (14 April 1471) proved to be a decisive blow in returning the Yorkist King Edward IV to the throne of England.
The Wars of the Roses in a nutshell? The great and storied dynastic conflict of English history that raged between 1455 and 1485, during which period the throne of England changed hands six times. The conflict takes its name from the emblems of the two sides, the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York – William Shakespeare uses broad poetic licence when setting the scene where each side selected their emblems, and places it at Middle Temple Gardens.
Battle commenced at Barnet early in the morning amid heavy fog. Cannon and arrows acted as a prelude to the bitter and barbarous hand-to-hand combat with swords and axes. The fog-addled fighting lasted from two to three hours and by its end some 1,500 men lay dead – the Earl of Warwick among them.
Warwick, popular among the people of England and once devoted to the Yorkist cause, had gained the nickname the Kingmaker and had been the leader of the Lancastrian forces.
In the spirit of the victors writing the history books, legend has it that Warwick was killed by the hand of Edward IV himself – a version that most historians reject. At the battle’s end, Edward had issued orders to have Warwick captured alive – which remains the subject of great speculation. Did he want to win his former ally back to the Yorkist cause? Or did he have a lavishly gory public execution in mind for the traitor? In the spirit of this last, Edward had the naked corpse of Warwick and that of his brother, the 1st Marquess of Montagu, displayed for three days at St Paul’s Cathedral to stamp out any potentially seditious cult growing around any legend of escape. Generally, the good folk at St Paul’s these days frown upon such exhibitions, but the old place is still worth a visit. (The current St Paul’s is, of course, only 300 years old, but the location remains the same.)
Warwick’s legend was eventually secured, however, when Shakespeare (that man again) gave him some dramatic last words:
‘Sweet rest his soul! Fly, lords, and save yourselves;
For Warwick bids you all farewell to meet in heaven.’
Unlikely, this, as being stabbed through the neck had finished him off.
Unfortunately for King Ted, he didn’t get his own Shakespeare play. His brother, the Duke of Gloucester, did, and one with a starring role at that: Richard III. Perhaps King Ted didn’t have a very good agent.
All of which seems a million miles from the villagey Englishness of Barnet today. Yet only half a mile or so separates this Costa Coffee-d, WH Smith-ed suburban High Street from the scene of the barbarism. Today, you’ll find homes and a golf course – a battle being even more a spoliation of a good walk than a round at ‘the gowf’ – on the approximate location. But, since 1740, the Hadley Highstone has commemorated the Kingmaker’s death. It currently stands on the Great North Road about 180 metres away from its original spot. The inscription on the obelisk reads thus:
Here was fought the famous battle between Edward IV and the Earl of Warwick April 14th Anno 1471 in which the Earl was Defeated and Slain.
In the early 21st Century the flight requirements of the Royal Family are catered for at RAF Northolt. Hendon, however, retains its place centre stage when the popular imagination turns to all matters RAF, although this is thanks in no small part to the excellent RAF museum based there.
The King’s Flight (the world’s first fleet of aircraft dedicated to a head of state) was established at Hendon in 1936. It was later moved to RAF Northolt and was the subject of a news item in the Independent on 12 April 2006 when it was reported that: ‘Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and ministerial colleagues were last night accused of using private jets in the Queen’s Flight like a private taxi service.’ The New Labour high-fliers denied the claim strenuously, despite the figures claiming that the Prime Minister used the Queen’s Flight up to 60 times a year, whereas HM used it ‘six or seven’ times.
King George V was an early flight enthusiast, as had been his father King Edward VII, who had met the Wright Brothers and watched a demonstration of their aircraft in action.
An enthusiast he may have been, but when King George V found out that his son and heir (the man who would, briefly, be King Edward VIII) had flown in 1918 with a pilot who had one arm in a sling, he decided that it was best to clip the Prince’s wings lest the nation lose a future king to the reckless pursuit of pleasure – a measure that proved, ultimately, futile.
The Prince of Wales later took delivery of a Gipsy Moth biplane in 1929, and from 1930 he and his brother – the man who would be king after the man who would be king – the Duke of York, later King George VI, father of Elizabeth II (I do hope you are paying attention at the back) – kept their aircraft at Hendon.
In December 1952 Prince Philip made the first solo flight by a member of the Royal Family in a helicopter. The model of helicopter was a de Havilland Chipmunk.
ROYALS WHO HAVE HELD RANK IN THE RAF
■ King Edward VIII – Air Marshal
■ King George VI – Air Marshal
■ Henry, Duke of Gloucester – Air Marshal
■ Prince George, Duke of Kent – Group Captain
■ HRH Prince Philip – Air Marshal
■ HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales – Air Chief Marshall
Abandon hope all ye who cross the Heath – hope of navigating your way by street sign, that is. The Heath is free of the aesthetic pollution of ‘signage’ and is as delightful a place to get lost as London can afford. It also provides us with one of this book’s earliest royal references: the land was granted to St Peter’s monastery by King Ethelred the Unready in 986 AD.
As resistant to royal history as Hampstead seems at first glance, since 1992 it has been possible to visit the Queen at Hampstead Town Hall, 213 Haverstock Hill, NW3 – in the persona of MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Glenda Jackson.
By the time the next general election rolls around, the former actress Glenda Jackson will have represented her constituents in Parliament for two decades. And she is probably roundly sick of being described as an actress. But her status as such in the popular imagination is cemented by her legendary performance in the role of Queen Elizabeth I in the landmark 1971 BBC drama Elizabeth R, in addition to her two Oscars.
As ordinary North London streets go, Brodie Road is about as ordinary as they get. Early- to mid-20th-century villas and terraced housing in a variety of styles, quiet for the most part. Certainly not a typical haunt of dashing playboy princes – no offence, Enfield.
Yet the man who reigned over us, not so happy or glorious, as King Edward VIII has left his signature on this Enfield street in the shape of one of only 161 bright-red post boxes commissioned during his reign.
British mailboxes bear the name of the monarch during whose reign they were commissioned – VR for Queen Victoria, E VII R (Edward VII), a simple GR for King George V (there was no postal system as we recognise it today during the reigns of Kings George I–IV), G VI R (George VI) and, of course, E II R for Elizabeth II.
During the short, uncrowned reign of King Edward VIII – a mere 326 days – just 161 new post or pillar boxes, were commissioned. And one such example can be found in Brodie Road, Enfield, just along from the junction with Browning Road.
Letters form a central part of the legend of Edward VIII – not least his famous abdication letter, or ‘instrument of abdication’ as it was dubbed. In 2001, over 200 letters penned by the then Prince of Wales to his lover Freda Dudley Ward fetched £34,500. At almost double the expected price, this marks our enduring fascination with this star-crossed royal. His lover was – wait for it – a married woman whom he first met in 1918. One exchange in the letters is most revealing:
‘What a hopeless state the world is in just now and each day I long more and more to chuck in this job & be out of it & free for you sweetie: the more I think of it all the more certain I am that really... the day for Kings & Princes is past, monarchies are out of date.’
This letter was written some 14 years before he ever clapped eyes on Wallis Simpson. At which point his relationship with Dudley Ward ended abruptly.
The letters are addressed from ‘Backhouse SW’, so I am making the assumption that they were not posted from Enfield, but if new information comes to light we’ll publish an updated edition of this book forthwith.
The red-brick, twisty and gnarly English Gothic structure of Highgate School dates from the Victorian era. But the school dates back to the reign of that other formidable, epoch-defining woman of English history, Queen Elizabeth I.
Good Queen Bess granted by charter permission for Sir Roger Cholmeley to found a free grammar school for boys in 1565. After a long history as a public school for boys only, Highgate School went co-ed in 2004.
Former pupils include Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984). The poet laureate – a post that stretches back to ancient Greece – is a government-appointed poet to the nation and has been the prime minister’s responsibility since 1790, but originally was a royal appointment. Betjeman succeeded C. Day-Lewis in 1972 and held the post until his death in 1984.
SELECTED POETS LAUREATE IN LONDON SINCE QUEEN VICTORIA
1843–1850: William Wordsworth
The only laureate not to have composed a word of verse in his official capacity. Lived at Cheapside by St Paul’s.
1850–1892: Alfred Lord Tennyson
Longest-serving laureate, ennobled by Queen Victoria – the first writer to be so.
1913–1930: Robert Bridges
Trained as a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Tube: St Paul’s/Barbican) and composed ‘London Snow’:
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees.
1930–1967: John Masefield
Wrote ‘So many true Princesses who have gone’, set to music for choir and orchestra by Edward Elgar for the unveiling of the Queen Alexandra Memorial outside St James’s Palace (situated just off The Mall). (Tube: St James’s Park)
1968–1972: Cecil Day-Lewis
English Heritage blue plaque on his former home at 6 Crooms Hill, Greenwich. (Rail/DLR: Greenwich)
1972–1984: Sir John Betjeman
A blue plaque can be found on his former home in Cloth Fair, EC1. (Tube: Barbican)
Martin Jennings’ statue at St Pancras station finds Betjeman gazing heavenward, as if struck by inspiration. Betjeman helped save the Gothic masterpiece of St Pancras from demolition in the 1960s.
1984–1998: Ted Hughes
Commemorated, but not re-interred, at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in December 2011.
1999–2009: Andrew Motion
Born in London and raised in Essex, Motion is the first poet laureate to survive the post! Upon accepting the honour, Motion broke with tradition by announcing that he would stay on for ten years only.
Wrote ‘Spring Wedding’ in 2005 for the marriage of HRH The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles.
2009: Carol Ann Duffy
The first openly gay poet, the first Scot, and the first woman to hold the post.
Composed the poem ‘46 Rings’ in honour of the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.
In August 2011, HRH The Prince of Wales visited riot-torn Tottenham in the aftermath of the biggest civil upheaval seen in our country in decades. ITN later broadcast footage of Prince Charles as he was approached by a young rapper who offered the Prince a hip-hop CD. Introducing himself as an actor and a poet and a rapper, he suggested that more youth clubs would form part of the solution to modern society’s ills, before presenting the Prince with his musical gift. ‘It is reasonable rap, isn’t it?’ asked the Prince. ‘Yeah, it’s reasonable,’ the young artist assured the royal visitor, adding, ‘go home and have a listen, yeah?’ before signing off with ‘God bless ya Prince!’ and a warm, matey pat on the royal arm.
Earlier, the Duchess of Cornwall (in the BBC footage) had been greeted by a cheery Tottenhamite with almost ambassadorial formality and a grin as wide as the Seven Sisters Road is long: ‘Hello Camilla, how are you? Welcome to Tottenham.’ The only anachronism was that he filmed the whole encounter on his mobile phone as he chatted.
In terms of just exactly how many breaches of royal protocol had been witnessed, statisticians are still rattling the abacuses and consulting dusty tomes at the time of going to press, but all involved – HRH, locals and media alike – emerged looking jolly and more than a little relieved that dialogue had been achieved in a week of great strife in our city’s modern history.
The Prince’s Trust announced an immediate £2.5 million investment in the hardest-hit areas following the riots.
Tottenham’s royal history, however, stretches much further back than the early 21st Century.
Fingerprints of the royal line of Scotland can be found here, too. The House of Bruce once owned much of the land. Upon his ascension to the Scottish throne in 1306 as King Robert I, Robert the Bruce forfeited all claims on his English lands.
Bruce Castle (only the name remains from the days of the Scottish king) as it stands today is a Grade I listed 16th-century structure. The oldest parts of the castle were built by William Compton. Compton, around a decade older than King Henry VIII, was a close confidant of the King and was appointed Groom of the Stool at the outset of Henry’s reign. The Groom of the Stool was, as the name suggests, responsible for providing the means for the monarch to defecate in appropriately regal comfort by first fetching or arranging the provision of a commode (portable toilet) and then waiting in attendance for nature to take its course.
The historian Dr David Starkey points out that, although this seems a menial task to our modern sensibilities, the intimacy of the situation brought about unrivalled access to the king. A powerful position indeed.
King Henry VIII is known to have visited Bruce Castle and to have hunted in nearby Tottenham Wood. The fossils of Tottenham Wood are plain to see in the modern London name Wood Green, which has stood on the site of the old wood since urbanisation in the Victorian era.
The Bruce Castle that can be seen today is a red-brick structure – less castle, more manor house – laid out in an E-shape. A clock tower surmounts the central porch (the middle ‘leg’ of the E). The various alterations to the building create the effect of seeing the Jacobean past through the prism of the classicists.
The castle now plays host to a museum and houses the historical archives of the London Borough of Haringey. There’s also a postal exhibit featuring – that topic again – historic pillar boxes, including an unusual example in blue (for air mail letters) with the lettering GR (see here).
It is one of the great common modern misconceptions of Royal London that Alexandra Palace was the residence of the wife of King Edward VII. It’s a simple mistake to make. Built in 1862 by the Great Northern Palace Company, the original name for the project was to have been the Palace of the People or the People’s Palace. The decision was taken to rename the palace in honour of Alexandra of Denmark, who married the Prince of Wales in 1863.
Ally Pally, as it is affectionately known, is famous as the home of the world’s first purpose-built high-definition TV studios. The first broadcasts in 1936 could only reach homes within a 35-mile radius of Ally Pally and only 20,000 of those homes were equipped with a set to receive the signal. Sets cost in the region of £100.
NINE HISTORIC ROYAL BROADCASTS (AND ONE FAMOUS NON-BROADCAST) FROM LONDON
1924: King George V makes the inaugural radio broadcast by a monarch on the BBC from Wembley (see below) on 23 April.
1934: The first royal wedding broadcast from the BBC by radio. The Duke of Kent and Princess Marina marry at Westminster Abbey on 29 November.
1937: The coronation of King George VI and his Queen Consort Elizabeth, covered by a simultaneous radio and television broadcast. An outside broadcast van is used for the first time.
1953: Sales of television sets rocket and 20 million viewers around Europe watch the BBC broadcast of the entire coronation ceremony – featuring, for the very first time, the actual moment of coronation.
1960: HM The Queen’s first Christmas broadcast is recorded at Buckingham Palace. Until this point, Sandringham had been the most popular recording place.
1969: HM The Queen decides against the traditional Christmas message, in the belief that the investiture of the Prince of Wales along with that year’s TV documentary The Royal Family constituted something approaching overkill.
1981: Some 750 million people worldwide tune in to the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
1995: 15 million viewers watch Diana, Princess of Wales give her now infamous ‘Three people in that marriage’ interview with Martin Bashir for the BBC’s Panorama programme. The frank and confessional 40-minute conversation includes an admission of adultery on Diana’s part with her riding instructor James Hewitt.
1997: BBC announcer, 31 August: ‘This is BBC Television from London. Normal programming has been suspended and we now join Martyn Lewis in the news studio…’ Lewis: ‘This is BBC Television from London. Diana, Princess of Wales has died after a car crash in Paris. The French government announced her death just before five o’clock this morning. Buckingham Palace confirmed the news shortly afterwards.’
2011: The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton generated a 2,400MW power surge in the UK as viewers at home – nearly 25 million of them – switched on their kettles for that immortal British curative in the aftermath of high excitement, a nice cup of tea.
The first Wembley Stadium opened in April 1923 as the Empire Stadium and was home to the British Empire Exhibition of 1924. During the construction, the honour of cutting the first turf was given to no less an imperial hand than His Majesty George V, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.
The stadium’s legend lies principally in its association with the national game of football (soccer). The first game played there, just four days after it opened, kicked off on 28 April 1923: the FA Cup Final between Bolton and West Ham. The match was delayed by three-quarters of an hour because of the vast crowd in attendance: 126,047 is the official figure left for the history books although some sources estimate up to twice that number. The game has gone down in history as the White Horse Final; Billie, a white police horse, being instrumental in clearing the field of play to allow the game to commence and upstaging even guest of honour King George V. The Times opined that the arrival of the King, and an enthusiastic rendition of the national anthem, helped calm the crowd during an otherwise chaotic afternoon. Bolton Wanderers beat West Ham United by two goals to nil.
The next year, 1924, King George V made the first royal radio broadcast from the British Empire Exhibition – an exhibition ‘to stimulate trade, strengthen bonds that bind mother country to her sister states and daughters, to bring into closer contact the one with each other, to enable all who owe allegiance to the British flag to meet on common ground and learn to know each other’. His broadcast was relayed to the nation not just by radio but also by loudspeakers outside major department stores through these islands. In places this spectacle was so popular that it stopped the traffic.
In 1948, on 29 July, the Summer Olympic Games opening ceremony took place in the presence of His Majesty King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. At 4pm that afternoon, the King declared the Games – the first since 1936 – open.
The most famous sporting day in the history of the old stadium was the World Cup Final of 1966 on 30 July, when England defeated West Germany by four goals to two. England captain Bobby Moore famously wiped his battle-muddied hands before shaking the be-gloved hand of Her Majesty upon receipt of the trophy.
Queen Elizabeth II watched the match and was subject to something of a colour clash when presenting the medal to England goalkeeper Gordon Banks, resplendent as they both were in yellow. The Queen’s official dressmaker in 1966 was Sir Hardy Amies – a post he held until his death in 1989. Widely regarded as the founding father of ‘bespoke couture’ – a radical hybrid in its day in stuffy, post-war Savile Row – Sir Hardy, through his equally radical populist crossover design deal with Hepworth’s (parent company of today’s High Street chain Next) also designed the blazers and leisurewear sported by the England football players in 1966.
The most famous non-sporting day in the history of the old stadium came on 13 July 1985 with the staging of the Live Aid concert in aid of famine relief in Ethiopia. Queen famously stole the show – not, in this case, Her Majesty, but the rock band fronted by Freddie Mercury.
The Prince and Princess of Wales were in attendance, accompanied into the royal box by the man behind the concert, Bob Geldof, to the royal fanfare played by the Coldstream Guards. The Prince nodded along to Status Quo with the air of an heir who would rather have been fishing on Royal Deeside. The Princess smiled politely like a gal who preferred Duran Duran.
Wembley Stadium was also used for the Diana memorial concert in 2007 – this time at the New Wembley. The famous twin towers of the 1923 edifice had been demolished in 2003 – much to the dismay of some traditionalists – and replaced with the 90,000-seater stadium (the second largest in Europe) that stands on the site today. Designed by Foster and Partners and Populous, the towers have been replaced by a skyline-defining arch 440 feet (133 metres) high with a span of more than 1,000 feet (315 metres).
It was beneath this unique London feature that the Concert for Diana was staged on 1 July 2007, on what would have been her 46th birthday, 10 years on from her death. The concert featured performances from, among many others, Diana favourites Sir Elton John and Duran Duran. Princes William and Harry, the organisers, addressed the fans at the sell-out concert. ‘This evening is about all that our mother loved in life – her music, her dance, her charities and her family and friends. For us, this has been the most perfect way to remember and this is how she would want to be remembered.’
In a Boujis-Nightclub-Goes-to-Wembley-like scenario, also in attendance were Princess Beatrice of York, Princess Eugenie of York, Prince Harry’s girlfriend Chelsy Davy and the future Duchess of Cambridge back in her days as ‘Waity Katy’ – at this point the girl who hung on for an age for a proposal out of our future king was filed under ‘just friends’ in William’s Facebook status. Philippa Middleton was also there. Also in attendance (but not part of the Boujis set) were Zara and Peter Phillips, and Sarah, Duchess of York – the latter also not part of the Boujis set but perhaps not for the want of trying.
All proceeds from the concert went to charity.
A NICE SIT DOWN AND A CUP OF TEA
Three suggestions here in North London, each right at a location named in the chapter.
On the main drag
RAF Hendon
Grahame Park Way, NW9 5LL. Tube: Colindale
If you’re up north on the trail of royal fliers (and, indeed, the Royal Air Force), then the cafeteria here at RAF Hendon provides a unique opportunity: where else can you sip tea surrounded by historic aircraft? The staff at the museum, on my last visit, were particularly helpful and friendly.
Something a little stronger, perhaps?
The Spaniards Inn
Spaniards Road, NW3 7JJ. Tube: Hampstead
The Spaniard’s Inn dates from the 1580s and is said to take its name from the Spanish Ambassador to the court of King James I. The Spaniards feels warm inside and clandestine on a winter’s day/night and has perhaps the most magnificent beer garden in all of London for the summer months. A bracing/thirst-making walk across the Heath will get you here (alternatively, the 210 bus will bring you almost to the door from Golders Green station). Good food, too.
Sssshhh. It’s a secret
Bruce Castle Park
Tube: Wood Green/Seven Sisters
Far from secret to the local residents, Bruce Castle Park teems with things to do for local families in summertime. And it is dotted with picnic benches. It seems a shame not to linger when you’ve stumbled upon a rare 16th-century manor house deep in the heart of suburban London.