The remarkable reign QE3 of
She was the Queen’s closest confidante and one of the few to call the Sovereign ‘Lilibet’. How did the daughter of an Inverness railway worker end up ruling Buckingham Palace?
THRouGH decades, she was the most feared personality at Buckingham Palace. And Windsor, Sandringham, Holyrood, Balmoral, as she made her seasonal rounds.
She boasted a magnificent suite of rooms, was served in state in her own private diningroom by liveried servants. Even the most senior figures – be it the Queen’s Private Secretary or the Duke of Edinburgh – dared not cross her. New hands were immediately instructed that she was on no account to be addressed, if she passed you in the corridor, unless she deigned to speak to you herself.
She waged, through decades, practically a feud with one of the land’s pre-eminent dressmakers. Aboard the Royal Yacht, nervous crew referred to her nervously as the ‘QE3’. Her nickname is said to be the very first word the Princess Elizabeth ever uttered. She was the last, outwith immediate family, allowed to call the Sovereign ‘Lilibet’, one of the very few people allowed physically to touch her and, apart from Philip, to have shared her bedroom.
She was the first person the Queen saw every morning, bearing in a ‘calling-tray’ to the bedchamber with a pot of Earl Grey tea, exquisite china with the EIIR cipher in gold, and a few Bath oliver biscuits – save on the occasion of her own birthday when, incredibly, the Queen always took tea to her.
But this was neither a Windsor dowager nor some begemmed duchess. Born in 1904, Margaret ‘Bobo’ MacDonald was the very Scottish daughter of a humble Inverness railway worker – but nursemaid to the little princess for as long as the Queen could remember. And, by her 1947 marriage, her dresser, her confidante, her eyes and ears.
Woe betide anyone who dropped some juicy morsel of gossip to their Sovereign that Miss MacDonald had not heard first. Vengeance was sure and cameth early. once, Michael Fawcett – long-standing valet to Prince Charles – somehow offended her. A day or two later, the Queen – normally punctilious in greeting even the lowliest employee – cut him dead in a Buckingham Palace corridor.
‘Whatever you do, don’t upset Bobo,’ officials warned, ‘or you’ll ruin the Queen’s day’ – and no one since has dared to address Her Majesty as freely as Bobo did.
The old dragon wore her wavy, increasingly silvered hair in the same heavy perm as her charge. She, too, would adorn herself in silk dresses by Norman Hartnell; likewise wear a triple strand of exquisite pearls. They say, as the Royal Yacht Britannia was being fitted out at Clydebank, the Queen took a particular look at the plans for one suite and snapped, ‘That’s not good enough for Bobo…’
Certainly, Bobo could be very grand. once, accompanying the Queen on a visit to her Brabourne relatives in Kent, she took one look at the modest house they occupied and declared: ‘I don’t believe it!’
That was a little rich from someone who had herself been raised in a tied cottage hard by the railtrack. Yet Miss MacDonald herself had very decided ideas about what was good for the Queen, to whom she referred as ‘my little lady’.
You can’t wear green,’ she would declare. on another occasion, ‘You look awful in that dress.’ And, to the despair of Her Majesty’s couturiers, while Bobo suffered them to make the Queen’s gowns, coats and outfits, the shoes, gloves and accessories generally she annexed as her exclusive bailiwick.
‘Nobody outside the family,’ writes Sally Bedell Smith, ‘could match Bobo’s knowledge of the Queen or the unbroken link to her childhood.
‘They had shared a bedroom until Princess Elizabeth was a teenager, including the war years in Windsor Castle. Bobo had been there for the Queen’s honeymoon, the King’s death, the unfettered idyll in Malta, the months when Philip was travelling, the births of four children, the holidays, the foreign trips…’
‘Bobo could say anything to the Queen,’ recalls Margaret Rhodes, the monarch’s first cousin. ‘She was a confidante, very much so.’ After all, throughout her childhood the Princess had seen far more of Miss MacDonald than she did her own parents.
Engaged as assistant to Clara ‘Allah’ Knight, the Princess’s nanny and from almost the start of her life, it took the arrival of Princess Margaret in 1930 to cement the Highlander’s triumph. ‘Now Margaret’s sister Ruby joined them and assisted Allah, who took over the new baby,’ recounts historian Elizabeth Longford.
‘Margaret MacDonald, “Bobo” to her young charge, devoted herself to Lilibet. They shared a bedroom and were in time almost to share a life, for Bobo was to be Queen Elizabeth II’s personal maid, dresser and lifelong friend. She was a Scot, and like many generations of Scottish royal servants possessed the gift of perfect deference combined with perfect dignity – and outspokenness to match.’
There is a whiff of tragedy to this for, in a servant-mistress relationship that bordered on obsession, the young Scotswoman sacrificed any prospect of a husband, children or future of her own.
Margaret MacDonald was in youth pretty, with striking red hair. ‘A small, smart, rather peremptory Scotswoman,’ John Dean – the Duke of Edinburgh’s valet recalled, adding that ‘her years of royal service seemed to be imprinted on her face and stature.’
She was very formal, he reflected, saying things like ‘We have to keep a certain standing in this house’ – but quite friendly when thawed. ‘She was a lovely dancer and very good fun, with a nice sense of humour, but even when we were staying in some village, and were out socially in the local pub, she always addressed me as “Mr Dean”.’
‘For 67 years,’ Gyles Brandreth darkly mused, ‘Bobo lived for Elizabeth. She loved her, protected her, respected her. She was wholly loyal and ever-present. I imagine, at times, she must have got on Prince Philip’s nerves…’
‘Let’s face it,’ remembered the Prince’s rakish friend Mike Parker, ‘he had a hell of a time with her. Miss MacDonald was always there. And in charge. Princess Elizabeth was Bobo’s baby and that was that. But I don’t think he ever complained… he just put up with it.’
Patricia Mountbatten told Brandreth that Bobo would draw the Queen’s bath and then potter in and out of the bathroom while she was having it, effectively keeping Philip at bay. ‘He couldn’t share the bathroom with his wife, because Bobo saw it as her territory and I don’t think Princess Elizabeth had the heart to say, “Bobo, please go away…”’
Among the very many who, as the decades passed, hoped fervently Miss MacDonald might soon disappear were Her Majesty’s dressmakers – Norman Hartnell, Hardy Amies and, latterly on Bobo’s watch, Ian Thomas.
officially she was but the Queen’s dresser – a mere lady’s maid. In fact, she had entire command of the Queen’s wardrobe (and, in the main, of
‘the little lady’ herself) and kept mere couturiers firmly in their place. ‘You’re here for the clothes, not the accessories,’ she repeatedly pronounced.
Bobo, then, chose things like belts and shoes and handbags. Unfortunately, Bobo was a ‘personally disciplined, conservative inclined, frugally minded Scotswoman,’ as Brandreth mewls, who saw no point in fitting her Lilibet out with very expensive things.
Worse, Bobo’s taste was execrable. Throughout her long pomp the Queen would appear at even important engagements with ugly, boxy handbags, in hideous hoof-like shoes and beneath dowdy turban hats.
Sometimes entire outfits were disastrous, such as the full oiled silk dress the Queen wore for a sensitive 1953 jaunt to Edinburgh – she was formally presented with the ‘Honours of Scotland’ – and which angry Scots who saw only the newspaper snaps thought was a drab raincoat. Or the fussy, ruffled, be-bowed and shoulder-padded gown that swamped the Sovereign at a 1982 state banquet in America.
Ironically, in her tenth decade the Queen dresses with far more flair, impact and class than she did through the first 40 years of her reign.
The dressmakers hated Bobo even as they sought to placate her, making presents of fine shoes and beautiful handbags not only to the Queen but to her dresser. And yet she despised them all, harbouring special enmity to Hardy Amies (who, in fairness, returned the compliment with interest.)
The sheer power amassed by Margaret MacDonald was extraordinary. Her sister, Ruby – latterly nanny to the children of Princess Margaret – was just as arrogant, but far less cunning, and was finally manoeuvred from her position by the guile of Lord Snowdon.
Bobo, by contrast, was untouchable – ‘a fierce guardian of the Queen’s image,’ recorded Brian Hoey, ‘and no one in the Household, however senior in rank or grand in title, dared to cross her…’
SAvE for Ruby, Margaret MacDonald refused to socialise with any of them. Everyone else had to sup in communal dining halls: she ate, in state, alone in her apartment. A young footman, on joining the staff, was bluntly instructed ‘not to speak to Miss MacDonald if you meet in one of the corridors unless she addresses you first’.
Many were too terrified even to meet her eye. Certainly, it was her custom to ignore anyone other than royalty – and even someone boasting herself royal blood and as close personally to the Queen as Patricia Mountbatten used to worry far more, when Her Majesty came for the weekend, about Bobo’s comforts and state than that of the guest of honour – for, if anything was amiss, the Queen would hear of it and the visit would be ruined. But Miss MacDonald was more than just a royal intimate and general palace battle-axe. She was the spider atop a web of ruthless espionage. It is no exaggeration to say that she had a network of informants not only throughout the Palace but in every significant royal residence. ‘They were her eyes and ears,’ notes Hoey, ‘and she relayed all the Palace gossip to the Queen,’ and even to her bed-ridden end. On a rare misjudgment, and to the rich enjoyment of very many in the Household, Bobo accompanied the Queen in 1967 on a trip to a stud farm in Normandy, wandered off for a walk in the woods, got lost – and was then spotted and arrested by alarmed agents of the French Secret Service.
IN 1986, and in a notable honour for a personal servant, the Queen created Margaret MacDonald a Lieutenant of the Royal victorian Order (her childhood governess had been made a mere Member). But no amount of royal favour, not her fine chambers or retinue of personal servants could spare even Margaret MacDonald old age and its indignities.
By 1990 she had to be gently relieved of most of her duties, and her little household was discreetly augmented with two full-time nurses. By 1992 she was under round-the-clock care – but would still have the latest tittle-tattle and her Sovereign’s ear.
The Queen, of course, visited daily, brought the birthday tea, and could not hide her distress at the old woman’s decline.
Once Miss MacDonald had to enter hospital for a spell. The Queen, most unusually, went to see her every day regardless and once, returning to her Daimler well past the allotted time, murmured by way of apology to her detective, ‘She’s been with me since I was six weeks old…’
And when, on Wednesday, September 22, 1993, and at the age of 89, Bobo at last died, the Queen flew all the way from Balmoral to personally attend her funeral, held in the Chapel Royal and directed by Her Majesty in every detail.
Angela Kelly, a brash Liverpudlian, subsequently emerged as the Queen’s new dresser and in the years since – by her keen sense of humour as much as her absolute discretion – has become almost as powerful a figure. ‘We handle her with kid gloves,’ one Private Secretary has darkly confided.
But no one will ever again be as close to the Queen as the redoubtable little Highland woman who had known her from infancy – and Her Majesty even took a certain pleasure in how, accordingly, Margaret MacDonald was at once envied and loathed.
About to knight Hardy Amies, in 1989, the Queen reached for the sword, caught his eye and murmured, deadpan, ‘Bobo will give me hell for this.’