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The Queen of calm
Harry Mount reports on a monarch with a knack for comforting the nation
From the Second World War to the Gulf War, from the death of Diana, Princess of Wales to the loss of her own mother, whenever her nation is in mourning or grappling with a global catastrophe, the Queen has been the one constant comfort. So why do we all turn to her during crises – and how does she know instinctively what to say? Harry Mount reports
By a strange coincidence, at exactly the moment – 8pm on 5 April – the Queen addressed the nation, her Prime Minister was rushed into hospital for tests for his attack of the Covid-19 virus.
As on so many occasions in her 68-yearlong reign, it was the monarch who provided reassurance to her people during a time of crisis. Again and again, she has been so much more comforting than her Prime Ministers, even when they are fighting fit.
‘The politicians are there on sufferance,’ says AN Wilson, Prince Albert’s biographer and historical adviser to the ITV series Victoria. ‘Our response to the monarch is to a deeper magic.’
The Queen has always come into her own during difficult times – as she did in the previous three exceptional events that led to her public broadcasts: the 1991 Gulf War, the 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. (Another broadcast, in 2012, was a celebratory one for her Diamond Jubilee.) On each occasion, her role was understated, unflashy, faultless.
The same goes for her coronavirus broadcast earlier this month, which was perfectly timed. To have given it earlier would have been to jump the gun before the full horror of the virus, and its restrictions, had hit the British people. To have broadcast it over Easter would have given it religious implications. (And when she did give an Easter address, the following week – her first ever – this too was impeccable: offering hope, light and speaking to all faiths.)
Even before she spoke in her coronavirus broadcast, her very appearance was reassuring: she wore a plain, green dress – she is said to choose striking colours so people can clearly see her – with three simple strings of pearls, single-drop pearl earrings and a brooch that belonged to her grandmother, Queen Mary. (It has been suggested that the Queen chose the turquoise pin to ‘link’ herself to her grandmother, who helped support her husband George V during the First World War.) And her distinctive haircut was as unmoving as the Rock of Gibraltar – swept back in the middle, with curls to either side.
As she addressed our grief, financial worries and all-round emotional disruption, her words were measured and suitably sombre to suit the public mood. The Queen has always known that less is more. ‘The Queen’s strength was the dominant impression – at a time when her country is so terribly weakened,’ says historian Lady Antonia Fraser. ‘She’s six years older than me and it was wonderful to see her looking so healthy in this time of such sad illness, including at the very top; to see this marvellously strong, beautiful face.’
In a world of celebrities advertising their every emotion, she achieves a much more sincere effect by her very lack of sentimentality. When she talked of the British ‘attributes of self-discipline, of quiet, good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling’, she could have been talking about herself. Except she wasn’t – for someone who has been worshipped like a semi-deity for her reign, and the 94 years of her life, she is extraordinarily free of ego.
After thanking NHS workers, she turned to the majority of us, trapped at home, and subtly backed the Government’s message that we should stay there. By thanking us for ‘staying at home’ – unlike the Government’s irritating Americanism, asking us to ‘stay home’ – she even cheered up us grammatical pedants.
Yet it was her memories of the Second World War that got the tear ducts working in overdrive. Her war memories are particularly powerful because she is the last world leader to have served during the war, as a driver and mechanic in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. And it is no coincidence that her broadcast echoed the plain prose of the wartime Prime Minister – and her first Prime Minister – Winston Churchill, who would have prized her words: ‘Those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.’ And of course, her star line, ‘We will meet again’ – a play on the words of the Forces’ sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn, from the most famous song of the war.
And what other head of state could refer to a broadcast they made 80 years ago – as the Queen did, when she was a 14-year-old princess on Children’s Hour in 1940, alongside Princess Margaret, in the same room in the same castle? ‘Part of the brilliance [of the recent speech] was that it was the Queen, our head of state, speaking to us. There was no rubbish about Meghan or Prince Andrew,’ says Lady Antonia. ‘The only other royalty she brought in was Princess Margaret, which brought tears to my eyes. That broadcast on Children’s Hour was part of my childhood. With that true image, she reminded us in the most economical way that she’d been through such a ghastly time before – and that there had been another terrible situation we’d survived.’
Some rumours suggest that the Prime Minister had a hand in the speech before he was hospitalised; Downing Street is bound to have seen an advance copy. Certainly, Sir Edward Young, the Queen’s private secretary, would also have looked over it. They might well have
made suggestions, but the speech had the Queen’s stamp all over it, in that simple prose, which commands attention by not demanding it.
At every stage in the ongoing crisis, the Queen hasn’t put a foot wrong. First, she decided to self-isolate at Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral. For all her love of Scotland, the Queen knows that she should be closer to London – to sign emergency legislation if required. She also knows that Windsor – home to the Royal family for 1,000 years – has a more powerful, spiritual heft in her subjects’ minds than Balmoral. And last week, she cancelled her traditional birthday gun salute, deeming it inappropriate at such a time.
The Queen is by nature an unfussy woman and will accept self-isolation uncomplainingly. A bonus is that she is now living with Prince Philip again full-time. Since his retirement in 2017, he has largely lived alone at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate, joining the Queen in the ‘big house’ when she is there. Of course, she still lives in great luxury, but the staff at Windsor have been reduced ever since the Queen’s dog-walker (one of her few female footmen), who exercises her ‘dorgis’ Candy and Vulcan, contracted coronavirus. Staff in close contact with the dog-walker have had to self-isolate too. Still, though, she can rely on Paul Whybrew, 61, the Queen’s Page of the Backstairs and Serjeant-at-arms, who kicked the intruder Michael Fagan out of her bedroom in 1982. Her other mainstay is Angela Kelly, her senior dresser, who washes and sets her hair in that familiar style. With Prince Philip in residence at the castle, she has also been helped by his staff from Sandringham, the pages William Henderson and Stephen Niedojadlo. With this smaller staff in place, the Queen seems relatively safe in self-isolation. Her broadcast was filmed with a single cameraman in protective gear using disinfected machinery, with a separate crew in a different room. She is unable to visit the Windsor stables or go on her beloved rides, but is keeping in touch with her grooms by her charming, old-fashioned cream-telephone landline. She has let her staff, also confined to the castle, use the royal swimming pool.
Throughout this crisis, she has been happy to let other family members shine: thus the prominent role of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who have been pictured visiting an NHS 111 centre in London, doing school visits via Zoom, promoting the National Emergencies Trust Appeal, launching a £5 million scheme to support the nation’s mental health and narrating an advice-giving Public Health England film. And their children looked adorable as they took part in the public clap for the NHS in a video posted on Instagram.
The Queen will have been concerned that her eldest son, Prince Charles, contracted the virus, but delighted that he recovered swiftly, just as she will have been at his applause of the NHS, delivered from self-isolation at his Birkhall home. His speech to mark the opening of NHS Nightingale Hospital at the beginning of April – delivered with the extra authority of having recovered from the condition – also hit just the right note.
Before the departure of the Sussexes for North America, the big plan was to scale down the Royal family to the Queen, Prince Philip and the Cornwalls, the Cambridges and the Sussexes. Despite the Sussexes launching their new charitable foundation, Archewell, earlier this month, the crisis has shown that it’s now really all about the Cs – the Cornwalls and the Cambridges – headed by the Queen.
So how exactly does she know just the right thing to say and do, when even seasoned politicians struggle? It helps that the Queen has the life experience of surviving multiple crises. But she also knows instinctively what to do because she has been drenched in royal protocol since 1936, the year that then-10-year-old Lilibet
‘The Queen’s visibility in a crisis makes us feel safe – she is the ultimate talisman of stability’
became (thanks to the abdication of her uncle, Edward VIII) the most likely successor to follow her father, George VI.
Even before that, she inhaled royal traditions dating back to her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, who died only 25 years before she was born. These traditions bred in her an understanding of protocol – from the German custom of opening Christmas presents on Christmas Eve to the exact layout of a dining table for a state banquet.
‘The Queen’s visibility in a crisis makes us feel safe because she is the ultimate talisman of stability,’ explains royal biographer Anna Pasternak. ‘Her level-headedness is reassuring to the national psyche, while her stoicism reminds us to garner our own fortitude. Mostly, she has judged the mood of the nation and responded with an almost psychic intuition of what we need from her.’
The Queen’s nanny, Marion Crawford, aka ‘Crawfie’, noted Lilibet’s level-headedness in her 1950 account of the monarch’s early life: ‘She wasn’t quite six, but clearly loved order. After dinner every night, both she and Margaret would hold out their hands and their father would give them each a spoonful of old-fashioned barley sugar. Margaret pushed the whole lot into her mouth. Lilibet, however, carefully sorted hers out on the table, and then ate it very daintily. She also kept all her belongings immaculately tidy... During the course of each night, she’d hop out of bed several times just to make sure her shoes were quite straight on the floor and her clothes arranged just so. It was only when Margaret did a hilarious imitation of her sister’s bedtime rituals that Lilibet finally stopped performing them.’
Another rare skill of hers is knowing when to break protocol. In 1997, when she refused to fly the Union flag at half-mast over Buckingham Palace on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, she initially stuck to the rules. Traditionally, only the Royal Standard is flown, and only when the Queen is resident. However, she realised it was right to break protocol, so great was the outcry – and the flag was flown at half-mast when the Queen left the palace for Diana’s funeral.
‘The Queen may have misjudged the public temperature after the death of Diana because, for her, duty always overrides emotion,’ says Pasternak. ‘It
was unprecedented for her to leave her summer holiday in Balmoral and return to London. It’s precisely this unwavering routine that makes us feel secure. To have diverted from it risked further alarming the public. Her Majesty also reasoned that it would have been better to stay with the young princes and support them. So she was slow to realise that her duty was to react to the emotion that the public felt. However, the reason that she’s been a matriarchal balm to the nation throughout her reign is because she leads not from the heart but from the head.’
The aftermath of Diana’s death brought a rare blip in public confidence in the Queen. But her broadcast righted the rocky ship of state, principally thanks to the heart-wrenching effect of the line, ‘So what I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.’ For someone who is so selfcontrolled, any sign of emotion is magnified.
Likewise, the Queen knew she should break protocol again the day after the September 11 attacks in 2001, when she authorised The Star-spangled Banner to be played during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace for the first time.
And though it has been said that her delayed visit to Aberfan, after the dreadful disaster of 1966, was another rare blunder, this too was well-judged. ‘People say that she was “late” going to Aberfan,’ says Hugo Vickers, biographer of Queen Mary and the Duchess of Windsor. ‘Prince Philip and Lord Snowdon went instantly. [But in fact] she was anxious lest in any way she delayed the rescue operation. She went 10 days later.’
Behind the scenes, the Queen’s responses have been shaped by close advisors; initially by Sir Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles, George VI’S private secretary from 1943 until his death in 1952, who continued briefly as her private secretary. In 68 years on the throne, the Queen has only had nine private secretaries. Her treasured ones last a long time: Sir Michael Adeane from 1953 to 1972; Sir Robert Fellowes from 1990 to 1999; the most recently departed, Sir Christopher Geidt, served her from 2007 to 2017. Her current private secretary, Sir Edward Young, worked in television before joining her household, so will be particularly valuable in giving her media advice.
Before the Queen Mother’s death in 2002, the Queen would also take advice from her. These days, the last person with as much experience of royal life is Prince Philip, 98. He is also the only person with the sheer self-confidence to tell her what to do. For a man who had to flee his native Greece and fought with valour in the Second World War, the travails of coronavirus will surely seem no great hardship. Together, they belong to a generation that doesn’t complain and ‘just gets on’ with it.
Yet even Prince Philip isn’t present during her weekly audiences with the Prime Minister – conducted over the phone at the moment. She provides a unique bulwark to a Prime Minister, particularly when there’s a crisis – because she’s been through so many. As John Major, Prime Minister during the Gulf War of 1991, said when she gave her first special broadcast: ‘You don’t forget crises and neither does the Queen.’
What’s more, in the leaky world of politics, the Queen is completely discreet. Tony Blair – Prime Minister during her extraordinary broadcasts on the deaths of Princess Diana and the Queen Mother – says, ‘There is nothing you can’t say to the Queen… She is the person, probably more than any other, that you can have, completely and totally, a discreet conversation with. It will never go further.’
She will be the same trustworthy confidante to Boris Johnson and will have been greatly sympathetic during his hospitalisation – indeed she sent a message to Carrie Symonds and his family – but will have also understood that the ship of state must sail on. She has seen three of her Prime Ministers in extreme ill health before – Winston Churchill had a severe stroke in 1953; Anthony Eden suffered from a botched gallstone operation while he was in office; and the Queen went to Harold Macmillan’s bedside in 1963, when he had prostate problems.
Hugo Vickers says, ‘The reason that we have a head of state who is above politics is that it is possible for everyone to respect her, regardless of political affiliations. When she goes to Grenfell Tower, she is in a sense bringing with her the fact that she went to Aberfan and Lockerbie. And there are the acts of conciliation in her long reign: visits to Germany, Japan, Russia, China and Ireland.’
‘Her link with history gives us reassurance,’ adds Claudia Gold, Henry II’S biographer. ‘The promise that humanity will not only survive, but will flourish once more.’
The Queen summed up that emotion in that recent speech: ‘We will meet again.’ No one else could lift national morale at such a bleak time with four such simple words. And we would not believe those words – or be consoled by them to such a degree – if they were said by anyone else on the planet. How England Made the English, by Harry Mount (Penguin, £9.99)