‘But how does it drive at 2mph?’
TO MARK her Golden Jubilee in 2002, the Queen received a present from the car industry: a new State Bentley, left.
She asked her chauffeur, Joe Last, to put it through its paces.
He informed her that he had driven it comfortably at 100mph, and that it could go very much faster than that.
‘Yes, but what’s it like at two miles per hour?’ the Queen replied.
Along with the Popemobile, this was one of very few vehicles specifically designed to enhance the view from the outside looking in, rather than the other way round.
by the time the first emissaries from Downing Street, including Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell had so much as set foot inside Buckingham Palace to discuss the nation’s farewell to the Princess.
AS THAT memorable 1992 visit to the former East Germany had shown, the contrast between domestic dramas and international milestones would be a recurring feature of the 1990s. One minute, the younger members of the Royal Family would be in the news following a fresh marital spat. The next, the Queen was making history in a rapidly changing world.
There was her landmark state visit to Moscow and the magnificent sight of Britannia sailing into Cape Town harbour where a beaming Nelson Mandela was waiting on the quayside.
In May 1994, the Queen opened the Channel Tunnel with President Mitterrand of France (she tactfully hosted the British end of the festivities in Ashford, Kent, rather than at the new Eurostar terminal in London; inviting the French President to celebrate this bilateral triumph in a station called Waterloo would have been going too far).
Four weeks later, the Queen and Mitterrand reunited to honour another cross-Channel endeavour, though this occasion would be among the most emotionally charged state occasions some Palace staff could ever recall – the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.
Running the British side of things was the Defence Minister, Lord Cranborne (now the Marquess of Salisbury). He well recalls the clash between Royal punctuality and French presidential timekeeping. Mitterrand was nowhere to be seen as thousands of British veterans gathered on the beach at Arromanches, determined to march past their Queen on the sacred sands. One pressing factor was the incoming tide, yet there was still no sign of the French head of state.
It was Prince Philip who cut through the diplomatic niceties with the immortal line: ‘Who does he bloody think he is? King Canute?’
At which point, says Lord Cranborne, the regimental sergeant major from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, marched up to the Queen and announced: ‘Eight thousand, four hundred and eighty-two veterans on parade, Your Majesty.’ And off they marched, despite the protestations of French authorities.
‘The local mayor was complaining that the regulations would permit no more than 400 people on the beach,’ laughs Cranborne, whose only concern was the tide. ‘We just made it, though it got a bit damp by the end.’ ‘IT TOOK a long time to get rid of that sense that, round every corner, lay a new problem,’ says Charles Anson, the Royal press secretary during some of the darkest days of the 1990s. Ahead of the 50th anniversary of VE Day in 1995, the Government was planning a major commemoration in front of Buckingham Palace, just like in 1945. Once again, Defence Minister Lord Cranborne was in charge of the party. He received several messages that the Queen was worried.
‘It was clear that she was very nervous about people not turning out and it looking a bit thin,’ says Cranborne. ‘It was her suggestion that we should go to Horse Guards instead.’
Cranborne decided to take a gamble. As a Minister, he would advise the Queen to stick to the Government plan and appear on the Palace balcony. And if the crowds were looking threadbare, he would get two military bands to lead the public down from the huge 1945 festival taking place in nearby Hyde Park. ‘I thought that if I get this wrong, I’m in trouble,’ he recalls.
On the big day, Cranborne was checking on Hyde Park when a call came through from the brigadier on duty at the Palace.
‘He said, “We’ve got a problem.” ‘So I said, “OK, we’ll get the bands down there.”’
The problem, however, was not a lack of crowds – it was the opposite. Police outside the Palace were worried that the 1995 crowds were actually larger than those that had been there in 1945. ‘That’s when I realised what a strong institution the Monarchy is,’ says Cranborne. ‘After all the problems with the Royal Family, there were these huge crowds cheering their heads off.’
BEHIND the scenes, the 1990s saw an extraordinary series of reforms to the management, the finances and even the core functions of the Monarchy.
The big test was to come in 2002, as the Queen marked 50 years on the throne. Could her Golden Jubilee replicate the astonishing success of the 1977 Silver Jubilee?
‘There’s no doubt she was not confident about it,’ a former senior staff member told me. ‘She had been knocked by those many years of trials and tribulations.’
No sooner had the celebrations started than Princess Margaret died, aged 71. The Queen was as sad as she had ever been. Always protective of free-spirited, mercurial Margaret since the nursery, she had spoken to her almost every day of her life. Weeks later, she lost her mother, too.
An estimated one million people turned out to watch the Queen Mother’s coffin make its final journey from Westminster Abbey to St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
Yet, just days later, after a bare minimum of Court mourning, the Queen embarked on her Golden Jubilee tour of the UK.
The crowds were colossal and deeply appreciative wherever she went.
For many, however, the spirit of that Jubilee summer was summed up by the sight of Queen guitarist Brian May playing a national anthem riff on the Palace roof.
Tony Blair looks back on it all as a lesson in the Queen’s staying power. ‘In a small “p” political sense – nothing to do with party politics – she has a near genius. That is what 2002 was about.’
‘The death of Margaret left the Queen as sad as she had ever been’
IN TOMORROW’S DAILY MAIL HOW THE WARTIME QUEEN BATTLED A PLAGUE OF RATS WITH A PISTOL