Queen Elizabeth II

Of the many pupils fondly remembered by Horace Smith, Royal Riding Master throughout the reigns of six British Monarchs, one young rider was always held in the very highest esteem. At the age of 12, having already distinguished herself as a gifted and eager horsewoman, Princess Elizabeth confided to her teacher that, had she not been born to be Queen, she would “like to be a lady living in the country with lots of horses and dogs”. These youthful remarks are revealing indeed, demonstrating not only a genuine passion for an aspect of Royal life that outsiders often dismiss as mere pomp and ceremony, but also for a remarkable degree of prescience and acuity. Even as a child, Princess Elizabeth understood the full significance of the role into which she had been born; and yet coupled with that awareness was an ardent desire to lead a simple, traditional country life. Little could the Princess have imagined then just how prophetic her words would be; for it is perhaps this blend of her sense of regal duty with a love of simple pleasures that came so uniquely to characterise the style of Elizabeth II’s reign.
Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born in London at 17 Bruton Street, at 2.40am on April 21, 1926. She was the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York, subsequently King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. With the Victorian era not three decades past, it might appear peculiar that Elizabeth’s parents applied so thoroughly modern a manner of bringing up their daughter – for, from the outset, it was decided that the Princess’s life was to be as normal as possible. No longer was the future Monarch to be sheltered from her people’s concerns by Royal excess and opulence; instead, she was to understand the inescapable reality of a nation still coming to terms with the loss of so many of its sons in the First World War. She was born in the year of the General Strike, and British society was undergoing a profound change. Accordingly, the Duke and Duchess of York were determined that Elizabeth should neither be shielded nor spoilt.
Much of the Princess’s early years were spent at the family home at 145 Piccadilly. Her parents’ commitment to providing the future Queen with an appreciation of both her privileges and her responsibilities was absolute. Yet Princess Elizabeth’s first year of life proved a rather solitary affair. Duty-bound to undertake an official visit to Australia in order to open its new Commonwealth Parliament, her parents were obliged to leave her in the hands of her nanny, Clara “Alla” Knight. This early separation was not as traumatic as one might expect – on the contrary, it served to forge an unbreakable bond between Elizabeth and her grandparents. King George V and Queen Mary were immediately entranced by their granddaughter, and proudly informed her parents of every new tooth and word.
When the Yorks returned in June 1927, they found a loving, confident, and slightly mischievous child. “Tillabet”, as the Princess referred to herself, was always ready to amuse. During that year’s Christmas party for the tenants of the Sandringham Estate, she clambered on to the dining-table and proceeded to pelt the guests with cracker after cracker, handed to her by her mother. Her well-developed sense of fun was equally evident in the games that she persuaded her grandfather to play with her. The Archbishop of Canterbury was once utterly discombobulated when, upon attending an audience with George V, he found the King crawling on all fours across the floor, pretending to be a horse, and the young Princess taking the role of groom.
By 1936, the elderly Monarch was dead, and “Tillabet” had become “Lilibet”, the affectionate name by which she is known to her Family to this very day. She had gained a little sister, five years previously, with the birth of Princess Margaret. Princess Elizabeth was initially educated at home, although the Duchess of York had always harboured the hope that one day her daughter would attend public school, and thus learn about matters both intellectual and social. This, however was not to be, as the new King, Edward VIII, had decided that it would not do for a Princess to be educated alongside commoners, and thus Elizabeth received the entirety of her instruction in private.
Given contemporary circumstances, it may well have been the case that the King was merely trying to minimise the level of press scrutiny on the affairs of the Royal Family. His relationship with Wallis Simpson was soon to become the United Kingdom’s most popular source of common gossip, and there can be little doubt that he was apprehensive as to the public reaction when news of her divorce came to light. By the end of 1937, Elizabeth’s life had changed dramatically: Edward VIII had abdicated, her father had been crowned King George VI, and she was Heiress Presumptive to the Throne.
Despite the requisite move to Buckingham Palace, and the ever-increasing pressure of life as the daughter of the King, the 11-year-old Elizabeth was essentially unchanged. Her propensity for pranks and play had been replaced by a more mature and responsible attitude to life and duty, but her formidable sense of humour remained very much intact.
As befitted an Heiress Presumptive, she took it upon herself to discover all she could about the matters that would one day form the basis of her ruling life. She began to attend lessons in constitutional history at Eton College, one of England’s most illustrious and intellectually demanding public schools. Soon, her love of all things historical led her to broaden her education in order to take in the history of Europe. A famous anecdote recounts the occasion on which Princess Marie Louise apologised to her fellow guests at a dinner party held at Windsor Castle for having spoken for so long about her life. With her customary warmth and sincerity, Princess Elizabeth answered: “But Cousin Louise, it’s history, and therefore so thrilling!”
The Princess’s idyllic days of study and self-improvement were soon to be curtailed by the menacing shadow that had fallen over Europe. Hitler’s National Socialist Party, in power since 1933, held Germany in its thrall, and, once again unified with Austria, was threatening to drag the world into another bloody conflict. When war came in September 1939, the people of Great Britain dug deeply, and pulled together as never before. The arbitrary divisions of class were rapidly cast aside as London was pounded by the full force of Germany’s Luftwaffe aircraft.
Princess Elizabeth decided it was time to show that she was ready to assume the full weight of her Royal responsibilities. Realising the need to boost morale, she became patron of organisations whose work she valued. Already President of charities such as the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in Hackney, east London, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, she embarked on a series of national visits with the King and Queen. She first bore the full weight of regal office at the age of 18, in 1944, when, during the King’s absence on a tour of the Italian battlefields, she performed many of the official duties of Head of State.
That August, standing at her mother’s side, Princess Elizabeth received an address from the House of Commons, and replied on behalf of the Crown. In 1945, the year in which she flew for the first time, the teenage Princess took a courageous decision: fiercely desirous of showing that she was resolved to do her bit for the war effort, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Services as Second Subaltern No. 230873, a rank equivalent to second lieutenant. It was at this time that Elizabeth truly began to fulfil her mother’s ambitions for her. Her contemporaries frequently remarked not only on how at ease she appeared, but also on what a capable driver she was!
By the end of the Second World War, the Heiress Presumptive to the British Throne had risen through the military hierarchy to become a Junior Commander and a fully qualified driver. Meanwhile, Hitler’s expansionist fantasies had been crushed by the Allies. Happier times, thankfully, were ahead. In 1947, Princess Elizabeth made her first official overseas visit to South Africa. That year, she took a pledge of dedication to the people of the Commonwealth.
The Princess’s role in service had demonstrated that “Lilibet” was now a mature and natural leader. Furthermore, she had achieved her majority. It was with little surprise, but much joy, that the public was informed of her engagement to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, son of Prince Andrew of Greece and great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria. The couple had known each other for many years, and thus Prince Philip was the obvious and most popular match for Elizabeth, in the eyes of both senior courtiers and the British public. Even the characteristically fickle British press conceded that this was “clearly a match of choice not arrangement”.
They married on November 20, 1947 in Westminster Abbey. The couple were rapturously welcomed wherever they went by a nation sincerely proud of its Monarchy. This happiness was only enhanced by the announcement on November 14 1948 that Princess Elizabeth had given birth to Prince Charles, a baby who was, by all accounts, the perfect likeness of George V, his great-grandfather. Two years later, a sister for the Prince, Princess Anne, was born.
The influence of Princess Elizabeth’s mother was obvious in her maternal attitude towards her children. Conscious of the impact and significance of the War, Elizabeth was convinced that her children needed to be modern Princes and Princesses, and resolved that they, like her, would not be shielded or spoilt, and that they would attend public school.
But as a new generation of the Royal Family was born, another began to fade. By 1952, King George VI was so seriously ill that Princess Elizabeth and her husband stepped in to take his place on a State visit to Australia and New Zealand. On their way there, in Kenya, the Heiress Presumptive was brought the news that her beloved father was dead, and that she had acceded to the Throne. On June 2, 1953, as news of the Commonwealth’s conquest of Mount Everest arrived, the Princess returned to Westminster Abbey, in which she had been married just a few years earlier, to be crowned “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”.
Princess Elizabeth had become Queen Elizabeth II, but she had never quite ceased to be “Lilibet” – the little girl who knew both her duty and her own mind, and was determined to be the best and the most “normal” regent that she could.
The kingdom that Queen Elizabeth II inherited from her father, King George VI, was a confident one – war had ended nearly a decade earlier, and 1953 proved to be a golden year that imbued Britain with a sense of optimism unprecedented in recent years. The austere days of rationing were finally over, the British Commonwealth had claimed Everest for its own, and, most importantly of all, the nation had great hope for its new, young Queen. Following the Coronation on June 2nd, the men and women of Great Britain were looking forward to a new age, a second Elizabethan era in which the spectre of war would become a distant memory and the normal rhythms of life would be resumed. One cannot easily imagine just how great a responsibility this must have appeared to Her Majesty at the dawn of her reign; yet, from the outset, she proved herself to be the very model of a modern Monarch and bore the immense burden of public expectation both gracefully and willingly.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were the successors to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth not only by right of birth, but also, to informed commentators, in a spiritual and emotional sense. The zeitgeist of 1950s Britain was remarkably reminiscent of that of the nation some twenty years previously – the energy, dynamism and sheer personality of the Royal couple were reflected in the contemporary press. One periodical commented on the different but complementary natures of the Queen and her husband, noticing how her “quick common sense” and his “shrewd modernity” combined to make them the perfect parents for Prince Charles and Princess Anne.
But the high esteem and affection in which the new Monarch was held was not confined merely to the United Kingdom; during a series of high-profile Royal visits to Australia, New Zealand and Canada in 1954, the Queen was able to gauge for herself her extreme popularity throughout the Commonwealth. Ever conscious of the changing role of the Sovereign in the post-war world, the rapturous reception she received left her in no doubt as to her subjects’ feelings for her. In May 1954, Queen Elizabeth pronounced that: “The structure and framework of Monarchy could easily stand as an archaic and meaningless survival, [but] we have received visible and audible truth that it is living in the hearts of our people.” For a Monarch, there can be no more deserved nor more welcome an assurance than this.
But trouble was around the corner. As the 1950s yielded to the socially turbulent sixties, the Royal honeymoon period appeared to be drawing to a somewhat abrupt end. In spite of the efforts of the new Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, to shore up the Monarchy’s central position in British society, the Suez Crisis opened up a wider debate as to the validity of the Monarchy as an institution, not least among ambitious politicians in capital cities across the Empire. With the Commonwealth on the verge of fragmentation, the British press could not resist the opportunity of questioning the relevance of the Royal Family in the second half of the twentieth century. This debate, however, vastly underestimated the loyalty and love of the British people. In the summer of 1959, when Her Majesty took the world by surprise by announcing that she was once again pregnant, the newspapers and popular magazines reflected the delight of her subjects, and no amount of republican whispering could conceal that fact.
Prince Andrew, the first child born to an enthroned Monarch since Princes Beatrice in 1857, was also the first to be born with the new, “de-royalised” surname of Windsor. Five years later, on 10th March 1964, the birth of Prince Edward Antony Richard Louis completed the Royal Family unit. Queen Elizabeth II soon demonstrated that she was every inch her mother’s daughter; insisting that her children should lead lives that were as normal as was possible, she stressed the importance of education and was adamant that they should have the academic advantages that had always been denied her. Accordingly, all the Royal children came to be educated at schools that were traditionally perceived to be upper-middle and upper-class institutions. Charles set the precedent by attending Gordonstoun, a prestigious if austere private school in Scotland where he was free to mingle with boys from backgrounds very different from his own.
Not only a devoted mother, the Queen proved that she was also blessed with an impressive degree of social acuity – she had long known that if the Monarchy was to survive into the next century, then its next generation would have to be more grounded and aware of the different strands of British society than any of its recent predecessors.
Evidence of the Monarchy’s drive towards “normalisation” was provided by the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle (the historical seat of the Welsh princes) on 1st July 1969. At the Queen’s wish, it was not to be an exclusive “in camera” affair. Instead, Her Majesty was determined that it should serve as an example of her commitment to a “People’s Monarchy”, decidedly aware of its duties, responsibilities and, to a certain extent, its audience. As a television documentary, Royal Family, made the previous year, had shown, Her Majesty was keen to stress that whilst her Family was indeed Royal, it was, first and foremost, just a family.
The uses and advantages of television as a communications tool were not lost on Buckingham Palace. Just as the Coronation had been filmed and attracted an enormous global audience, so Queen Elizabeth was convinced that a large, lavish investiture was the best way for her son to keep in touch with the British public. The ceremony itself was devoutly traditional and solemn in tone, but, largely due to the ardent desire of courtiers to bring the British people closer to their future King, it was a truly modern spectacle. Charles touchingly recorded its personal significance for him when he wrote in his diary that “by far the most moving and meaningful moment came when I put my hand between Mummy’s and swore to be her liege man of life and limb”. At the same time, the investiture propelled the twenty-one year old Prince on to the international stage.
By the time the Queen and Prince Philip came to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary in November 1972, the British had grown so accustomed to seeing them on television that they had come to be seen as just another, albeit rather special, couple. The Times commented on how much the public perception of the Royal Family had altered, noting that the Windsors were a “large, close, and remarkably devoted family”. The Queen herself was in no small way responsible for the Windsors’ continuing popularity: her ideals had shaped her children as much as had their social status, and her deliberate decision to make the Royal Family as accessible as possible had been vindicated by the warm respect that infused newspaper letters columns and editorials.
Five years later, Elizabeth was celebrating both thirty years of marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh and the twenty-fifth anniversary of her accession. The Silver Jubilee was marked in the summer of 1977, amidst the largest and most vibrant street parties seen since the end of the Second World War. Her Majesty’s popularity had reached such heights that when, on 6th June, she ascended Snow Hill (in the environs of Windsor Castle) to light the first of a network of bonfires that would illuminate the length and breadth of the kingdom, courtiers remarked that her own warmth combined with the torch she held to set the country alight. A million people crammed into the Mall the next day to watch the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh as they rode up to St Paul’s Cathedral.
There was further national rejoicing when, on 24th February 1981, the engagement of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer was announced. However, it soon became alarmingly obvious that not all subjects shared in the happiness of the Royal Family. On June 13th of that same year, during the Trooping the Colour ceremony, an obviously very disturbed adolescent boy loomed out of the crowd, brandishing a revolver. Six shots were fired at the Queen. To Palace security chiefs’ immense relief, it transpired that the weapon was loaded with blanks, and the feared “assassination attempt” had been nothing more than a pathetic and deranged publicity stunt. The most remarkable feature of the entire episode, however, was Her Majesty’s amazingly cool and dismissive reaction to what can only have been an utterly terrifying experience. Shrugging the incident off with the calm humour that has become one of her most endearing traits, she showed that, like another Queen Elizabeth some four centuries earlier, she was certainly not lacking in the sang froid so vital in a Commander-in-Chief of the British armed forces.
When Charles and Diana walked down the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral on 29th July 1981, Britain seemed to come to a standstill. The Queen was immensely proud as she watched her eldest son – and her heir – marry a beautiful young aristocrat. The wedding proved seductive to the public, but soon it became clear that this was not a happy union. It was not long before the Queen began to grow concerned about Charles, her son, and Charles, the future King of England.
To add to her parental anxieties, the Falklands War, provoked by the Argentine annexation of the Britain’s South Atlantic islands, meant that Prince Andrew, a gifted Royal Navy helicopter pilot, was called up to serve his country in spring 1982. Worrying about one’s children is an integral part of any parent’s life, but that process is unlikely to be made any less difficult by having to live under the constant scrutiny of both the press and the public. Still, Her Majesty steadfastly refused to let the strain show, knowing as she did that there were countless other mothers in the world in exactly the same predicament. And, like them, she knew that all she could really do was hope and pray and go about her business as usual. Mercifully, the conflict ended in June, but not without considerable loss of life on both sides; and Prince Andrew returned home, where he was hailed a war hero.
By the end of 1982, the Queen’s heir had, in turn, produced an heir, but pressure on the Family was growing. Charles and Diana were becoming increasingly estranged, the tabloid press appeared to have developed a fixation with Prince Andrew’s personal life, and two IRA bomb attacks had brought death and destruction to London and to the Queen’s Household Cavalry. This was the start of a 15-year period that would test the British Monarchy to its very limits.
The Queen steeled herself to face the greatest challenge to the Throne in more than three centuries. This was a Monarch who had stared down a gunman, and a mother who knew both her duty and her own mind. True to form, she would ensure the “modernisation” of the Monarchy while remaining the best and the most “normal” regent that she could.