The Queen. Ben Pimlott

like to record my unique debt to the late Lord Charteris – a great royal and public servant with whom I spent many happy, instructive and sometimes hilarious hours in the cell-like interview rooms of the Palace of Westminster, and whose voice I often used to illuminate my text. In addition, I should like to thank the staff of the Buckingham Palace press office, and especially Geoff Crawford and Penny Russell-Smith, successively Press Secretaries to the Queen; together with Mary Francis, Peter Galloway, David Hill, Stephen Lamport, Robin Ludlow, Lady Penn, Frank Prochaska and a number of others who prefer not to be named. I should once again like to give my special thanks to Arabella Pike of HarperCollins, for her encouragement and ever incisive advice. I should also like to thank Aisha Rahman for her care and efficiency in guiding the Golden Jubilee edition through to publication. Caroline Wood has again provided invaluable help as picture researcher. At Goldsmiths, I am extremely grateful to Edna Pellett for typing an illegible (sometimes even to the author) manuscript with astonishing skill and without reproach. I would also like to thank Jef McAllister, London Bureau Chief of Time Magazine, and the staff at the Australian High Commission, for their kindness in providing access to newspaper and other files; and Dan and Nat Pimlott for their resourcefulness in sifting through them.

      New Cross, London SE14 September 2001

      PREFACE

      ‘What a marvellous way of looking at the history of Britain’, said Raphael Samuel, when I told him about this book. Others expressed surprise, wondering whether a study of the Head of State and Head of the Commonwealth could be a serious or worthwhile enterprise. Whether or not they are right, it has certainly been an extraordinary and fascinating adventure: partly because of the fresh perspective on familiar events it has given me, after years of writing about Labour politicians; partly because of the human drama of a life so exceptionally privileged, and so exceptionally constrained; and partly because of the obsession with royalty of the British public, of which I am a member. Perhaps the last has interested me most of all. To some extent, therefore, this is a book about the Queen in people’s heads, as well as at Buckingham Palace. It is, of course, incomplete – no work could be more ‘interim’ than an account of a monarch who may still have decades to reign. However, because the story is still going on with critical chapters yet to come, it is also – more than most biographies – concerned with now.

      It is an ‘unofficial’ study, and draws eclectically on a variety of sources. For the period up to 1952, the Royal Archives have been invaluable; documentation up to the mid or late 1960s has been provided by the Public Record Office and the BBC Written Archive Centre, alongside a number of private collections of papers, listed at the end of this book. For later years, interviews have been particularly helpful. In addition, there is a wealth of published material.

      I have a great many individual debts. I am extremely grateful to Sir Robert Fellowes (Private Secretary to the Queen and Keeper of the Royal Archives, Charles Anson (Press Secretary to the Queen), Oliver Everett (Assistant Keeper of the Royal Archives) and Sheila de Bellaigue (Registrar of the Royal Archives) for assisting with my requests whenever it was possible to do so.

      I would like to thank Anne Pimlott Baker, principal researcher for the book, for the care and resourcefulness of her inquiries, and for her skilful digests and research notes; Andrew Chadwick, for research into the archives of The Times and News of the World; Sarah Benton, for reading the whole text in draft and making many perceptive comments on it; Anne-Marie Rule for typing the manuscript with her usual combination of speed, precision and good-natured tolerance of unreasonable demands – the fifth time she has typed a book for me (am I the last author, incidentally, who still uses a pen and has his drafts typed on a pre-electric typewriter?); Terry Mayer and Jane Tinkler for their help in typing, and retyping, some of the chapters, and for many kindnesses; and my colleagues and students at Birkbeck, for their forebearance, interest and encouragement.

      I am grateful to the many librarians and archivists, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, who have helped me in person, on the telephone, or by correspondence. In addition to those already mentioned, I would especially like to thank Jacquie Kavanagh at the BBC Written Archive Centre at Caver-sham Park, Helen Langley at the Bodleian Library and the library staff of The Times Newspapers and the Guardian. I am also particularly grateful to Sir Hardy Amies, for generously making available to me his correspondence with the Queen and members of the Royal Family over a period of more than forty years; to Phillip Whitehead, for letting me see the unedited transcripts of interviews for his television documentary, The Windsors; and Vernon Bogdanor and Frank Prochaska for showing me the text of their excellent recent books, before publication. I am deeply indebted to the staff of the British Library at Bloomsbury, who continue to provide an outstanding service, despite trying conditions during the countdown to the move (regretted by so many) to St Pancras.

      I am grateful to the following for permission to quote copyright material: Arrow Books (D. Morrah To Be a King); Collins (H. Nicolson Diaries and Letters 1930–1939); Duckworth (M. Crawford The Little Princesses); Hamish Hamilton (R. Crossman The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman; The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister 1964–66); Hutchinson (T. Benn Out of the Wilderness: Diaries 1963–67); Macmillan (J. Wheeler-Bennett George VI: His Life and Reign).

      I would like to acknowledge the gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen for allowing me the privilege of using the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, and for granting me permission to quote from papers in the Archives. For the use of other unpublished papers and documents I am grateful to: Sir Hardy Amies (Amies papers); Lady Avon (Avon papers); Balliol College, Oxford (Nicolson papers); BBC Written Archive Centre (BBC Written Archives); British Library of Political and Economic Science (Dalton papers); Christ Church, Oxford (Bradwell papers); Churchill College, Cambridge (Alexander papers; Chartwell papers; Swinton papers); Lady Margaret Colville (Colville papers); Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (Eisenhower papers); Mrs Caroline Erskine (Lascelles papers); House of Lords (Beaverbrook papers); John F. Kennedy Library (Kennedy papers); Lambeth Palace (Fisher papers); F. D. Roosevelt Library (Roosevelt papers); Harry S. Truman Library (Truman papers); University College, Oxford (Attlee papers); University of Southampton (Mountbatten papers).

      I would like to thank the following people who have taken the time to talk to me about different aspects of this book: Lord Airlie, Lady Airlie, Ronald Allison, Sir Hardy Amies, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, Sir Shane Blewitt, Lord Brabourne, Sir Alistair Burnet, Lord Buxton, Lord Callaghan, Lord Carnarvon, Lady Carnarvon, Lord Carrington, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, Lord Charteris, Lord Cranborne, Jonathan Dimbleby, Lord Egremont, Sir Edward Ford, Princess George of Hanover, The Duchess of Grafton, John Grigg, Joe Haines, David Hicks, Lady Pamela Hicks, Anthony Holden, Angela Howard-Johnston, Lord Howe, Lord Hunt of Tamworth, Douglas Hurd, Sir Bernard Ingham, Michael Jones, Robin Janvrin, Lord Limerick, Lady Long-ford, Brian MacArthur, Lord McNally, HRH Princess Margaret, Sir John Miller, Sir Derek Mitchell, Lady Mountbatten, Michael Noakes, The Duke of Norfolk, Commander Michael Parker, Michael Peat, Rt Rev Simon Phipps, Sir Edward Pickering, Sir David Pitblado, Sir Charles Powell, Enoch Powell, Sir Sonny Ramphal, Sir John Riddell, Kenneth Rose, Lord Runcie, Sir Kenneth Scott, Michael Shea, Phillip Whitehead, Sir Clive Whitmore and Mrs Woodroffe. I also spoke to others who prefer not to be named. Where it has not been possible to give the source of a quotation in the text or notes, I have used the words ‘Confidential interview’. None of these people, or anybody else apart from the author, is responsible for how the material has been interpreted.

      HarperCollins has once again proved itself the Rolls Royce of British non-fiction publishing. I am particularly indebted to Stuart Proffitt, my publisher, for his persistent faith in the project and his shrewd author management, and to my incomparable editor, Arabella Pike, for whom my admiration has no bounds. I am also grateful to Caroline Wood for her inspired picture research, and to Anne O’Brien for vital last-minute help. Giles Gordon, my literary agent, has been a constant source of practical wisdom and advice.

      Finally, I thank the people to whom the book is dedicated: my children, for keeping my spirits up; and my wife, Jean Seaton, for whom all my books are really written, whose thoughts about monarchy and royalty are now inextricably bound up with my own, and whose fertile historical imagination has been a daily quarry.

      Bloomsbury, WC1 August 1996