Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

NINETEEN

Moving Pictures

“THE BRITISH HAVE LOST THE HABIT OF PROPER PARTYING,” SAID historian David Starkey at the end of January 2002, explaining that changes in the nature of British society meant the celebratory atmosphere of the Silver Jubilee could not possibly be duplicated twenty-five years later. Starkey was part of a chorus of skeptics predicting the Golden Jubilee would be a flop. As it had in 1977, The Guardian led the charge, joined by The Independent—the same newspapers that had predicted a tepid response to the death of the Queen Mother.

Even after the outpouring of enthusiasm for the monarchy shown by the crowds for her funeral, much of the press had remained dubious. In keeping with its “softly, softly” strategy of holding down expectations, Buckingham Palace advisers concentrated on refining their ambitious plans. The celebration was privately financed, and had taken eighteen months to map out. Shipping magnate Jeffrey Sterling, Lord Sterling of Plaistow, who had successfully run the Silver Jubilee, was appointed chairman of the Golden Jubilee committee. Within a matter of months, he raised nearly £6 million from corporations and individuals who wanted to honor their Queen.

A crucial part of the Palace strategy involved an advisory group of outsiders that met fifteen times in 2001 over lunches hosted by Robin Janvrin in the Chinese Dining Room. Its members were drawn from the senior ranks of public relations, broadcasting, magazines, and newspapers, including Libby Purves, a columnist for The Times who articulated the views of “middle Britain.” In the spirit of their more open approach, Janvrin and Simon Walker also invited such critics of the monarchy as Waheed Alli, a Labour peer who was a highly successful television producer and gay rights activist. The committee members made their own suggestions and commented on plans presented by Palace officials. Neither the committee’s membership nor details of its deliberations ever leaked.

Private polling and focus groups measured the Queen’s popularity by region. This research helped the Queen’s advisers plan her three-month-long progress starting on May 1 with sixteen regional tours throughout the United Kingdom. The Palace intentionally launched the tours in Cornwall and Devon, counties that showed some of the highest support for the monarchy. To ensure maximum coverage, the press office briefed three thousand community organizations even before conducting off-the-record briefings for national and regional media, followed by meetings with the international press.

On April 25, 2002, the Queen had a reception at Windsor Castle for more than 750 journalists representing the smallest regional newspapers as well as the major dailies in London. Alastair Campbell acidly observed that “there was something truly pathetic about these so-called hardened hacks, many of them self-proclaimed republicans, bowing and scraping.” The Queen “moved effortlessly between them and left grown men in little puddles of excitement.” Afterward, Simon Walker suggested to the Queen that they should have a similar party in five years’ time. She said she preferred ten.

Four nights later, Tony and Cherie Blair hosted a dinner at 10 Downing Street for Elizabeth II and Philip and her surviving prime ministers—Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, and Major—and the families of the others. “What a relief!” the Queen said as she greeted the Blairs. “No need for any introductions!” Campbell detected a marked difference in the Queen’s manner from her evening at Windsor “when she had been doing her professional small-talk thing,” and at No. 10, “where she seemed genuinely happy.”

The following day, Elizabeth II addressed the Joint Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall, where her mother’s body had lain in state only three weeks earlier. As was the case in the same setting in 1977, her words were personal, and they reflected the essential message of her jubilee year. “Change has become a constant,” she said. “Managing it has become an expanding discipline. The way we embrace it defines our future.” She emphasized the importance of Britain’s enduring values of moderation and pragmatism, inventiveness and creativity, and fairness and tolerance, as well as its tradition of service.

In keeping with her theme of inclusiveness, she cited “the consolidation of our richly multicultural and multi-faith society” as a “major development” since 1952, achieved “remarkably peacefully and with much goodwill.” (Only days earlier, the Palace had announced that during her travels over the summer, she would visit a Hindu temple, a Jewish museum, a Sikh temple, and an Islamic center—her first time inside a mosque.) At seventy-six years of age, she made clear—yet again—“my resolve to continue, with the support of my family, to serve the people of this great nation of ours to the best of my ability through the changing times ahead.” One thousand peers and members of Parliament rose to their feet and gave her a loud and prolonged round of applause—the magnitude of which seemed to both move and embarrass her.

After her first three regional swings through England, she traveled to Northern Ireland on May 13 for a three-day tour in an atmosphere far different from her tense visit during the Silver Jubilee. On April 10, 1998, the Good Friday Agreement had brought peace to Ulster with a compromise to share power between the Protestant majority and Catholic minority in a newly created legislative assembly (ending direct London rule). The accord also put aside the idea of a united Ireland unless approved by the voters in both Ulster and the Republic of Ireland.

Four years later, Elizabeth II addressed legislators from the new Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time as their Queen at a reception in the parliament buildings at Stormont. She told them they had “an historic opportunity to bring the administration of Northern Ireland closer to the people whom you serve” and to “meet the aspirations both of those who are proud to be British and of those who feel a strong sense of Irish identity.”

THE CENTERPIECE OF the Golden Jubilee festivities was a four-day “people’s party” at the beginning of June, with two unprecedented concerts in the gardens at Buckingham Palace. Each concert was attended by twelve thousand fans randomly selected from nearly two million applicants, and both were televised live by the BBC. The music was classical on Saturday the 1st and pop on Monday the 3rd.

Initiating the pop concert required some delicate maneuvering. “It was important to have young support for the jubilee,” said Simon Walker. Robin Janvrin ultimately won over the Queen, who made it clear she had no interest in spending three hours listening to pop singers. As a compromise, the courtiers arranged for her to arrive about thirty-five minutes before the end.

The concert began dramatically with Brian May, the guitarist from Queen, standing on the roof of Buckingham Palace playing his idiosyncratic version of the national anthem. When Elizabeth II appeared, Eric Clapton was singing “Layla,” and the comedian Dame Edna Everage introduced her as the “Golden Jubilee girl.” The Queen, who wore yellow earplugs, sat with Philip, the Blairs, and twenty-four members of the royal family in the VIP box for the remaining acts, which ended with Paul McCartney singing “Hey Jude.” Accompanied by her husband, Charles, William, and Harry, she joined the performers on the stage as Charles greeted his “mummy” and saluted her “50 extraordinary years,” adding, “You have embodied something vital in our lives—continuity. You have been a beacon of tradition and stability in the midst of profound, sometimes perilous, change.” The audience cheered, and the heir to the throne gave his mother a kiss.

Afterward, Elizabeth II ignited a beacon in front of the Victoria Memorial, one of more than two thousand bonfires blazing in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries. In Kenya, a fire was lit near Treetops, where she became Queen. The evening ended with a spectacular fireworks display and light show on the Palace facade, before a crowd of a million people who had gathered in the Mall and nearby parks. The Queen and Philip watched from a reviewing stand, beaming as an illuminated version of the Union Jack rippled across the front of the Palace.

The final day of celebration, on Tuesday the 4th, featured the ceremonial drive in the ornate Gold State Coach from the Palace to St. Paul’s for a jubilee service, followed by a Guildhall luncheon in which Tony Blair told the Queen, “Deference may be inherited but affection is earned, and the affection this country feels for you is real.” In the afternoon the Queen and Philip attended a festival along the Mall with twenty thousand participants, including a gospel choir of five thousand singers and representatives of the fifty-four Commonwealth countries in native costumes. By teatime the vast crowd had completely filled the Mall, waving flags, cheering, and singing, as they had twenty-five years before, “Land of Hope and Glory” and “God Save the Queen,” while Elizabeth II and her family waved back from the Buckingham Palace balcony. Above them at only 1,500 feet flew a Concorde followed by the RAF’s Red Arrows in synchronized formation.

The festivities continued throughout the summer as the Queen covered some 3,500 miles by Royal Train and visited seventy cities and towns. She had garden parties at Sandringham and Balmoral as well as Buckingham Palace and Holyroodhouse. She did some private celebrating as well. Fifty men who had been pages at royal events in their boyhood treated her to a black-tie dinner at White’s club, where women were permitted only on rare occasions. According to a story told by members afterward, a buffer spotted her arriving and grumbled: “The Queen coming to White’s—the thin edge of the wedge!” (A photograph taken that night of the Queen and her former pages hangs proudly in the loo at the club.)

The Golden Jubilee was an enormous success. “People woke up and realized that Her Majesty was about stability, serenity, continuity, calm through adversity, and humor when things are going wrong,” said her former press secretary Charles Anson. “Suddenly they got the point of the Queen, who had been doing her job for fifty years.” Press coverage turned effusive with the popular tide. The jubilee events “have proved conclusively,” noted the BBC, “that the Queen and the monarchy are still held in high esteem by millions of British people.” The results emerging from the private polls also augured well. “The public felt the Queen was paying attention to them and was having a good time,” said Robert Worcester of MORI. When the polling for the Palace began, those who felt the monarchy was out of touch registered nearly 40 percent, but that number dropped to the mid-20s in the years after the jubilee.

IN THE AUTUMN of 2002 the Queen became embroiled in a controversy over an encounter she had had five years earlier with Paul Burrell, the butler to the late Princess of Wales. He was known as Diana’s “rock” for his total devotion if not, as it turned out, discretion. Before working for Diana, Burrell had been a footman at Buckingham Palace, and the Queen had rewarded his service by investing him with the Royal Victorian Order, one of her personal honors. She was told that he was torn up with grief over Diana’s death, so when he asked for an audience at the Palace, she was open-hearted enough to oblige.

On Thursday afternoon, December 18, 1997, Burrell had a lot on his mind when he arrived at her private sitting room on the first floor overlooking the gardens. During their ninety minutes together, he spoke “at length” about Diana’s troubles and her feelings toward Charles. He said that Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, had been shredding her daughter’s letters and memos during visits to Kensington Palace, and he told the Queen “he had taken some of the princess’s papers for safekeeping”—just one topic among many before he and the Queen parted company.

Three years later, in January 2001, acting on a tip from another former royal servant, police raided Burrell’s home. They turned up more than three hundred items from Diana’s estate, including designer clothing, jewelry, handbags, and furniture, as well as a lesser number of belongings allegedly taken from Charles and William. The former butler was charged with theft. As the investigation progressed, the Queen was briefed several times by Robin Janvrin, but she didn’t mention her talk with Burrell because, as she later said, she didn’t think his passing reference to safeguarding Diana’s papers was relevant in the context of the charges Burrell faced. Nor, for his part, did Burrell disclose the nature of their meeting to his own lawyers because, he said, it was “private.”

Burrell’s trial began on Ocrtober 14, 2002, the day before the Queen returned to England from her ten-day Golden Jubilee tour of Canada. On Friday the 25th, while being driven to a memorial service, Philip and Charles were discussing the much-publicized case. Philip mentioned to Charles that the Queen had met with Burrell after Diana’s death and that the butler had talked about keeping some documents. This was apparently the first Charles had heard of the meeting. He immediately relayed the information to his private secretary, who alerted the authorities. On November 1, the prosecution dropped the case because it was based “on a false premise that Mr. Burrell had never told anyone that he was holding anything for safekeeping.” Even though what Burrell told the Queen pertained only to an unspecified number of papers out of the substantial hoard of valuable belongings, it was enough to stop the trial.

The press pounced on the dramatic turn of events and suggested that the Queen and her son had somehow tried to halt the trial to prevent embarrassing public testimony about the late princess and the royal family. Equally damaging was the alternative explanation—that she was an “old woman being forgetful.”

In fact, the Queen had not forgotten the incident at all. Earlier in the autumn at Balmoral, when the upcoming trial was in the news, Elizabeth II had been entertaining her guests over drinks before setting off for a barbecue. “She was playing patience, very content and very relaxed,” said a friend sitting with her that day. “Almost in passing, she talked about the conversation she had had with Burrell. Her recollection was very clear, that Burrell had told her he had taken a few documents as opposed to hundreds of things.” The impression she gave was that Burrell’s disclosure was minor. “She told me she thought no more about it,” said her friend. “It only became a topical matter because the trial was going to be taking place and it was on people’s minds. What she said was so matter-of-fact that she must have discussed it on other occasions.”

Michael Peat, who by then had moved from Buckingham Palace to be Charles’s private secretary, conducted an exhaustive examination of whether there was “anything improper or remiss” in the termination of the Burrell trial. Peat found “no evidence” that the revelation was meant to derail the trial. He pointed out that if the Palace had wanted such an outcome, there had been “numerous prior opportunities to intervene to prevent or stifle the prosecution.” It was only after the trial unfolded that press accounts reported the crux of the prosecution’s case, which was to prove that Burrell had spirited away hundreds of items without telling anyone.

A week after the trial collapsed, the Queen took on a task her mother had carried out faithfully every year, visiting the Field of Remembrance outside Westminster Abbey, where nineteen thousand tiny crosses had been planted in tribute to members of the British armed forces who had died in combat, a tradition that began in 1928 to honor those killed in World War I. The Queen Mother had invariably stayed longer than expected, stopping to speak to as many former servicemen and members of deceased veterans’ families as she could. The previous November she had braved freezing temperatures to plant her cross, and now the Queen planted her own during a brief prayer ceremony attended by several thousand people. As the service concluded with a minute of silence, Elizabeth II had tears streaming down her cheeks.

IF THE QUEEN showed traces of emotional fragility after the ups and downs of 2002, her physical health was as robust as ever. At the Windsor Horse Show the previous May, spectators had marveled at her vigor while following Philip on one of his competitive carriage driving marathons in Windsor Great Park. “She drove her own Range Rover to each of the obstacles every half mile,” recalled Nini Ferguson, one of the American competitors. “Philip was driving four horses. She would watch him do the obstacles, then run back and jump in her car. She was in her wellies, with her scarf flying, followed by four or five corgis. She had such spirit and energy, and she seemed so young.”

In early January 2003, Elizabeth II slipped while walking on uneven ground at Sandringham after visiting Desert Star, one of her most promising colts. She tore cartilage in her right knee, which required arthroscopic surgery. In a letter to Monty Roberts, she expressed her frustration over being stuck “languishing indoors,” unable to ride or walk her dogs. She recovered well and had an identical operation on her left knee less than a year later to repair minor cartilage damage that her doctors had discovered. She walked for several weeks with a cane, but was soon back into her weekly riding routine. Her one concession to age was using Fell ponies as her mounts rather than the larger horses she had been riding for decades. “They are about 14 hands high, solid squat things,” said Michael Oswald. “Not many her age ride at all, so they are safe conveyances.”

With her mother and sister gone, Elizabeth II came to rely more on her extended family for companionship. Her long-standing ritual on Sundays at Windsor had been to have a midday drink at Royal Lodge after attending the service at the Royal Chapel of All Saints. Now she would go instead to visit her cousin Margaret Rhodes, a small and sprightly countrywoman. Her cottage in Windsor Great Park is simple and cozy, with modest furnishings and rubber toys for Gilda, her West Highland terrier, strewn on the floor. The tables in her sitting room are filled with photographs of the Queen Mother, King George VI, and Elizabeth II in her Balmoral garb.

When Margaret’s husband was stricken with terminal cancer in 1981, the Queen gave them the house so they could be closer to London hospitals than their farm in Devon. “How would you like to live in suburbia?” the Queen asked. “It was the answer to a prayer,” Margaret Rhodes recalled.

Each Sunday the Queen takes the wheel of her Jaguar for the short drive from the church. Her cousin greets her with a curtsy, and the Queen perches on the faded sofa in the sitting room, her hat firmly in place, ready for the return trip to the castle. As Elizabeth II sips her gin and Dubonnet, the two women talk about the events of the previous week, and swap news about family matters and various people they know—the health of an elderly stalker at Balmoral, for example.

The events of 2002—her personal losses as well as the acclaim for her jubilee—had turned a page, and the difficulties of the 1990s had now been relegated to history. The Queen was smiling more in public. She seemed warmer, more approachable, and more relaxed, in some ways more like her mother. “This may sound impertinent,” said Robert Salisbury, “but I would guess the Queen has rather blossomed since her mother died.” Monty Roberts felt that she was showing “more understanding of the wonders of life than she had before.”

During a small dinner in 2003 with a group of Grenadier Guards in the Officers Mess at St. James’s Palace—a handsome high-ceilinged room decorated with antiques, regimental silver, a wooden officers’ latrine door from the trenches of World War I, and a portrait of the young Queen Victoria—laughter and loud conversation could be heard through the open windows. A call came through from the Queen’s comptroller, Malcolm Ross, who had an apartment in the Palace. He was complaining about the noise, not knowing the identity of the guest that evening. The officer of the guard conveyed the message to the Queen, who replied, “Oh tell Malcolm not to be so silly.”

Robert Salisbury detected a shift in Elizabeth II’s manner when he was seated next to her at the seventieth birthday party for Ginny Airlie at Annabel’s in February 2003. The Queen told friends how much she had been looking forward to the party because it was the first time she had been in a nightclub since the early days of her marriage. “Never have I seen anyone have such a good time,” said Annabel Goldsmith (after whom the club had been named), who was also seated with the Queen. “Here was this austere woman laughing and joking. She was amusing the whole table.”

The next day, Elizabeth II had an engagement at St. Alban’s Abbey, north of London. As she was being introduced to dignitaries, the dean of the abbey spotted Robert Salisbury, and asked the Queen whether she had met him before. “Oh yes,” said the Queen in ringing tones. “Robert and I were in a nightclub last night till half past one.”

She also acquired a new confidante in Angela Kelly, who had taken Bobo MacDonald’s place. Twenty-five years the Queen’s junior, Kelly had been a soldier who joined the royal household as a maid and worked her way up through the ranks to dresser, a title Kelly herself upgraded to “personal assistant.” Like Bobo, who was the daughter of a railwayman, Kelly had modest origins in Liverpool, where her father worked in the dockyards. But unlike Bobo, who kept a low profile, Kelly, a plump blonde with an effervescent personality, became a visible presence in the Queen’s entourage.

When Kelly is with the Queen “there is lots of jolly laughter,” said Anne Glenconner. “She has moved into the vacuum created by the death of the Queen’s sister and her mother,” according to one of the Queen’s relatives.

Kelly tends to the royal wardrobe in a rigorously professional way, adapting the traditions of Hartnell and Amies with an eye to the theatrical requirements of the Queen’s public appearances. Kelly often accompanies household officials on reconnaissance trips (“recces”) for foreign tours, checking the backgrounds where the Queen will be appearing and researching national colors as well as hues that might have positive and negative significance. “Angela understands the Queen needs to wear something that sets her apart from the crowd when she is at a distance, and that inside she can wear beige and grey, things that are more neutral,” said a senior royal adviser. Kelly uses new couturiers such as Stewart Parvin, but she also designs many of the Queen’s dresses, coats, and hats herself and has them made in-house at lower cost.

The Queen has long taken a keen interest in her jewelry and knows the history of the pieces in her extensive private collection. She enjoys displaying her beautiful jewelry whether in public or private, sometimes at dinner parties wearing multiple rings, even on her index fingers. Once, when she was introduced to Joel Arthur Rosenthal, the American creator of JAR jewelers, at a Winfield House dinner, she said, “I have heard that Damien Hirst has been using diamonds to make a jeweled skull, but I prefer the diamonds around my neck.”

Angela Kelly has built on her boss’s expertise by developing computerized inventories so she can have the most up-to-date facts at her fingertips when she sets out a tray with pieces for the Queen’s selection. “Angela will come up with something she has found God knows where,” said a lady-in-waiting. “If the brooch is from Mexico, she will say where the stones are from. She is interested in it, and she makes it fun.”

ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003, the Queen and her courtiers awoke to a “World Exclusive” in the Daily Mirror: a page-one photograph of a footman on the famous Buckingham Palace balcony with INTRUDER emblazoned above his head. Another headline explained: “As Bush arrives, we reveal Mirrorman has been a Palace footman for TWO MONTHS in the biggest royal security scandal ever.” Inside the paper were fourteen pages of surreptitiously snapped photographs and descriptions of royal family routines and private quarters, punctuated by equally sensational headlines (“I COULD HAVE POISONED THE QUEEN”). It was all the handiwork of twenty-six-year-old Mirror reporter Ryan Parry, who lied his way into a job as a footman and bolted with his story, violating the confidentiality agreement he signed when he was hired.

The newspaper tried to frame the stunt as a public service, but it was mainly a peek into the private lives of the Queen and her family. The most talked-about photograph was of the breakfast table laid for the Queen and Prince Philip with white linen, a floral centerpiece, silver cutlery, and bone china, along with an inexpensive transistor radio and three perfectly aligned Tupperware boxes containing cornflakes and porridge oats. Parry wrote that the Queen preferred her toast “with light marmalade,” but she ended up feeding most of it to the corgis under the table.

He reported that each royal tea tray had its own map, that Prince Andrew was a teetotaler who sometimes swore at his footman, and that Princess Anne required her breakfast bowl to “contain a very black banana and ripe kiwi fruit,” and went about her business “without a fuss.” Parry described Sophie Wessex as “kind and grateful,” and the Queen came across as chatty and congenial—“not nearly haughty enough for the job,” observed The Sunday Times.

Photographs and descriptions of the private apartments highlighted Andrew’s penchant for stuffed toys and pillows embroidered with messages such as “Eat, Sleep, and Remarry,” Anne’s sitting room where “every surface is covered with books, ornaments, piles of paper and magazines,” and Edward and Sophie Wessex’s modern decor and tidy housekeeping. Parry even snapped a picture of the carpeted Wessex bathroom adorned with a cartoon showing the Queen speaking to a group of penguins in “royal garments.”

The next day the Mirror struck again, with “our man’s exposé of Windsor,” showing Parry on page one petting two of the Queen’s corgis in front of the castle, followed by eleven pages of photographs and descriptions of his weekend working for the Queen. His picture of her breakfast table included her lineup of morning newspapers: as always, the Racing Post was on top, followed by the Daily Mail, Express, and Mirror (with its revelation of the day, an excerpt from Paul Burrell’s tell-all book about the royal family), then the Daily Telegraph and The Times.

Parry recounted that the Queen dined alone while watching her surprisingly lowbrow choice of television programs: The Bill, a popular police drama (“I don’t like ‘The Bill,’ ” she told Parry as he poured her coffee, “but I just can’t help watching it”), the long-running soap opera EastEnders, and, somewhat improbably, Kirsty’s Home Videos, a comedy show featuring footage of ordinary people that included “a fair share of bare bottoms.” There was also a photo spread of the castle’s luxurious Victorian summerhouse, with its potted plants, sculptures, swimming pool, indoor badminton court, table tennis, and netted cage surrounding Philip’s wooden polo practice horse.

The Queen was furious, and her lawyers took immediate legal action against the newspaper, citing “a highly objectionable invasion of privacy, devoid of any legitimate interest.” She obtained a permanent injunction that prevented the Mirror from publishing anything further and restrained the newspaper’s ability to reprint many of the photographs. The newspaper paid £25,000 toward the Queen’s legal costs, gave the Palace all unused photographs, and destroyed its unpublished stories.

But the Mirror’s editor, Piers Morgan, who went on to become a television personality in the United States, had succeeded in his mission. Not only did he embarrass the royal family, he timed publication—with its predictable cascade of coverage in the other newspapers—to coincide with the arrival of George and Laura Bush for the second state visit by a United States president. The only other American leader to be entertained on the same scale at Buckingham Palace over several days was Woodrow Wilson in December 1918.

The Bushes’ historic trip was already clouded by security concerns and the prospect of thousands of protesters marching against the war in Iraq. As a result, the Queen was forced to shelve the traditional welcoming ceremony in Horse Guards Parade followed by a procession of carriages along the Mall to Buckingham Palace. Instead, there was a truncated version in the forecourt behind the railings where the Changing of the Guard usually took place. The Bushes were driven from the rear of the Palace (where they had spent the night) around to the front. They walked up the red-carpeted stairs into a specially built pavilion to greet the Queen and a line of dignitaries. The Household Cavalry trotted past, the president and the Duke of Edinburgh inspected the guard of honor, and everyone then walked inside for lunch—all of which had an improvised feel that the press roundly mocked.

The Bushes, however, were delighted, and the Queen, who already had an easygoing relationship with the first couple, made them feel welcome. “She was unruffled by the protests,” George Bush recalled. “She had seen a lot during her life, and it didn’t seem to faze her. Nor did it faze me.”

That evening the Queen hosted a white-tie state banquet for 160 guests. The following night George and Laura Bush returned the hospitality with a smaller and less formal dinner hosted by Will and Sarah Farish at Winfield House. Among the sixty guests were prominent Americans in Britain such as U.S. senator George Mitchell and Rose Marie Bravo, the CEO of Burberry. “It was like old friends week,” said Catherine Fenton, the White House social secretary. “The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh greeted the Farishes affectionately, and there was lots of laughter.”

There were protesters in the streets that week heckling Blair as well as Bush, but in the prime minister’s case, they were objecting to the protracted campaign by the Labour Party to ban fox hunting. When Blair tried to explain the issue, Bush said, “Whatever did you do that for, man?” The president, Blair observed, was “as ever getting right to the point.”

The proposed ban united animal rights activists concerned about the well-being of the foxes (typically killed by a pack of hounds at the end of each hunt) with a populist assault on the aristocracy. Blair embraced the measure as a purely political ploy to assuage the left wing of his party. Debate over the ban consumed more than seven hundred hours in Parliament—the largest amount for any piece of legislation during the Blair era. It also galvanized a series of protests by a “countryside alliance” in London that attracted vast peaceful crowds ranging from landed peers to humble countrymen dependent on the sport for their livelihood. Although the Prince of Wales didn’t join the protest, he and his sons were avid hunters, and he openly defended the sport, telling Tony Blair the ban was “absurd.” Blair, in turn, warned Charles against trying to “play politics with him.” Sophie Wessex reflected the prevailing view in the royal family when she said, “Fox hunting is just vermin control but people think it’s the aristocracy running round doing what the hell they like.” She added that Blair was “ignorant of the countryside,” which he later acknowledged was correct.

Elizabeth II necessarily had to remain neutral. But as her cousin Margaret Rhodes observed, “She is a countrywoman at heart. She would defend hunting as one of the glues to keep the countryside together.” In her own quiet way, the Queen lobbied Blair during a weekend at Balmoral several years before the ban came to a vote. She patiently explained to him over dinner that hunting was an activity not only for the upper class but for regular people as well. Some of the riders, she said, were far from well-off and rented their horses from livery stables. She naturally assumed that Blair knew about these facilities, which were a staple of rural areas, but he had never heard of them.

Her briefing helped him understand the economic as well as social significance of hunting for rural communities, and he later admitted that the ban was “one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret.” He claimed he could do nothing to stop the momentum toward eventual passage of the Hunting Act of 2004. In fact, he “allowed a compromise proposal to be overruled by his own party,” wrote Charles Moore in The Spectator, permitting a bill “to be invoked … to force through a total ban.” As a practical matter, fox hunting with hounds continued as clever huntsmen found various loopholes, and the anticipated widespread arrests never happened. Still, all members of the royal family had to stop fox hunting since it had become technically illegal.

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ON SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2005, the Prince of Wales finally married the love of his life, Camilla Parker Bowles, thirty-four years after they first met, and nearly two decades after they resumed their romance in the mid-1980s. He was fifty-six and she fifty-seven.

Camilla and her first husband had divorced in 1995, and she had been gradually brought into the fold in the years since Diana’s death. Her appearance at the two Golden Jubilee concerts in the Buckingham Palace gardens was the first time she had been seen in public with the Queen and the rest of the royal family. Although Camilla’s love affair with Charles had aggravated his problems with Diana, the Queen recognized her good qualities—salty humor, resilience, warmth, common sense, and above all devotion to Charles. Camilla enjoyed the field sports so important to the royal family, and she embraced all their traditions. Through years of vilification, Camilla maintained a discreet silence, which also impressed the Queen. “Camilla never whines,” said one of her longtime friends. “She takes things as they come and tries to turn them into something humorous.” When the tabloids were stirring up trouble in the weeks before the wedding, Camilla joked, “It’s just two old people getting hitched.”

Under liberalized Church of England guidelines, the two divorcés could have been married in a religious ceremony, but church leaders agreed that given the couple’s well-known adultery, such a service would have offended too many priests and parishioners. Instead, they exchanged their vows at the Windsor Guildhall.

As Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Queen decided it would be inappropriate to attend the civil service at the Guildhall, which was witnessed by twenty-eight family members. “Her decision assuredly had nothing to do with her private feelings but everything to do with her public role,” wrote Jonathan Dimbleby at the time. “Much as they might have wished otherwise, her advisers knew that they had no chance of persuading her otherwise—however un-motherly or even out of date it may have made her appear.” The Queen and Philip did attend the “Service of Prayer and Dedication” afterward at St. George’s Chapel.

The congregation of 720 guests that filled St. George’s Chapel included the Blairs and other political leaders as well as representatives from royal houses in Europe and the Middle East, numerous titled aristocrats, and television and film stars such as Kenneth Branagh and Prunella Scales. The traditional service conducted by Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which Charles preferred to the more modern version. In contrast to the elaborate naval commander’s uniform he wore in Westminster Abbey a quarter century earlier, Charles was dressed in a morning suit, and Camilla chose an elegant floor-length pale blue silk coat dress with gold embroidery. When they emerged from the West Door of the chapel, they declined to kiss before two thousand well-wishers who had been admitted by ticket to the castle grounds, although Charles and Camilla, now known as the Duchess of Cornwall, did a five-minute walkabout, shaking hands and accepting congratulations.

Everyone was in high spirits at the reception hosted by the prince’s mother in the state apartments at the castle. “I have two very important announcements to make,” said the Queen. “I know you will want to know who was the winner of the Grand National. It was Hedgehunter.” After the applause died down, she turned to Charles and Camilla, and said, “Having cleared Becher’s Brook and the Chair [the most dangerous and highest fences on the steeplechase course] the happy couple are now in the winners’ enclosure.” “There was a huge roar of approval, very un-monarchical,” wrote veteran broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, who was thrilled to be among “the great gangs of England” celebrating the marriage. Charles paid tribute to “my darling Camilla,” thanking her for “taking on the task of being married to me.” When Joan Rivers, a friend of the couple, was introduced to the Queen, the comedian said, “I’m going on Larry King tonight, and I’m going to tell him how beautiful your pin is.” “Thank you,” replied the slightly puzzled Queen.

As the newlyweds left the castle for their honeymoon at Birkhall, they paused at the sovereign’s entrance where Camilla and the Queen kissed goodbye, the first time they had done so publicly. Princes William and Harry kissed their new stepmother as well before she climbed into the waiting car with “Prince” and “Duchess” scrawled across its windshield.

WILLIAM GRADUATED FROM St. Andrews University in Scotland the following June. His younger brother, Harry, had already embarked on a career in the military, and William wanted to do the same. But first he worked on his father’s farm in Gloucestershire and at Chatsworth, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, to gain experience in estate management. He spent three weeks visiting financial institutions including the Bank of England, the London Stock Exchange, and Lloyd’s of London, which gave him “a better understanding of how all the different financial institutions work and how they fit together.” By January 2006 he was enrolled at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where Harry was completing his training.

At twenty-two, William was already showing he knew how to meet royal expectations with a determination, not unlike his mother’s, to do things in his own way. When he sensed he was being “pushed,” he could be “quite stubborn,” yet he said he remained “open for people saying I’m wrong because most of the time I am.” He had learned to live in the glare of publicity, though he found being in the spotlight “kind of awkward.” At the same time, he emphasized that he valued “the normality I can get, doing simple things, doing normal things, more than anything, rather than getting things done for me.” He even liked to do his own shopping, paying with his credit card because “I’m not organized enough to have cash.”

The Queen and Prince Philip were a visible and important force in the lives of their grandchildren, who now numbered seven with the addition of Edward and Sophie’s first child, Louise, in November 2003. Elizabeth II paid particular attention to William as second in line to the throne. During his student days at Eton, he had often come to tea with his grandmother at Windsor Castle, and he had observed her from the time he was a little boy.

In a November 2004 interview he said he was “very close” to both his grandparents. The Queen had been “brilliant. She’s a real role model,” he said. “She’s just very helpful on any sort of difficulties or problems I might be having. But I’m quite a private person as well, so I don’t really talk that much about what I sort of feel or think.” His grandfather “makes me laugh. He’s very funny. He’s also someone who will tell me something that maybe I don’t want to hear, but still tell me anyway and he won’t care if I get upset about it. He knows it’s the right thing to say, and I’m glad he tells me because the last thing I want is lots of people telling me what I want to hear.” William flashed his own self-deprecating wit when asked if he ever had to wear a disguise like a wig. “That’s a different issue actually,” said the prematurely balding prince. “But no, I haven’t.”

ON THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2005, Islamist terrorists detonated bombs on London’s subways and buses, killing fifty-two people and injuring seven hundred others. That day the Queen ordered the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace lowered to half-staff. The next day she made the rounds of hospitals to console the injured, and she visited the wreckage of one of the bombings. Epitomizing the “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude of Londoners during the Blitz and years of terror attacks by the IRA, she said, “I want to express my admiration for the people of our capital city, who in the aftermath of yesterday’s bombings are calmly determined to resume their normal lives.” Looking up for emphasis, she added, with a trace of steel in her voice “That is the answer to this outrage.”

A week after the bombings, a moment of silence was observed throughout Europe to honor the dead. The Queen assembled the royal family in the Palace forecourt as Big Ben chimed to 12 and everything came to a standstill. “There in one of the archways stood the Queen,” said a courtier, “with her handbag, for two minutes, all alone, symbolizing unity and stability.”

That October, Margaret Thatcher celebrated her eightieth birthday with a reception at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Hyde Park. Unlike her royal contemporary, the erstwhile Iron Lady had slowed considerably, her mind impaired by several strokes. But she was visibly excited that the Queen was coming to the party. “Is it all right if I touch her?” asked Thatcher as Elizabeth II was approaching. She extended her hand, which the Queen held steady as her former prime minister curtseyed, although not as low as before. The Queen then tenderly guided Thatcher through the crowd of 650 guests. “That was unusual for the British, who know you are not supposed to touch the Queen,” said Charles Powell. “But they were hand in hand, and the Queen led her around the room.”

By the time Elizabeth II reached her own eightieth birthday six months later, she and her children had reached a welcome state of equipoise. Charles did a televised tribute to his “darling mama” and hosted a formal dinner for twenty-five family members at Kew Palace with the Queen seated between himself and William. The heir to the throne was happily settled with Camilla, dedicating himself to his hundreds of charities and causes, Andrew had been working for five years as Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment, Anne and her husband assiduously went about their duties, and Edward and Sophie had left the private sector to work full-time for the “Firm.” On Edward’s marriage in 1999, the Queen had announced that he would become Duke of Edinburgh when his father died. Although Philip at age eighty-five continued to keep a heavy schedule of engagements, his youngest son was now sharing a number of commitments including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme for young people who had met high standards for physical stamina and community service.

On serious issues, Elizabeth II remained vigilant about avoiding public comment unless advised by government officials, and her advisers were continually on guard to shield her political views. But on duty in private settings, she occasionally let her commonsense opinions slip out. Her friend Will Farish had been unhappy as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s and had resigned in the summer of 2004. When his successor, Robert H. Tuttle, was presenting his credentials to the Queen the following year, the American embassy was embroiled in a controversy with Ken Livingstone, the left-wing mayor of London, who had imposed a “congestion charge” on vehicles entering the city, ostensibly to reduce traffic. Officials at the embassy had decided not to pay the charge, contending that it was a form of taxation from which Americans were exempt.

After the credentials ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the Queen said to Tuttle, “I understand you think the congestion charge is a tax.” “Yes, ma’am,” replied Tuttle. “Well, it is a tax,” she said. “I looked at Michael Jay, who was the head of the diplomatic corps,” recalled Tuttle, “and he sort of blanched.”

The Queen seemed to take pleasure in being less formal, and less inclined to stand on ceremony. On her fifteenth visit to Australia, in March 2006, she attended the Commonwealth Games, which she liked to call the “Friendly Games.” In that spirit, she joined the competitors in their canteen for lunch, and happily posed with one woman athlete who put her arm around the Queen’s back. Nor did Elizabeth II flinch when Eddie Daniel, a twenty-year-old boxer from the Cook Islands, slid into a seat next to her and enthusiastically kissed her on the cheek. She “just smiled back” at what he called his mark of respect. “She is so cool, man,” he added.

On the first day of Royal Ascot that June, the Queen opened a completely rebuilt racecourse and grandstand. The complex had been demolished two years earlier (with Royal Ascot in the intervening year held at York Racecourse), and both Elizabeth II and Philip had been intensely involved in the plans and £200 million redevelopment of the site, which is leased from the Crown Estate. Peregrine Cavendish, the 12th Duke of Devonshire (known as Stoker to his friends), whom the Queen appointed as her representative at Ascot, oversaw the project and consulted with the royal couple from the inception of the plans in 1996. “Prince Philip has experience with all sorts of building projects,” explained Devonshire, “so he looked at it from a practical use angle, while she looked from a racing angle.”

The Queen’s interest was far-reaching and at times surprisingly detailed—from the particulars of the turf to the construction of the smaller but no less well-appointed royal box: two curved rows of four comfortable armchairs, television monitors below showing four different angles of the course, an area in the rear of the box where the other guests could stand to watch the race, and a tearoom with round tables behind. “She was most interested in the actual racing surface,” said Stoker Devonshire, “and in how it would affect the horses.” They grew special grass on seventy acres in Lincolnshire, harvested it at the right time, and returfed the track.

The new stand was a soaring structure with a light-filled galleria behind the boxes and general admission seats. Numerous old-timers complained about its sleek modernity and said its escalators reminded them of an airline terminal. They also objected to diminished sight lines for some racegoers, a less picturesque paddock, the quality of the food, and the general difficulty getting around.

The Ascot management spent an additional £10 million to improve the viewing at the lower levels, and the Queen brought in her cousin Lady Elizabeth Anson, a veteran party planner, to enhance the look and feel of the hospitality tents in the Royal Enclosure, and to improve the menus.

TO MARK HER eightieth year, the Queen permitted two anodyne documentaries devoted to her life and work, neither of which presented the personal glimpses she had allowed nearly four decades earlier in Royal Family. She also participated in a somewhat contrived film about a new portrait of her being painted by seventy-five-year-old Rolf Harris, an Australian-born television entertainer and artist. When the BBC proposed the project, the Palace took only two days to say yes—further evidence of the Queen’s willingness to be seen by the public in less traditional ways.

All efforts by her advisers to shape the Queen’s image paled beside the impact of The Queen when it appeared in theaters in the autumn of 2006 to popular and critical acclaim. The director, Stephen Frears, said, “We made the Queen a Hollywood star”—not a notion she would savor. But the film did serve to define her anew and, odd as it seems, merged the real Queen in the public imagination with Helen Mirren, a lifelong republican whose newfound admiration for Elizabeth II made her into a “Queenist.” Although much of the dialogue and many of the scenes were pure invention by screenwriter Peter Morgan (Prince Philip may have called his wife “Sausage,” but never “Cabbage”), the film was thoroughly researched and grounded in reality.

Its appeal lay in imagining moments that contrasted the Queen’s exalted status with her appearance in curlers as her worst nightmare unfolded after Diana’s death, in balancing her shortcomings with an essential goodness, and in satisfying the public’s need for her to reflect their own anxieties, doubts, and sadness. “What is brilliant is that the film has a mythical quality,” said Frances Campbell-Preston, lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother for thirty-seven years. Although the words were “not necessarily the Queen’s words,” she said, “there is a truth.”

“I gather there’s a film,” Elizabeth II said to Tony Blair in an audience just after the movie opened. “I’d just like you to know that I’m not going to watch it. Are you?” “No, of course not,” said Blair. One of her relatives gave her a full rundown on the telephone as the Queen listened silently. When told the film was good for the monarchy, she asked why. “Because it showed why you didn’t come down to London, that you were being a grandmother as opposed to temporarily not being queen,” said her relative, who added that she shouldn’t see it because it would be “a reminder of a really ghastly week” and that “to see herself portrayed by someone would be irritating.”

One of Elizabeth II’s friends gently ribbed her by sending a cartoon titled “The Queen” from The Spectator magazine. It showed the interior of a movie theater with someone’s view of the screen being obstructed by a person wearing a crown. The Queen was tickled by the cartoon, but she told her friend she was holding to the agreement she had with Blair—stubbornness perhaps, but also a sign of her lack of self-absorption. When the film came up in a conversation with Monty Roberts, she asked him not to see it, even when he told her he heard it was flattering. “I suppose it depends on your point of view,” the Queen said. “I think she preferred me to know her the way I know her,” he recalled.

Nearly everyone else who knew the Queen did go, and they almost unanimously felt that the portrayal “rang true,” as Nancy Reagan said—from the way it captured aspects of her character and personality to her sturdy walk and the way she put on her spectacles. But they also observed that because of the tragic circumstances of the film, Mirren’s Elizabeth II was more like her restrained public image than her relaxed and jolly private self. Most agreed that the depiction of Philip was unduly harsh, and that both the Queen Mother and Robin Janvrin had been mischaracterized. But even Elizabeth II understood the phenomenon created by the film, according to her friends. Palace officials were delighted when the movie spawned articles in fashion magazines about “Balmoral chic” as sales of Barbour waxed jackets surged.

“You know, for fifty years and more Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle,” said Helen Mirren to appreciative laughter after winning the Oscar for best actress in February 2007. “She’s had her feet planted firmly on the ground, her hat on her head, her handbag on her arm, and she’s weathered many many storms, and I salute her courage and her consistency.” Holding the Oscar aloft, she concluded, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ‘The Queen!’ ”