The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor Read online

  PENNY JUNOR

  The Firm

  The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor

  For Lupus

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Introduction

  1 An Extraordinary Way to Live

  2 Keeping House

  3 Winds of Change

  4 188 Recommendations

  5 Communication

  6 Lessons Learnt

  7 Diana

  8 The Duty of an Heir

  9 Not Waving: Drowning

  10 Camilla and the Future

  11 From Bad to Worse

  12 What If?

  13 Mrs PB

  14 Lord Blackadder

  15 Battle of the Palaces

  16 Master of Spin

  17 Planes, Trains and Automobiles

  18 Beyond the Dreams of Avarice

  19 All the King’s Horses – The Private Queen

  20 The Sport of Kings

  21 Representing the Nation to Itself

  22 Coming to Grief

  23 Pomp and Ceremony

  24 Charity Begins at Home

  25 The Rough with the Smooth

  26 A Moment of Madness

  27 The Key to the Door

  28 Community Spirit

  29 A Thankless Task

  30 Changing the World

  31 Maundy Thursday and Fixtures in the Calendar

  32 Pressing the Flesh

  33 Crossing Continents

  34 Gongs and Garden Parties

  35 Voluntary Service

  36 Media Menace

  37 Temporary Stand-off

  38 Burrell

  39 Allegations and Denials

  40 Bear Traps

  41 In the Genes

  42 Conclusions

  43 The Way Ahead

  44 The Camilla Factor

  Plates

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  List of Illustrations

  The King, Queen and Princess on the balcony (Rex)

  Lady Diana Spencer in see-through skirt (Rex)

  The Royal Family on the balcony with Diana and young Princes at Trooping the Colour (Tim Graham)

  The Family on the balcony during the Golden Jubilee (Tim Graham)

  The Party at the Palace (Tim Graham)

  The Prince of Wales shooting with Michael Fawcett (Eddie Boldizsar/Rex)

  Paul Burrell carrying a corgi (Tim Graham)

  The Queen arriving in Saudi Arabia on Concorde (Tim Graham)

  The Queen and Prince Philip in the Gold State Coach (Tim Graham)

  Prince Philip in bearskin (Les Wilson/Rex)

  Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother with Irish Guards and wolfhound (Tim Graham)

  The Queen at the Windsor Horse Show (Les Wilson/Rex)

  The Kiss on the balcony (Tim Graham)

  Charles and Diana in Korea (Tim Graham)

  The Princess of Wales with children in her arms (Tim Graham)

  Princess Anne standing by a cot (Tim Graham)

  Diana crouching to talk to hospice patient (Tim Graham)

  Diana in surgical mask (Rex)

  Prince William with hand to mouth for 18th birthday (Rex)

  Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation (Rex)

  Queen Mother’s funeral (Tim Graham)

  Prince William over a hot stove (Rex)

  Prince William in school uniform with Union Jack waistcoat (Rex)

  Prince Edward with Sir Cliff Richard at It’s a Royal Knockout (Rex)

  Princes William and Harry playing polo on bicycles (Les Wilson/Rex)

  The Queen wrapped up against the weather with a labrador and spaniel (Greaves/Rex)

  The Queen with Princess Anne and Zara Philips, all on horseback (Tim Graham)

  A tearful Queen leaving the 9/11 memorial service (Tim Graham)

  The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles on the evening their engagement was announced (Rex)

  Prince Charles with Lady Diana Spencer after their engagement (Tim Graham)

  Prince Charles and Prince William on the 50th anniversary of VJ Day (Tim Graham)

  Prince Charles and Prince William with cows on the Home Farm (Les Wilson/Rex)

  Prince Harry being restrained outside a London nightclub (David Abiaw/Rex)

  The Princess of Wales during the Panorama interview (Rex)

  The Queen at the Derby – both glum and jubilant (Les Wilson/Rex)

  The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh meeting flag-waving children (Tim Graham)

  The Queen arriving at Bristol on the Royal Train (Tim Graham)

  Princes William and Harry sharing a joke on the balcony at Buckingham Palace (Les Wilson/Rex)

  Introduction

  Once upon a time kings and queens ruled the land. There was nothing mysterious about it; some of them invaded to take up the throne, others inherited via one route or another, but once installed they governed, they were the executive, they were all-powerful, they had their own armies and they chopped off the heads of anyone who thwarted them. People may not have liked their monarch, they may have grumbled about taxes or the extravagance of the court, or been tired of endless skirmishes with France, but no one was ever in any doubt about what their monarch was for.

  Twelve hundred years later, after many changes (and a brief period in the seventeenth century when there was no monarch at all), we have a Queen who has no executive power, who acts entirely on the advice of ministers, who reads speeches that others have written, and who relies upon government for her keep. Four years after she came to the throne, a poll suggested that 34 per cent of the population believed that Elizabeth II had been chosen by God. Today you’d be hard pushed to find anyone who believed that God was involved in the process – it’s becoming enough of a challenge to find people who believe in God, full stop. Under these circumstances, in an age when our social order is based upon merit rather than inheritance, it is not surprising that we should ask what monarchy is for. Most children haven’t a clue, wouldn’t recognize members of the Royal Family and probably couldn’t care less. Their local football team or the latest contestants in I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! are more relevant to their lives. There is indifference among the younger generation that must make the future of the monarchy highly questionable.

  Republicanism is nothing new. There has always been a minority chipping away at the credibility of the monarchy, and although they seem to be increasingly vocal, they are still very much in the minority. But today even monarchists are beginning to question whether the institution, steeped as it is in history and tradition, can survive in the current climate of indifference and disrespect towards institutions and authority. And perhaps more importantly, as the newest member, the controversial figure of Camilla Parker Bowles is finally welcomed into the fold, as HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, whether the Royal Family, as individuals, can survive the ever more intrusive and destructive demands of the modern media.

  The world has changed during the course of the present Queen’s reign, arguably more radically in the time span than at any period in history. Television was in its infancy when the Queen came to the throne in 1952. Many families, my own included, bought their first television set to watch the coronation – tiny little black and white sets that had to warm up before you saw a picture which then shrunk to a white dot when you turned them off. Fifty-two years later even the most modest mobile home has a colour television
with a satellite dish on the roof, and in most households people would sell their granny before parting with the TV. It sits in pride of place, chattering away every waking hour, and defines our view of the world. News rolls seamlessly into drama, fact into fiction and all that is remembered is the sound bite.

  And what television has created is the cult of the celebrity. People whose faces we recognize from the screen are the new idols, no matter whether they have talent, wit or wisdom. If their face has been on the box often enough for it to become familiar, they have instant status and national fame. And the public is greedy to know everything about its celebrities – which is where newspapers come into their own.

  Newspapers have also changed since the fifties. When the Queen first came to the throne the newspapers, reflecting the age, were deferential towards the monarch. Proprietors could be relied upon to keep any whiff of royal scandal out of the papers. There were two court correspondents employed by the Press Association who went to Buckingham Palace for briefings – dressed in morning dress and top hat – and meekly lapped up official notices and announcements.

  Today’s equivalent is a tabloid ‘rat pack’ charged by their editors with finding exclusives – gossip, scandal and as much personal detail as possible, and, in some cases, by whatever means possible. And the Royal Family is considered to be fair game, as the Countess of Wessex discovered to her cost when a reporter posing as a Middle Eastern sheik tried to employ her PR company. Actors, footballers, pop stars, politicians – many have suffered similar stings or found themselves unwillingly making headline news. And for a family that is dependent upon an army of staff to run their lives, it was only a matter of time before some of them became disgruntled or found irresistible the opportunity to make money by speaking to the press.

  This is the environment in which today’s monarchy has to operate. It needs the oxygen of publicity no less than actors, entertainers and politicians, or anyone else with something to sell. The Queen understands this only too well, from history as well as her own experience. Never has the monarchy been so unpopular in modern times as when Queen Victoria vanished from sight after Prince Albert’s death in 1861. In her grief, she hid herself away at Balmoral and, although she carried on the affairs of state perfectly well, she did not make a public appearance in London for three years. The people were furious and when they did finally catch sight of her they pelted her carriage with stones. It was apparently not enough that she saw to her constitutional duties. The present Queen stayed away from London after the death of the Princess of Wales – she was also at Balmoral – and the public was again furious. They wanted to see their Queen. The newspaper headlines during the week before the funeral were the most critical of her reign and it was not until she returned to London and spoke to the nation on television, both as a grandmother and as Head of State, that the crisis, possibly the most serious of her reign, was averted.

  The question is why? Why did so many thousands of people flock to Buckingham Palace in their grief rather than to Kensington Palace, which was where Diana had lived after all? Why did the nation want to see the Queen so badly? Strictly speaking, at the time of her death Diana was no longer a member of the Royal Family, and anyway, ought it not to have been her former husband to whom they should have looked?

  The reason, I suspect, goes to the very heart of what monarchy is all about. It goes far beyond the constitutional. The Queen provides the focus for the nation’s emotion. When the nation is in mourning, it looks to the monarch to lead the process. In every major disaster, from Aberfan in 1966, where schoolchildren were buried beneath tons of coal slag, to 9/11, in 2001, when al-Qaeda suicide bombers flew passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, or the Asian tsunami that killed over 120,000 people on Boxing Day in 2004 and left millions homeless, the Queen or another close member of the Royal Family has been there to express the nation’s grief. When the nation is jubilant at having won the World Cup or gold medals at the Olympics, the Queen congratulates and honours the winning teams on our behalf. When the East End of London and other cities were bombed during the Second World War the Queen’s parents, George VI and Queen Elizabeth, went to visit the devastation and much of the warmth that attached to the Queen Mother throughout her life came as a result of the solidarity and concern she and the King showed to the people of London.

  The magic of monarchy is in the seeing. And it is magic – despite what cynics might say. Many of the people who work for the Queen and accompany her on away days and foreign tours describe their jobs as being the ‘Feel-Good Business’. And there is no doubt that people do feel good when they meet her. It doesn’t seem to matter that the papers have been filled with tawdry details of her children’s domestic disasters – the day she comes to town they stand for hours in all weathers clutching Union Jacks. They cheer when her gleaming Bentley with its royal flag on the roof appears with its police motorcycle outriders down the car-free high street. They cheer again when she steps out, smiling and waving; they reach forward at perilous angles to offer flowers and posies, proffer their children, and click frantically at their pocket Pentaxes when she comes within range. Everyone is smiling, everyone is elated and everyone takes away with them a memory to treasure for the rest of their lives. And for those who strike lucky and are the ones the Queen stops and talks to, they will probably never have an experience to match it.

  Of course, the people who want to see the Queen on these visits already like her and probably approve of the institution. If they didn’t they wouldn’t bother standing and waiting in all weathers. But there are other occasions on which the Queen meets people when that is not the case. Not every worker in a factory, hospital or school is a monarchist; not everyone who is invited to a garden party or a reception at Buckingham Palace is a devoted fan, but there are not many who fail to be impressed when they meet the Queen, or who are indifferent to the recognition of their work and worth that such a meeting implies.

  Recognizing, thanking, praising and rewarding citizens for their bravery, dedication, charity or work is another part of the monarch’s job. At one end of the scale outstanding service is rewarded to an individual with a peerage or a knighthood – although most of that is on the Prime Minister’s say-so and overtly political – but at the other end a visit to a factory is no less significant, and for the people on the production line to be asked to explain what they do by the Queen or the Prince of Wales, her heir, or even another member of the Royal Family, is a real fillip. It’s like as a schoolchild being singled out for praise by the headmistress when you didn’t even think she knew your name. People feel that their effort has been noticed and is appreciated, and in the lower-paid jobs that tend to be vocational, such as nursing or care work, that matters.

  During the nineteenth century the family became an important part of monarchy, as Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880, acknowledged: ‘The influence of the Crown is not confined merely to political affairs. England is a domestic country. Here the home is revered and the hearth sacred. The nation is represented by a family – the Royal Family; and if that family is educated with a sense of responsibility and a sentiment of public duty, it is difficult to exaggerate the salutary influence they may exercise over a nation.’

  Walter Bagehot was the first to note this. A Victorian economist and political analyst, Bagehot is often quoted from his book The English Constitution, first published in 1867 and which still provides the most enduring analysis of monarchy to date. ‘A family on the throne is an interesting idea,’ he wrote. ‘It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales. They treated as a great political event, what, looked at as a matter of pure business, was very small indeed. But no feeling could be more like common human nature as it is, and as it is likely to be.’

  The Prince of Wales he was referring to was the future Ed
ward VII and the marriage that of Edward to the Danish Princess Alexandra in 1863, but he could just as easily have been writing about the first marriage of the present Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, 112 years later. There was a great display of childish enthusiasm for the event: the newspapers talked about little else for weeks beforehand, London’s Oxford Street hosted the biggest street party in the world in the couple’s honour, there was a massive fireworks display in Hyde Park and celebratory beacons were lit up and down the country. On the day of the wedding – declared a public holiday – millions lined the route between Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral; the first arrivals had staked their claim to a piece of pavement three days before the wedding and an estimated seven hundred million more watched it on television. The Royal Wedding, as it was referred to for many years, notwithstanding the fact it had not been the only one, was a major landmark in most people’s memories, and until the cracks began to show it was an event that reaffirmed the monarchy’s place in people’s hearts.

  Those were halcyon days. For the first thirty-five years of the Queen’s reign the Royal Family had been everything the nation could have wished for, a model for us all. But since then three of her four children have been through a divorce, with all the tawdry details paraded by the press, and the influence they exercise over the nation today is perhaps less than salutary. The troubled private life of the Prince of Wales, who finally, in February 2005, announced his intention to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, has made international news on and off for nearly twenty years. The breakdown of his marriage to Diana – according to her because of his obsession with Camilla – her revelations about their life together, his admission of adultery on prime-time television, their divorce and her subsequent death, split the nation’s loyalty. Some people recognized it to be an ill-starred match from the start and felt nothing but sympathy for everyone involved. Others, for whom Diana was an icon, roundly blamed the Prince, as Diana had done, for having destroyed her happiness. And the question of whether he should marry Camilla Parker Bowles, the figure at the centre of it, caused even greater division in the country.