The Queen has recognised services to her mother
The Queen has issued a special Honours List to
mark her mother's 100th birthday.
Nine people are honoured, including five who
helped stage the Queen Mother's centenary
pageant on London's Horse Guards parade
ground last month.
Major Michael Parker, the pageant's producer,
is knighted along with Major General Evelyn
Webb-Carter, chairman of the pageant
committee.
The two men become Knight Commanders of
the prestigious Royal Victorian Order, an
honour in the Queen's personal gift.
Miss Fiona Fletcher,
secretary to the Queen
Mother's ladies in
waiting, receives a
CVO, becoming a
Commander of the
Victorian Order.
Also made CVOs are
Ian Gill, registrar and
seneschal of the
Cinque Ports, Kent, of
which the Queen
Mother is Lord Warden,
and Captain Ashe Windham, chairman of the
Castle Mey Trust, set up to administer the
Queen Mother's Scottish home.
Equerry honoured
Colonel William Toby Browne receives an LVO
(Lieutenant of the Victorian Order) for his work
as organiser and parade commander of the
Queen Mother's centenary pageant.
The Queen Mother's equerry, Captain William
de Rouet of the Irish Guards, gets an MVO
(Member of the Victorian Order) as does
Coldstream Guards Warrant Officer Alan Mason,
who was the pageant's parade sergeant major.
Major Parker's assistant as producer of the
pageant, Mrs Emma Bagwell Purefoy, receives
an RVM (Silver), a Royal Victorian Medal.
Major Parker also masterminded the Queen
Mother's 90th birthday pageant on Horse
Guards, the VE and VJ Day 50th anniversary
commemorations in London five years ago, and
the Royal Tournament and other military
tattoos.
~*~
Royal diehards soak up birthday spirit(BBC News)
By BBC News Online's Dominic Bailey
Tarpaulins, brollies and sleeping bags were
hurriedly erected to keep flags and banners dry
as the skies opened outside Buckingham
Palace.
But rain-soaked well-wishers on the Victoria
memorial showed the resilience and spirit they
believe is embodied by the woman they are
waiting to wish Happy Birthday to - the Queen
Mother.
Tourists hurrying back
to dry hotels after
watching the Changing
of the Guard vowed to
return in their
thousands for the
official celebrations on
Friday.
For the die-hard fans,
the party starts with
another night under
canvas to ensure the
best view of the
nation's favourite grandmother.
Mad for it
Alvine Pearce, who has left her husband
running their snooker club business in
Gloucester, admits most people think she's mad
for camping out on Thursday.
But says she would not
miss the Queen
Mother's 100th birthday
for the world.
"She is a real Royal, she
always has a smile and
never lets anyone down," she said.
She first stumbled across the celebrating
crowds outside Clarence House in 1979 and
has been back ever since.
Her friend Elaine Gaffney, laden with flasks,
blankets, hooters and banners, is waiting to
sing Happy Birthday to a woman she respects.
"She always sticks to her principles," she said.
"I know she has had the best of everything but
the woman has guts and you can see it all
over her."
The matriarch
The ladies, decked out with Union Flags, were
not alone in their dedication and admiration.
Cheryl Bernstein, 39 has flown from Minnesota,
USA, to celebrate the Queen Mother's birthday
since 1984.
She met up with
familiar faces sheltering
from the rain waiting
for another Royal
occasion.
"We love her and
admire her," she said.
"She is the matriarch.
Over here you don't
appreciate what you
have."
Fellow Royal occasion veteran and retired
carpenter Terry Hutt, 65, from Waltham
Abbey, Essex, picked his spot for the
celebrations on Wednesday night.
"She was my Queen when I was a little boy
and I met her when I was five during the Blitz
on North London," he said.
"I have been coming here seven years, it's to
catch up on lost time.
"I always wanted to meet her and when I do
she says "thank you for coming," she is just a
nice person."
Generations celebrate
Sharing a step for the night but generations
apart, Barbara Kewell, 80, from Bury St
Edmunds, Suffolk, joined the family of Zoe
Maidment, three, who first celebrated the
Queen Mother's birthday 97th birthday as a
baby.
Mrs Kewell said she had
been coming to see the
Queen Mother's
birthday since 1983.
"I am 20 years younger
than the Queen Mum,
but I feel like I've really
grown up with her,"
she said.
"It's very reassuring.
Things in her life seem
to parallel mine."
But Royal memorabilia collector Greg Paxton,
44, from Middlesex, was the only one of the
fans to dare to mention the real reason why
this year is so special.
"She is a nice lady who has reached 100," he
said.
~*~
'Courage and wisdom; behind the smile
lies a character of steel'(Electronic Telegraph)
By W F Deedes
SHE is much loved and smarter than she looks. The legs are shaky, the eyes
are weak but they don't miss much and the mind is sharp as ever. Behind that
famous smile lies a racy disposition, a firm hand on the family helm, infinite
courage and a flair for extravagant living.
My favourite portrait of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother is drawn from the
scene at Buckingham Palace in May 1995, the VE-Day jubilee. She stepped
out on the balcony, central figure between her daughters the Queen and
Princess Margaret, a reminder to my generation of the star she had been
when the enemy was at the gate.
What an artiste, I thought; and so she is, at 100 years of age. On the stage
she would have wrung laughter and tears from her audiences; but mainly
laughter, for she is a bit of wag and a good mimic. Part of the act is looking
straight at you when she talks to you. She can make people feel, even in a
crowd, that she is speaking to them and them only.
There was another and more poignant thought to be drawn from the balcony
scene. It recalled the pain she suffered almost half a century ago when her
sick husband King George VI died in his sleep, leaving her a widow at 51
without a throne, without a role and without a home.
She set about creating a life of her own and she has stuck to it. The world has
changed a lot since then, but she has not. She clings to the routine of a past
era, quite regardless of expense. Clarence House is staffed as it might have
been during the reign of King Edward VII. She is, after all, an Edwardian.
Everything around her is of the best.
There is also Birkhall on the 50,000-acre Balmoral estate, which is more
bracing but no less well appointed. She owns a second home in Scotland, the
Castle of Mey, which she bought as a ruin, restored and made snug soon after
the King died and its isolation caught her mood. To keep Birkhall and Mey
going costs a packet, and the Queen sighs, but the Queen Mother would
probably say that Scotland, where she was born and spends the late summer
and early autumn, is her spiritual home.
It seems to be the rugged outdoor life that draws her still, the chilly mists, the
driving rain. Diana, Princess of Wales loathed the Scottish life and was glad to
escape from it. The Queen Mother cannot wait to get up there. She sees it
also as a retreat from the disciplines of royal life. There is wisdom in seeking a
place where you can be yourself for a while.
She hates to part from her personal staff. My old regimental mate, Lt Col
Martin Gilliat of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, joined her as private secretary
in 1956 and was coaxed into staying with the job until almost the final years of
his life. The affection is entirely mutual. The staff are fond of her and enjoy
indulging her little eccentricities.
When members of her family argued recently about GM crops, there
appeared a headline: "Royals should be seen and not heard". Therein lies part
of the Queen Mother's secret. She is rarely heard to speak, and so discloses
very little of herself. Her circle is not one in which she "is overheard to say
during a dinner party . . ." or in which "sources close to the Queen Mother say
. . ." So nobody knows what she really thinks.
But she is the source of some good stories. My favourite relates to her visit an
old people's home. "Do you know who I am?" she asked one of them
playfully. "If you don't know who you are dear," came the reply, "go to the
desk at the end of the corridor and they'll help you."
Towards the end of the Second World War, reading letters sent home by
soldiers (as we had to do in those days) it struck me that when the boys came
home many reunions would soon fail. I entered a plea through a third party for
Queen Elizabeth to make a sympathetic broadcast about this, warning families
of the difficulties ahead, urging patience. It didn't come off, because she didn't
then and doesn't now like holding forth. But I sometimes wish it had. She
would have made a good job of it, and in the post-war years the divorce rate
among ex-service families soared.
There is, of course, a drawback to guarding your privacy as successfully as
the Queen Mother does. It leaves critics free to tell tales about you which, for
want of any other evidence, people tend to believe. Well-loved as she is, and
though ardent republicans usually step carefully round her, the Queen Mother
has not been immune from sniping. When Buckingham Palace was bombed
during the war, for example, she was quoted as saying she was glad about it,
for she could now look east London in the face.
On which Penelope Mortimer, a hostile witness, observed: "The East End,
however, was not able to retreat to Windsor for the weekend to catch up on
sleep, or to spend recuperative holidays in Norfolk and Scotland. Nor was
the East End able to supplement its diet with pheasants and venison shot at
the royal estates."
In reality, the King and Queen lived in huge discomfort at Buckingham Palace
during the war. Rationing was observed. Eleanor Roosevelt, who stayed there
in the autumn of 1941, found no heating, one electric bulb in each room and
shallow bathwater.
There is light criticism of her enormous overdraft and her refusal to budge
from an Edwardian style of life. A more persistent cloud hangs over the
personal vendetta Queen Elizabeth is reputed to have conducted against the
Duchess of Windsor. It runs so contrary to the public vision of the Queen
Mother as a tender-hearted old thing.
As a reporter around the time of the abdication of Edward VIII, I have
always thought it would be unnatural if the then Duchess of York had not
heartily disliked and mistrusted the then Mrs Simpson. Bertie, the Duke of
York, was closer to David, as the Prince of Wales was known within the
family, than any other brother. Bertie and Elizabeth watched with anguish
David's infatuation with an American divorcee.
It was a hole in the corner business because the British press (mainly from
fear of defamation, but also with a sense of propriety that prevailed in those
years) said nothing about it. Most of the gossip came from imported
publications. So when the Bishop of Bradford unwittingly lit the touchpaper,
the short-lived crisis exploded over a largely unsuspecting public. As a
reporter, I was outside 145 Piccadilly, where the Yorks lived, to see their
departure for the Palace. They looked strained with anxiety. "I don't think we
could ever imagine a more incredible tragedy," the Queen wrote later, "and
the agony of it was beyond words."
What few of us knew at the time was how much the Duke of Windsor, after
his departure, preyed on his brother's peace of mind. We now know that
Windsor could never have rallied support for his return, but it was not like that
at the time. The King felt uneasy on the throne. Edward then plagued his
brother about money (after lying to him as to the extent of his own resources),
about granting the Duchess the rank of HRH, and when war came what job
he could do. Such was the pressure that at one point Queen Elizabeth feared
it would cause her husband a breakdown.
She has been described as the sworn enemy of the Duchess of Windsor. It is
nearer the mark to say that the King was driven almost batty by his brother
and Elizabeth was fiercely protective of her troubled husband. How could it
have been otherwise? Ill-feeling between the two women was mutual. Wallis
was contemptuous of Elizabeth: she and her husband referred to her as
Cookie, an intended slight on her ample figure and her domestic inclinations,
and called the young Princess Elizabeth "Shirley Temple".
I met Edward as the Prince of Wales a couple of times. We once entertained
him in Bethnal Green where my uncle, Wyndham Deedes, was engaged in
social work. On short acquaintance, he struck me as fretful. I see him now
pitching a half-finished cigar towards the fireplace of our sitting room - and
missing it. But then and later he had countless admirers, among them (up to
the war) Winston Churchill.
The waters ran deep. So deep that the King hoped Churchill would not be
made Prime Minister in 1940. He and Elizabeth saw him as one of the old
enemy. It was war that brought them together - war and the fact that Churchill
came to see for himself the flaws in Edward's character. There is a good study
to be made of how Churchill developed this thinking, how it communicated
itself to the King and Queen, and slowly bound the three of them closer
together.
As some have it, the Queen vetoed the title HRH for the Duchess of Windsor.
As history has it, the King took the decision, cordially supported by his wife.
In taking that decision, he had no precedent to guide him. Come to that, there
was no precedent for the title of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It was a
style she established for herself. Before the Duchess of Windsor died,
Elizabeth, while on an official visit to Paris, sought to make peace with her.
The Duchess was too unwell to receive her, but flowers were left with a card:
"In friendship. Elizabeth."
It is a plain statement of fact that the Queen played a heroic part in the war.
The King told his wife virtually everything of importance and valued her
opinions and advice. After wartime expeditions of her own, she would
sometimes return with insight and fresh guidance. Between them, they
travelled some 50,000 miles in this country alone. It was a close partnership,
which made the pain of losing him so relatively early so acute.
Given the life she has led, it would be strange if the Queen Mother had not
developed a strong will. She was a stronger character than her husband, who
at first badly lacked self-confidence. When King George VI died, Churchill
put on his wreath the VC's inscription "For valour." But the King was also a
man of many moods, which Elizabeth understood better than any of his staff
or his ministers.
We have forgotten how uncertain was the process of that war, and how many
heavy blows it delivered before it was won. The strain of it wore him down.
Without Elizabeth, it might have destroyed him. Some reckon that the visit
they made to Canada and America in the summer of 1939, and at the eve of
war, was the most important voyage of their lives. The tour was a triumph. It
altered the minds of some Americans who until then had inclined to side with
the Duchess of Windsor as one of their own, and who saw Edward VIII as
the rightful occupant of the throne.
The tour also had its bearing on American attitudes when war came. "It was,"
the President's roving ambassador Harry Hopkins later told Churchill, "the
astounding success of the King and Queen's visit to US which made America
give up its partisanship of the Windsors."
If that was providential, so was the way they found each other. From the day
Bertie first set eyes on Elizabeth at a London ball and fell in love with her,
almost two and a half years elapsed before she accepted him. At the first time
of asking, she turned him down. Not for her, she thought, the life of a servant
to the country.
Blessed with other admirers, she seemed at one point more likely to marry the
handsome James Stuart, a Scottish neighbour, MC and bar from the First
World War, an MP at 26, Churchill's wartime Chief Whip and a serious
philanderer. Bertie's luck seems to have turned on a false report in a London
newspaper that Elizabeth was really destined for the Prince of Wales. In the
flurry of embarrassment that caused, they went for a walk in the woods and
Bertie won acceptance.
Talking at schools, I sometimes find the young have a better understanding of
what the Queen Mother embodies by way of history than their elders. She
was our last Empress of India, the last Queen to reign over the British Empire.
A week before their coronation, Prime Minister Baldwin, appealing for peace
in the coalfields and making the last speech of his life to the Commons, spoke
of "our young King and Queen, who were called suddenly and unexpectedly
to the most tremendous position on Earth". So it was, in May 1937.
Naturally, to some eyes in these times, the Queen Mother's level of living
borders on the eccentric. She no longer has that talented snob Hartnell to
dress her extravagantly well; but he more than anyone else established the
regal style and her love of expensive clothes. In those days she never
bothered to discuss prices and she doesn't now. The lure of milliners and
hatters remains strong. Hence some of the overdraft.
The bank account joins other difficulties in life which the Queen Mother
simply shrugs off. She has been described as an "emotional ostrich". The
awkward things of life are gently pushed out of sight. The same applies to little
local difficulties within the family. She adores Charles, her favourite
grandchild, and if she had had her way he would have gone to Eton, not
Gordonstoun. But he won no support from her when he complained about
school life.
Some of the bruising caused by his ill-starred marriage to Diana must have
hurt her, mainly because she saw her as a threat to the stability of the Royal
Family. But a remark she is said to have made to the Queen on one occasion
- "different generation; let them get on with it . . ." - gives the flavour of her
philosophy towards the young mismatches. When it came to the Townsend
affair with her own daughter Margaret, she was described as "serenely
detached". There is no knowing how she really felt about it. Perhaps she owes
something of her longevity to this gift of shrugging off life's awkwardnesses.
No sensible person grudges the Queen Mother's style of life, her ample staff,
stable of horses in Norfolk and love of racing over half a century, her talent
with rod and line, her taste for a stiff gin and Dubonnet. One does wonder
though how far that formidable will has discouraged changes in the Royal
Family's way of doing things.
There has, after all, been a conscious endeavour by the Queen and her family
to adjust to the fact that we are no longer an imperial power; that she no
longer occupies "the most tremendous position on Earth". But we "mustn't
upset granny". And granny, in common with many grannies, likes things as
they were. If she strongly opposes an idea, the chances are she will get her
way. Prince Philip exercises caution in that direction.
A devout Christian, she does not take divorce as lightly as some. A divorced
acquaintance is liable to suffer banishment. Yet she is not a prude. In the old
days, she relished an after-the-show supper at the Savoy Grill with Noel
Coward, a discreet but notorious homosexual. She can thoroughly enjoy
herself in pretty raffish company.
Then again, there are times when we see the stoic in her. She has always
taken her physical mishaps lightly, and there have been quite a few. Yet, along
with the cold Scottish mists, she loves the pampered life. A woman of
attractive contradictions. Such a well-known figure to us all, and yet how little
we know of her. Behind the smile, steel.