The Queen

a royal celebration of the life and family of Queen Elizabeth II, on her 90th birthday

A. N. Wilson

• Verlag: Atlantic Books
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786490698
• Thema: History
• Thema: British History

Biographer and novelist A. N. Wilson, whose most recent work on the life of Queen Victoria was an enormous critical and commercial success, turns his clear eye to our own Queen, Elizabeth II, as she turns 90.
In this unusual and vibrant examination of the life and times of Britain's most iconic living figure, Wilson considers the history of the monarchy, drawing a line that stretches from Queen Victoria to the bloody history of Europe in the twentieth century, examining how and why the Royal Family has survived. He paints a vivid portrait of 'Lilibet' the woman, and of her reign, throughout which she has remained stalwart, unmoving, a trait some regard as dullness, but which Wilson argues is the key to her survival. He outlines the case for a Republic, arguing that this will almost certainly happen at some point after her reign is at an end, at least in Australia. In part historical overview, but with a keen eye to the future, A. N. Wilson writes with his signature warmth, intelligence and humour, celebrating the life of the Queen and her role as figurehead of Britain and the Commonwealth, while asking candidly whether we can remain a constitutional monarchy.

1

IN PRAISE OF DULLNESS

‘I don’t fully understand her, but that’s part of her secret’

ROBERT RUNCIE¹

The great achievement of Elizabeth II’s grandfather, King George V, was to make the British monarchy dull. There had been some danger, during the short reign of his father, Edward VII, that things might get ‘interesting’. Not only had Edward the Caresser lived a shameless life, with mistresses galore, but he had also openly and independently indulged in European politics. The Entente Cordiale between his country and France was largely his creation, locking Great Britain into treaty obligations – about going to war in the event of another conflict between France and Britain’s natural allies and cousins the Germans – that had catastrophic consequences. His diplomatic trip to Paris in 1903 was the last visit abroad by a British sovereign undertaken without ministerial approval.²

George V was kept on a much tighter rein, both by his wife and by his Prime Ministers. He was also, luckily for the British Constitution’s sake, a much duller dog. His official biographer, Harold Nicolson, exclaimed with self-pity in his diary, ‘for seventeen years in fact he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps’.³ Sophisticated people found plenty to mock about George V. He was small, and peppery. At the opening of the Tate Gallery extension, he stood before the French Impressionists and called out to the Queen, ‘Here’s something to make you laugh, May.’ In the National Gallery, he had shaken his stick at a Cézanne.⁴ At his Silver Jubilee in 1935, he and Queen Mary went to St Paul’s Cathedral, where, of course, there was a large gathering of clergy. ‘A wonderful service,’ the King said afterwards to the Dean. ‘The Queen and I are most grateful. Just one thing wrong with it – too many parsons getting in the way.’⁵

Yet, the enormous crowds who filled the streets of London to see their King Emperor on that day moved him, and – for he was a modest man – surprised him. That night, broadcasting to the nation via the relatively new-fangled invention of the wireless, he said, in his strange, cocknified voice, ‘I can only say to you, my very dear people, that the Queen and I thank you from the depth of our hearts for all the loyalty and – may I say – the love, with which this day and always you have surrounded us.’⁶

It was all the more moving, because this socially awkward sailor-king was not one to wear his heart on his sleeve. For twenty-five years, he had done his duty, gone through the motions of office. He and Queen Mary were, quite simply, adored by the British people, and by the people of the British Empire. His grand-daughter, who became Queen Elizabeth II, used to call him ‘Grandfather England’. It was an appropriate nickname. He was an embodiment, and that is what a successful constitutional monarch can be. It is not yet possible to know how closely Elizabeth II has been involved with the political crises of her reign. For instance, what did she have to say to Tony Blair about the banishment of most hereditary peers from the House of Lords, and the failure of his Government to find a satisfactory way of selecting members of a Second Chamber. We know that George V was, willy nilly, involved in the Constitutional Crisis of 1909–11 – basically caused by the conflict between the strong Liberal Commons and the largely Conservative and Unionist Lords, who clashed over both Ireland and the Budget. The threat to create 500 Liberal peers to outvote the Tories in the Lords was one that George V rejected, but he was forced to accept the Parliament Bill, 1910, which made it impossible thereafter for the Lords to overturn fiscal decisions made by the Commons. (There had been cries of ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Who Killed the King?’ when the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith next appeared in the House of Commons.)⁷

In December 1910, Asquith sent a memo to George V that set out in no uncertain terms that the era of monarchical power was definitely over:

The part to be played by the Crown… has happily been settled by the accumulated traditions and the unbroken practice of more than seventy years. It is to act upon the advice of Ministers who for the time being possess the confidence of the House of Commons, whether that advice does or does not conform to the private and personal judgement of the sovereign. Ministers will always pay the utmost deference, and give the most serious consideration, to any criticism or objection that the Monarch may offer to their policy; but the ultimate decision rests with them; for they, and not the Crown, are responsible to Parliament.⁸

At the other end of George V’s reign when, the Liberal Party in tatters, the first Labour Government had been voted in, George, one of the most natural Tories imaginable, had been obliged to oversee the crisis caused by the financial collapse of 1934, and the choice facing the Labour Party – of voting to cut unemployment benefit or going bankrupt. The other parties expressed their willingness to serve in a National Government under Ramsay MacDonald, and this was the option favoured by King George. It destroyed MacDonald in the eyes of his party, and confirmed many Labour supporters in their republican instincts.

All this was to show that a constitutional monarch is not just a ceremonial figurehead. Though George V had no executive power, he did have a role, and it was one that history showed to have been that of a broker between differing political sects. He, for example, had chosen Baldwin as Conservative Prime Minister rather than Curzon, in 1923. He knew, however, that he must tread gently. Indeed, George V’s obsession with the Russian Revolution was undying, and one of his great dreads, when there was a Labour Government in power, was that ‘they’, his Socialist ministers, would ‘make’ him shake hands with those who had murdered his relatives, that is, the new Soviet diplomats in London.

George V, who so terrified his sons, was also their political role model. It was the model which his son David – Edward VIII – was unable to follow, but the example of George V and Queen Mary was the tried and trusted role model for George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, when their moments came.

From early childhood, Elizabeth – ‘Lilibet’ as she was known to her parents – had a close rapport with old King George V. Whereas others were terrified of the King’s bad temper, she spoke to him with Cordelia-like directness. When he did a little drawing to amuse her, she responded, ‘You really are not at all a bad drawer.’⁹ When he fell ill, the doctors recommended her presence to heal him, and she was sent to Bognor Regis, where the King had a villa, to play on the sands, while he sat in a deck-chair on the seashore watching her. ‘It was wonderful to see them together,’ her governess recalled, ‘the bearded old man and the polite little girl holding on to one of his fingers.’¹⁰

The decade of her birth was not a happy time to be a monarch. Just eight years before Elizabeth II was born, on 21 April 1926, her cousin the Emperor of Russia, his wife and his five teenage children, two servants and the family doctor were taken to a cellar in Ekaterinburg by Bolshevik revolutionaries, and done to death with revolvers and bayonets. In the same year, her cousin the German Emperor, Wilhelm II – in whose loving arms his grandmother Queen Victoria had died on the Isle of Wight in 1901 – abdicated the German throne, and went into exile in The Netherlands, where he lived until his death in 1941. There had been loud cries in Britain to have him hanged as a war criminal. In the same year as Wilhelm’s A...