Philip by Brandreth Gyles

Author:Brandreth, Gyles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2021-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

‘A King is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness’ sake. Just as if in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.’

John Selden (1584–1654), Table-Talk

‘When King George died,’ I asked Prince Philip, ‘did you know what to expect?’

‘No,’ he said, laughing a little bleakly. ‘There were plenty of people telling me what not to do. “You mustn’t interfere with this.” “Keep out.” I had to try to support the Queen as best I could without getting in the way. The difficulty was to find things that might be useful.’

‘But there was the example of Prince Albert, the Prince Consort,’ I suggested. ‘You’d read biographies …’

‘Oh, yes.’ An exasperated sigh. ‘The Prince Consort …’ A pause. ‘The Prince Consort’s position was quite different. Queen Victoria was an executive sovereign, following in a long line of executive sovereigns. The Prince Consort was effectively Victoria’s private secretary. But after Victoria the monarchy changed. It became an institution. I had to fit in with the institution. I had to avoid getting at cross purposes, usurping others’ authority.’

The institution had its own momentum and Philip had very little authority of his own. As darkness descended on that cold, dank February afternoon, the new Queen and her husband were driven from Heathrow to Clarence House, where they found the old King’s private secretary already waiting for them. Only, of course, Sir Alan Lascelles was not waiting for Philip. He was waiting for the Queen. He had a sheaf of state papers that he needed Her Majesty to sign. Within the hour, Queen Mary also came to call. She was eighty-four and frail, full of dignity and grief. The day before, her son, the King, had died. Today she had come, not to hug her granddaughter, but to curtsy to her new Queen. ‘Her old Grannie and subject must be the first to kiss her hand,’ she said. Elizabeth’s eyes pricked with tears as she accepted her grandmother’s obeisance. Martin Charteris told me, ‘For the young Queen, it was a moment that must have sorely tested her reserve and her resolve, but she loved her father and wanted to carry herself courageously as he would have done.’

Elizabeth said as much the following day, at St James’s Palace, where her Privy Councillors gathered for the formal meeting of the Accession Council – many of them, according to Hugh Dalton, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was there, ‘people one didn’t remember were still alive, and some looking quite perky and self-important’.77 The Queen, looking ‘very small’, according to Dalton, entered alone and read the Declaration of Sovereignty in a ‘high-pitched, rather reedy voice’. ‘She does her part well,’ said Dalton, ‘facing hundreds of old men in black clothes with long faces.’ Harold Wilson, another of the Privy Councillors and one of her future prime ministers, said it was ‘the most moving ceremonial I can recall’. When the Queen had read the formal Declaration, she added, ‘My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than that I shall always work as my father did.

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