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63 About this deal
The Queen, happiest when at Windsor or her private residences of Sandringham and Balmoral, was not wedded to a life of luxury. In 1936, however, the weight of responsibility suddenly intruded on this blissful period, as a sequence of events brought her to the very steps of the throne. King George V died in January, and in December there was the abdication of her then favourite uncle David, King Edward VIII, and the accession of her father as King George VI. Princess Elizabeth was now Heir Presumptive. Only the birth of a son to her 36-year-old mother, the Queen, could deprive the child of her ultimate destiny. Crawfie later wrote that when the Princess was told of her new status, she declared: “I will be good.” Those were, as it happened, the precise words used by the future Queen Victoria when, at the same age as Elizabeth, she was shown a chart of the line of succession. Who shall deny a governess her tender memory? Co-operation between the households barely existed. Only by chance in 1985 did the Queen discover that her son, about to pay a visit to the Vatican, proposed to attend the Pope’s domestic Mass in his private chapel (though not to take Communion). The Supreme Governor of the Church of England thought this gesture of ecumenism untimely. Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was born in 1921 at the royal summer house of Mon Repos, Corfu, the only son of Prince Andrew of Greece, a brother of King Constantine I. His mother was Princess Alice of Battenberg, whose brother Lord Louis Mountbatten had since 1917 borne the anglicised version of the family name.
Yet the only alternative for the Queen would have been to descend into the political arena as a partisan; to weigh Butler’s experience against his irresolution, Hailsham’s intellect against his volatile temperament, Home’s antipathy to economics against his skill as a diplomatist. The Queen visits the set of popular soap opera Coronation Street, May 1982 CREDIT: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty ImagesMeanwhile the Queen paced herself to take part, so far as she was able, in the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Some of her older subjects wondered whether the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, who worshipped each Sunday wherever she happened to be, could not have instilled in her restless brood a stronger commitment to their marriage vows. Others, more worldly-wise, accepted that a national failure of one in three marriages could not reasonably exclude even the most privileged family in the kingdom.
Nearly a hundred years earlier, the young Queen Victoria had emerged less well from just such an encounter. She wrote in her diary: “Lord M. told me that he heard it had been remarked that I didn’t bow to the Officer when the Escort changed; I thanked Lord Melbourne for telling me so, and I said I would take care and do so.” Significant events included Elizabeth's coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver, Golden, Diamond, and Platinum jubilees in 1977, 2002, 2012, and 2022, respectively. Although she faced occasional republican sentiment and media criticism of her family—particularly after the breakdowns of her children's marriages, her annus horribilis in 1992, and the death in 1997 of her former daughter-in-law Diana—support for the monarchy in the United Kingdom remained consistently high throughout her lifetime, as did her personal popularity. Elizabeth died aged 96 at Balmoral Castle in September 2022, and was succeeded by her eldest son, CharlesIII.
But the statement sounded defensive and the government’s expression of gratitude lukewarm. A deplorable failure of public relations led even monarchists to accept that the Queen’s financial sacrifice was a gesture of appeasement to the press. Nor did the Conservative government adequately thank the Queen when she ensured that Windsor Castle be restored to its former glory at no additional cost to the taxpayer.
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