Yours, E.R.
For many years, Her Majesty the Queen has received a weekly report on the news and issues of the day, known at the Palace as 'The Current Affairs Briefing Document', from one of her senior private secretaries. She has replied to them in letters which have expressed her private thoughts, and occasionally questions, about what is happening in the world outside. WIN a copy of the book here!
Now author Terence Blacker affectionately imagines her responses to the events of the past 18 months, from the Olympics to the announcement and arrival of the Royal Baby...
Dear Sir Jeremy
What a joy it was to read your Bulletin at the end of a somewhat strenuous week. Of course, one knew that having the Olympics in London (‘hosting’, as they now like to say) was going to be demanding, but what was surprising was how cheerful it all was.
It does make me laugh to see how even the professional grumps in the press have been forced to join the national good mood. They must be bursting to tell some Britishhopelessness story or a ghastly-foreigners story but they simply daren’t be out of step with their readers.
One of the children’s nannies used to tell them not to make faces because if the wind changed their faces would stay like that. Perhaps the wind will change now and those ill-tempered journalists will be stuck with a smile on their faces.
Maybe not.
Strangely, all this has made the last few days more tiring, not less. When I am simply being my normal self, everyone knows where they stand in the scheme of things. I am the Queen, they are the subjects. Conversation is polite and formal and stays safely on the surface of things.
But when people become relaxed, almost a bit squiffy with shared happiness, it is really altogether trickier. There’s a danger that one can look a bit solemn or, worse (that greatest of modern crimes), ‘out of touch’. So I have to be cheerful and relaxed, and yet dignified. It’s surprisingly hard work.
Like many people, I had been secretly dreading the opening ceremony. One can have too much of what we now are supposed to call ‘heritage’. I worried that it would be all Shakespeare and cream teas and bowler hats, or that the people organising it would try too hard to get away from the past with some ghastly line-up of girls or boys doing the dancing and singing acts that are now so popular.
Instead, it was like a rather odd dream. Those Victorians in funny hats. The nurses and doctors prancing around beds. We were all making fun of ourselves, but in an vaguely amusing way.
Then there was the helicopter business. As you know, I had my reservations about being part of a comic turn involving James Bond.
Although I’ve sat through several of the James Bond films, I have never been what you’d call a fan. Bond, with his smooth chat and caddish ways with women, reminds me of rather too many men I have met in my time. Andrew tried to be a Bond at one stage. Dear Tony Snowdon, when he was Antony Armstrong-Jones, managed it somewhat better, albeit in a slightly fey, pint-sized way. One of Catherine’s cousins seems to be something of a roughdiamond, would-be Bond.
But Thrusting Justin in the press office was so keen. They said it would be ‘ironic’ (a word I have learned to distrust). Apparently, it would show the human face of modern monarchy. Then, when they told me the dogs would be part of the film, I began to think it could be really rather fun, at least for them. They do love a change to their routine.
I asked what would be involved. They told me that I would have to walk along a corridor with Cider and Berry at my heels, and James Bond beside me. That didn’t sound too difficult, I must say, and so I agreed.
How wrong can you be! We had agreed to let them do their filming in the rooms above the State Rooms. What the production team called their ‘set-up’ took most of the morning and, when I was told that they were ready to film me walking down the corridor, a scene of utter bedlam greeted me.
About 50 people were milling about, some with cameras or tape-recorders or tiny machines to show whether it was light enough. Young men were talking into mobile phones. Girls with clipboards strode about the place telling people what to do. They were all so busy that for a moment they didn’t see me standing there with the dogs at my feet, watching them. When they did notice me, there was the usual fuss, ending up with people standing around in a semi-circle, gawking at me with the smiling, overawed expression I have come to know so well down the years.
A scruffy middle-aged man (the director, I assumed) introduced me to the actor playing James Bond, a chiselled, muscle-bound chap who did one of those showy bows that actors are so fond of.
I must say the filming took quite a lot longer than I expected. There was much fussing over James Bond’s hair.
We did the scene with me sitting at a desk, ignoring James Bond while he waits, before doing our dialogue:
Me: Good evening, Mr Bond.
James Bond: Good evening, Your Majesty.
I managed that without too much difficulty. Then we walked down the corridor and after that there was a huddle in the corner about how it all had gone.
The director thought that James Bond had not quite what he called ‘nailed’ the walk. It was more of a footmanwalk rather than a Bond-walk (the walk is very important with Bond, apparently). He said Bond needed to look at me but not too much. ‘Think helicopter,’ someone said rather mysteriously.
Then, when he tried again, my old bitch Berry lost interest and wandered out of shot. Unwisely, one of the young men tried to pick her up and, well, you know she hates being pulled around by strangers, particularly men. Piercing screams, young man hopping about, holding his hand and using rather unnecessary language, embarrassment in the ranks, with much anguished muttering from James Bond about ‘losing the moment’, whatever that meant.
We ‘took five’, as the director put it. I calmed Berry, they calmed Bond. We tried again, this time with the dogs knowing that there was a treat in my handbag for them.
Eventually, the thing was done. The director simpered that ‘Your Majesty is a born actress,’ to which I replied with one of my cooler glances.
When I saw the film, I thought it was all perfectly harmless fun. If a committee of bright sparks has decided that the best way for our country to present itself to the world is as a nation that knows how to laugh at itself, then so be it. I was very happy to be part of the joke.
In the days following the opening ceremony, though, I did begin to wonder. The press office reported that they were receiving a large number of emails from children around the world who seemed to believe that I had indeed jumped out of a helicopter.
Not for the first time, it occurred to me that any kind of logic or basic common sense tends to go ‘absent without leave’ when anyone in this family does something even faintly unusual. People want to believe that we have the most extraordinary attributes, that we are like them and yet gifted in an almost divine way.
I suppose it was at that moment that I began to think it might be an idea, at this advanced age, for me to remind the world in some way or other that we are really not that different from them. A woman in her eighties does not jump out of a helicopter. She has worries and weaknesses, just like they do. It’s a bit odd (and slightly unfair sometimes) to believe otherwise.
Yours,
ER
Dear Sir Jeremy
It is, as you so rightly say, a moment to remember. Your Bulletin paints a marvellous picture of the general brouhaha, but I must say that all seems like a distant clamour to me. To the world, little George may be a future king, but to me he’s just a very sweet great-grandson.
Yes, we have met. I am not, as you know, a baby person. It’s only when they start to speak and develop their own little personalities that I can truly warm to them. That soft, pink, vulnerable creature is something to be wondered at, but one couldn’t exactly feel warmth towards it – relief, wonder, all those things, but anything else has to be earned.
This time, though, was oddly different. You know, I felt really quite tearful! That little thing, what a life it has in front of it. I thought of all those other Georges down the centuries – kings and yet all too human. What a weight of history this new George already has on his tiny little shoulders.
No doubt, one day he will be able to look back and say, ‘I knew old Queen Elizabeth, you know,’ and everyone will be amazed, rather as I was when my father told me how he used to sit on Queen Victoria’s knee.
It worries me that he is at the back of a long queue. There’s me, then dear, patient Charles, then William. It will seem like an eternity of waiting for poor George. Maybe he won’t mind.
Looking at his sweet little face (we do produce goodlooking babies in this family, I must say), I found myself wondering about what the future holds for all of us.
For me, I sense, it will be about the family – this brave, battered family and the dogs and the horses, and what’s growing in the gardens. Those are the things that these days seem really rather more important than another visit full of smiles and awkwardness, another polite conversation with someone I shall never see again.
Of course, I shall stay. Much as I envy Beatrix her freedom in Holland, I shall keep going in the way that everyone expects of me. The finishing-post is not that far away. It would be rather feeble of me to do a Devon Loch at this stage.
It’s odd, being a great-grandmother. The years have made one a bit more distant from the children than used to be the case. I remember enjoying playing with William and Henry when they came along (rather more than I had with their father, uncles and aunts, if the truth be known), but this time around, it’s somehow not expected of one.
To my surprise, I find that I simply can’t wait for George to be old enough for me to be able to have a great-grandmotherly chat with him. The things I’ll tell him!
How he should enjoy his childhood, because in those years he will be as private a person as he will ever be.
How the family matters above all else (and how I wish I had known that 60 years ago).
How it’s wonderful to be carried along by the love of millions of people but that he should remember it’s not unconditional. He should try to be the person they expect him to be, at least in public. Otherwise they will feel oddly betrayed and can so easily turn.
How he should have animals near him throughout his life. There was a word his late grandmother Diana sometimes used – ‘grounded’. I always rather liked that. The very best way to be ‘grounded’ is to have a few dogs to look after, or perhaps have a brood mare or two.
How he should spend as much time in the country as possible. There is less of the madness of modern life there. How there’s really a lot to be said for cultivating the appearance of dullness. It’s when people in the public eye try to be interesting and original that the trouble begins. How he should never ever be interviewed, particularly by a Dimbleby (there will always be a Dimbleby around).
How the way to avoid going round the bend is to divide yourself into a public you – a person going about his duties, being discussed in the newspapers – and the real you. These days, when I read the latest newspaper chat about myself, I’m really quite interested. ‘Now what’s she been up to?’ I think.
How he should believe in something beyond this world of ours, some great and distant Uncle, and keep that belief to herself like a secret treasure. How he should follow his heart, not what is expected of him, when it comes to finding a wife. How, if he’s very lucky, he will find a female, 21st-century version of the Consort (no, I can’t imagine that either).
How, in the beginning and at the end, we are just little humans trying to do our best during our brief second in history. There’s not as much difference between us and the people watching and waving flags at us as the chattering world would have us believe.
How, when he becomes a busy public person, he should seek to find someone to guide him through his daily duties who is as similar in every way as is possible to his greatgrandmother’s dear, wise, loyal Sir Jeremy.
Yours,
ER
Yours, E.R. by Terence Blacker (Headline, £9.99) is out now.