‘The truth is, the Queen is wholly predictable’

We have had none of these embarrassments with Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.
‘The truth is, the Queen is wholly predictable’

BENGALURU: In March 2004, on the day, as it happened, of the funeral of the late Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, Queen Elizabeth II hosted a private party in London to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her Coronation.The party took place a year later than originally planned. It had to be postponed from 2003 because of the war on Iraq. The Duke of Edinburgh attended the party, of course, but he arrived a little later than scheduled - not on account of his age (he was then eighty-two), but because he had spent the day in The Hague, on duty, representing the United Kingdom at Queen Juliana’s funeral.

Queen Juliana was an interesting woman. She reigned from 1948 until 1980, when she abdicated in favour of her eldest daughter, Crown Princess Beatrix, who, in due course, in April 2013, abdicated in favour of her son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. In her day Juliana was Europe’s richest reigning monarch, but she eschewed pomp and ceremony, and abolished the curtsy, among other court formalities. She was kindly, deeply religious, devoted to her four daughters and her people (in that order), and married, for sixty-seven years, to Prince Bernhard, a German princeling whose way with women and money did him little credit and, on more than one occasion, came close to toppling the Orange throne.

Bernhard and Juliana each had their foibles. In 1956, for example, it came to light that, for the previous eight years, the Dutch Queen had been relying heavily on the spiritual services of a faith healer named Greet Hofmans. Hofmans, apparently, used her position to obtain posts at the palace for her friends and tried to influence government policy. She also persuaded the Queen to move from her quarters ‘because the earth waves were not right’. In 1959 the Queen and the Prince invited a self-styled American ‘professor’ (and former hamburger vendor) named George Adamski to visit them privately to report on what he described as his flight around the moon in a spaceship from Venus. More seriously, in 1976, Prince Bernhard was accused of soliciting money from the Lockheed Corporation of America and found - by the official inquiry into the case - to be a man ‘open to dishonourable requests and offers’.

We have had none of these embarrassments with Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. I wonder if we appreciate how fortunate we have been. Elizabeth II is neither eccentric nor quixotic, and her husband was as honest and straightforward as the day is long.

If there is one word that sums up Elizabeth II, it is ‘dutiful’. Her life has been driven by duty. She was a dutiful daughter. She has been a dutiful Queen. Because I have met her - because, at close quarters, I have observed her as she carried out a range of her official duties - people sometimes ask me, leaning forward, narrowing their eyes, ‘What’s the Queen really like?’ My answer disappoints them. ‘She’s seems very nice,’ I say. ‘Rather normal, actually; quite straightforward; much as you’d expect, in fact.’

The truth is, the Queen is wholly predictable. On 30 April 2002, in Westminster Hall, I watched her as she addressed the joint Houses of Parliament on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee. In the outfit you would expect (peacock blue, matching hat, smashing pearls, lovely brooch, black gloves, spectacles firmly in place), in the voice you recognise (Gainsborough Studios, circa 1947), she said all the things you knew that she would say.

The speech - brief, balanced, well phrased - reflected both the moderate and modest nature of the monarch, and the decent, enduring values she holds dear. As she concluded with her pledge to continue to serve her country in the years to come, the journalists sitting around me twitched with excitement. ‘She’s staying,’ hissed one. ‘That’s our story,’ whispered another. (Excerpted with permission from Philip The Final Portrait by Gyles Brandreth, published by Hodder and Stoughton, distributed by Hachette India)

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