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The highs and lows of Her Majesty’s unprecedented 70 years on the throne

Andrew Preston

King George VI dies peacefully in his sleep after a day’s shooting at Sandringham. At Sagana Lodge in Kenya, the Duke of Edinburgh takes the 25-year-old Queen for a walk to break the news of her father’s death and her accession to the throne. She is the first monarch since George I to be outside the country at the moment of succession.

Churchill resigns, aged 80. As Elizabeth’s first prime minister, he was her mentor in affairs of state. On his last night in office, he hosts a farewell dinner for his beloved sovereign.

The Queen’s first televised Christmas broadcast, live from the Long Library at Sandringham. From 1959, the messages would all be pre-recorded.

At the height of the Cold War, it is feared that President Nkrumah of Ghana is getting too close to Russia. But when the Queen dances with him at a state dinner in Accra, so much goodwill is generated that there is no more talk of Ghana leaving the Commonwealth. President Nkrumah later talked of ‘his personal regard and affection’ for Her Majesty.

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of another sensational triumph immediately before it: the conquest of Everest. The two legends who pulled it off, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal, might not have been technically British. However, the expedition was British (its patron was the Duke of Edinburgh), the flag on the summit was British, and Hillary, as a Kiwi, was a subject of the Queen at a time when Commonwealth realms were regarded much like an extension of the Home Counties. Hence the Daily Express headline on Coronation morning: ‘All This

– And Everest Too.’

COMPOSER SIR WILLIAM WALTON HID WHISKY MINIATURES IN HIS GOWN

POURING RAIN COULD NOT DIMINISH THE ENTHUSIASM

Britain was fit to burst with pride long before the public had gasped at the first sighting of the Gold State Coach leaving Buckingham Palace on 2 June 1953, with the young Queen and her consort at her side. An unseasonal chill and pouring rain did nothing at all to diminish the enthusiasm of the crowds. Some had been camping out all night. The lucky ones had secured one of the 110,000 seats along the route which had been erected using 4,300 tons of scaffolding. A London businessman called Denis Thatcher managed to purchase a pair for himself and his new bride, Margaret.

It had been an extremely early start for the 29,200 members of the Armed Forces from across the Commonwealth taking part. Reveille had been sounded at 2am. Blearyeyed

journalists – of which 2,000 were accredited to various parts of the processional route, including the future Jackie Kennedy who was a reporter for the Washington Times-herald – noted that the first lights were seen coming on inside the Palace at 5am.

By then, the five royal choirs due to take part at the Abbey were already up and about, though under strict instructions regarding their breakfast. ‘It is advised that no tea or coffee be taken on the morning of the Coronation,’ said the operational note sent to all the choristers. Along with the crowning moment, the other abiding memory which many of those inside the Abbey would retain of that day was the difficulty of finding a lavatory.

Despite the democratic advent of telly inside the service, the guest list was still dominated by the old guard and every member of the House of Lords was assured of a seat (the oiks from the Commons had to enter a lottery). A special London Underground shuttle was laid on to transport ticketed guests from Kensington High Street station to Westminster. Many peers had rented their Coronation robes, since a full set with proper ermine cost £800. A hired outfit, with rabbit fur instead of ermine (the underbelly of a stoat), could be found for a fraction. That was out of the question for Viscount Furness, the 24-year-old heir to a vast shipping fortune. He ordered the full works to be tailor-made. ‘I want to look my best on Coronation Day,’ he explained, ‘and wouldn’t feel proper dressed in bunny.’ Some peers, like the Marquess of Bath, were certainly not going to travel by Tube and chose to ride in their own horse-drawn family carriages. All those who had a seat inside were later able to buy it for seven pounds (Coronation chairs now sell for upwards of £2,000 each), to offset the cost of the occasion. The wise had come wellprepared. Sir William Walton, composer of much of the Coronation music, had hidden miniatures of whisky in his gown. The Keeper of

the Privy Purse used his purse to conceal a supply of Mars bars.

THE COUTURIER’S HERALDIC DILEMMA

Though everyone knew precisely what was going to happen, the one surprise was to be the Queen’s Coronation gown, designed by court couturier Norman Hartnell. He had come up with the idea of a floral theme, incorporating the emblems of the home nations. ‘Her Majesty liked the idea but if we had the British emblems we must, she told me, include the Commonwealth,’ said Hartnell. ‘It became, in the end, not so much a dress as a diplomatic plot.’ The stumbling block was Wales. ‘As we started on the pretty Welsh daffodils to be sewn in toning yellow silks, Garter King of Arms came in with his axe. “Leeks,” he told me, “not daffodils”.’

One can almost picture the contretemps between the bristling dress designer and the stern custodian of all things heraldic. Hartnell complained he would be ‘dressing a beautiful young woman in vegetables ’ if he was compelled to embroider leeks on to the dress. However, Garter King of Arms stood firm and the decision was final: leeks. ‘In the end they looked quite edible, shining with diamond dew drops,’ Hartnell recalled. The Queen’s response on seeing her finished gown? ‘Glorious!’

And that set the tone for the whole day. There was so much to take in and enjoy, whether you were watching on the box or on a rainy London street. The first of the nine processions set off for the Abbey nearly three hours ahead of the Queen, led by the Lord Mayor of London and his army of pikemen. One very famous support act would be Queen Salote of Tonga who sat beaming in the rain, a bright red flower in her hair, refusing to put the cover up on her carriage as she wanted to see and be seen by the longsuffering crowds.

Some of the biggest cheers were for the Irish State Coach carrying the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, and for the carriage carrying Sir Winston Churchill. Once inside the Abbey, the Prime Minister was supposed to wait in an annexe to greet the Queen. But the old romantic could not resist a sneak preview as the Queen emerged from her coach. John Talbot, then aged 11 and a page to the Earl of Shrewsbury, was also in the annexe. He later recalled the reaction on Churchill’s face: ‘When he came back, he looked sort of emotional and said, “I had to have a private view. She is lovely.”’

A TEMPLATE FOR FUTURE ROYAL CELEBRATIONS

An estimated 27 million of Britain’s 36 million souls were by now watching three million television sets. They ranged from the Queen’s uncle, the Duke of Windsor, sitting in self-imposed exile in Paris, to the

Somerset village where future broadcaster Ned Sherrin was growing up. He would recall that the villagers had clubbed together to rent a TV and even the squire had come along, sitting at the back on a shooting stick watching the screen through binoculars. For those not in the Abbey, the best view of the lot was at Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children where a new, experimental device called ‘colour television’ was being tried out. Much of the world watched agog as one magical event after another unfolded – the procession through the Abbey, the crowning, the bellowing of ‘God Save The Queen’ as St Edward’s Crown was finally lowered into place, the Duke of Edinburgh paying homage as ‘liege man of life and limb’, the sight of an awestruck Prince Charles (aged four and a half).

When it was over, those in London had a good gawp as the procession returned to the Palace via a five-mile route to give an estimated three million spectators a proper sighting of the Queen. By now, the first reels of film had been loaded onto aircraft and were heading across the Atlantic. Each plane had an on-board laboratory which could develop the film for transmission across Canada and the USA as soon as it arrived. In streets all over Britain, it was the cue to head out into the road for a celebration.

Even nearly seven decades later, there is something extremely moving about the sight of all those children in fancy dress or in their ‘Sunday best’ clothes, tucking in to good things piled high on trestle tables. Many had lost a father or uncle or big brother in the war. All had grown up on rationed food, erratic diets and tales of wartime deprivation. Yet it was entirely understood that they represented the new Britain emerging from the weary, soot-stained, make-do-and-mend nation which had just come through war and the end of Empire.

Little did they know that they had also created the template for the way in which Britain would be celebrating great royal milestones for years to come.

Don’t miss Robert Hardman’s biography Queen Of Our Times – The Life Of Elizabeth II, published by Macmillan in March.

HARTNELL COMPLAINED THAT HE WAS COMPELLED TO DRESS HER IN VEGETABLES

t was the Queen Mother who made sure fashion photographer Cecil Beaton took the official Coronation pictures, including these rarely seen behind-the-scenes images. He had photographed her in 1939, and it was the start of a long royal association.

Despite having had too much wine at a dinner party the night before, Beaton made it to the service with sandwiches inside his top hat and a supply of barley sugars. Afterwards he hurried home for an hour’s sleep and ‘a fistful of aspirins’ before hotfooting it to the Palace to take the official pictures, placing a 1,000-watt lamp behind the Queen to make her face shine. According to Beaton, the ‘dimpled and chuckling’ Queen Mother was encouraging throughout, but the Duke of Edinburgh was harder to win over – Beaton was convinced he’d wanted a friend of his to get the job. Meanwhile Prince Charles and Princess Anne, aged four and two, were ‘buzzing about in the wildest excitement and would not

keep still for a moment’. The pictures Beaton liked most were of the children with the Queen Mother. ‘She anchored them in her arms, put her head down to kiss Prince Charles’s hair, and made a terrific picture,’ he recalled. He had a tense night as the negatives went off to be processed, but the next day when he went to the studio he was ‘surprised to find that so many of the pictures were excellent’. ■

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