about Labour politicians; partly because of the human drama of a life so exceptionally privileged, and so exceptionally constrained; and partly because of the obsession with royalty of the British public, of which I am a member. Perhaps the last has interested me most of all. To some extent, therefore, this is a book about the Queen in people’s heads, as well as at Buckingham Palace. It is, of course, incomplete – no work could be more ‘interim’ than an account of a monarch who may still have decades to reign. However, because the story is still going on with critical chapters yet to come, it is also – more than most biographies – concerned with now.
It is an ‘unofficial’ study, and draws eclectically on a variety of sources. For the period up to 1952, the Royal Archives have been invaluable; documentation up to the mid or late 1960s has been provided by the Public Record Office and the BBC Written Archive Centre, alongside a number of private collections of papers, listed at the end of this book. For later years, interviews have been particularly helpful. In addition, there is a wealth of published material.
I have a great many individual debts. I am extremely grateful to Sir Robert Fellowes (Private Secretary to the Queen and Keeper of the Royal Archives, Charles Anson (Press Secretary to the Queen), Oliver Everett (Assistant Keeper of the Royal Archives) and Sheila de Bellaigue (Registrar of the Royal Archives) for assisting with my requests whenever it was possible to do so.
I would like to thank Anne Pimlott Baker, principal researcher for the book, for the care and resourcefulness of her inquiries, and for her skilful digests and research notes; Andrew Chadwick, for research into the archives of The Times and News of the World; Sarah Benton, for reading the whole text in draft and making many perceptive comments on it; Anne-Marie Rule for typing the manuscript with her usual combination of speed, precision and good-natured tolerance of unreasonable demands – the fifth time she has typed a book for me (am I the last author, incidentally, who still uses a pen and has his drafts typed on a pre-electric typewriter?); Terry Mayer and Jane Tinkler for their help in typing, and retyping, some of the chapters, and for many kindnesses; and my colleagues and students at Birkbeck, for their forebearance, interest and encouragement.
I am grateful to the many librarians and archivists, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, who have helped me in person, on the telephone, or by correspondence. In addition to those already mentioned, I would especially like to thank Jacquie Kavanagh at the BBC Written Archive Centre at Caver-sham Park, Helen Langley at the Bodleian Library and the library staff of The Times Newspapers and the Guardian. I am also particularly grateful to Sir Hardy Amies, for generously making available to me his corespondence with the Queen and members of the Royal Family over a period of more than forty years; to Phillip Whitehead, for letting me see the unedited transcripts of interviews for his television documentary, The Windsors; and Vernon Bogdanor and Frank Prochaska for showing me the text of their excellent recent books, before publication. I am deeply indebted to the staff of the British Library at Bloomsbury, who continue to provide an outstanding service, despite trying conditions during the countdown to the move (regretted by so many) to St Pancras.
I am grateful to the following for permission to quote copyright material: Arrow Books (D. Morrah To Be a King); Collins (H. Nicolson Diaries and Letters 1930–1939); Duckworth (M. Crawford The Little Princesses); Hamish Hamilton (R. Crossman The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman; The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister 1964–66); Hutchinson (T. Benn Out of the Wilderness: Diaries 1963–67); Macmillan (J. Wheeler-Bennett George VI: His Life and Reign).
I would like to acknowledge the gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen for allowing me the privilege of using the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, and for granting me permission to quote from papers in the Archives. For the use of other unpublished papers and documents I am grateful to: Sir Hardy Amies (Amies papers); Lady Avon (Avon papers); Balliol College, Oxford (Nicolson papers); BBC Written Archive Centre (BBC Written Archives); British Library of Political and Economic Science (Dalton papers); Christ Church, Oxford (Bradwell papers); Churchill College, Cambridge (Alexander papers; Chartwell papers; Swinton papers); Lady Margaret Colville (Colville papers); Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (Eisenhower papers); Mrs Caroline Erskine (Lascelles papers); House of Lords (Beaverbrook papers); John F. Kennedy Library (Kennedy papers); Lambeth Palace (Fisher papers); F. D. Roosevelt Library (Roosevelt papers); Harry S. Truman Library (Truman papers); University College, Oxford (Attlee papers); University of Southampton (Mountbatten papers).
I would like to thank the following people who have taken the time to talk to me about different aspects of this book: Lord Airlie, Lady Airlie, Ronald Allison, Sir Hardy Amies, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, Sir Shane Blewitt, Lord Brabourne, Sir Alistair Burnet, Lord Buxton, Lord Callaghan, Lord Carnarvon, Lady Carnarvon, Lord Carrington, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, Lord Charteris, Lord Cranborne, Jonathan Dimbleby, Lord Egremont, Sir Edward Ford, Princess George of Hanover, The Duchess of Grafton, John Grigg, Joe Haines, David Hicks, Lady Pamela Hicks, Anthony Holden, Angela Howard-Johnston, Lord Howe, Lord Hunt of Tamworth, Douglas Hurd, Sir Bernard Ingham, Michael Jones, Robin Janvrin, Lord Limerick, Lady Long-ford, Brian MacArthur, Lord McNally, HRH Princess Margaret, Sir John Miller, Sir Derek Mitchell, Lady Mountbatten, Michael Noakes, The Duke of Norfolk, Commander Michael Parker, Michael Peat, Rt Rev Simon Phipps, Sir Edward Pickering, Sir David Pitblado, Sir Charles Powell, Enoch Powell, Sir Sonny Ramphal, Sir John Riddell, Kenneth Rose, Lord Runcie, Sir Kenneth Scott, Michael Shea, Phillip Whitehead, Sir Clive Whitmore and Mrs Woodroffe. I also spoke to others who prefer not to be named. Where it has not been possible to give the source of a quotation in the text or notes, I have used the words ‘Confidential interview’. None of these people, or anybody else apart from the author, is responsible for how the material has been interpreted.
HarperCollins has once again proved itself the Rolls Royce of British non-fiction publishing. I am particularly indebted to Stuart Proffitt, my publisher, for his persistent faith in the project and his shrewd author management, and to my incomparable editor, Arabella Pike, for whom my admiration has no bounds. I am also grateful to Caroline Wood for her inspired picture research, and to Anne O’Brien for vital last-minute help. Giles Gordon, my literary agent, has been a constant source of practical wisdom and advice.
Finally, I thank the people to whom the book is dedicated: my children, for keeping my spirits up; and my wife, Jean Seaton, for whom all my books are really written, whose thoughts about monarchy and royalty are now inextricably bound up with my own, and whose fertile historical imagination has been a daily quarry.
Bloomsbury, WC1 August 1996
Chapter 1
APRIL 1926 was a busy month for every member of the Conservative Government, but for few ministers more than the Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks. A long, bitter dispute in the coalfields was moving rapidly towards its climax – with drastic implications for the nation.
‘We are going to be slaves no longer and our men will starve before they accept any reductions in wages,’ the miners’ leader, A. J. Cook, had declared in an angry speech that crystallized the mood in the collieries, while the men resolved: ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’. On 14 April, the TUC leadership asked the Prime Minister to intervene. A week later the owners and men met, but failed to reach agreement. Thereafter, the chance of a compromise diminished, and the prospect grew closer of a terrifying industrial shutdown which – for the first time in British history – seemed likely to affect the majority of British manual workers. Alarm affected all levels of society. Even King George V – mindful of his right to be consulted, and his duty both to encourage and above all to warn – discreetly urged his ministers to show caution. Alas, royal counsels were in vain, and the General Strike began at midnight on 3rd May 1926, threatening not just economic paralysis and bankruptcy, but the constitution itself.
‘Jix’ Joynson-Hicks – best known to history for his zeal in ordering police raids on the decadent writings of D.H. Lawrence and Radclyffe Hall, and for the part he later played in defeating the 1927 Bill to revise the Prayer Book – was scarcely an outstanding or memorable holder of his post. This, however, was his most splendid hour. In swashbuckling alliance with Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, Quintin Hogg and Leo Amery, the Home Secretary was a Cabinet hawk, in the thick of the fight, a scourge of the miners,