Her Majesty by Robert Hardman Read Free Book Online Page A

disaster. Our attitude was almost: “We must use this crisis well.” Both the Duke and the Queen could see that things couldn’t remain the same. So when people suggested something like the CRU, they were right behind it. Sometimes, you get a moment where you can do things you couldn’t otherwise do.’
    As far as the media and much of the world was concerned, all this was of minor importance compared to the marriages of the Queen’s elder sons, both of which came to an end in the Family Division of the High Court in 1996. The sudden death of Diana, Princess of Wales a year later would present the Royal Family with a personal tragedy and also the gravest crisis of the Queen’s reign. ‘That’s when the stakes were highest,’ says one former Private Secretary. ‘I can’t honestly say that I thought it was going to be the end of the monarchy but the serious republican element thought there was a chink in the armour and they were going for it.’ Once again, as we shall see, the Queen’s instinct, experience and a capacity for judicious change would prevail. So, too, would the reservoir of goodwill built up through nearly half a century of assiduous devotion to duty. A week after the Princess’s death, a MORI poll showed that public attitudes towards the monarchy were just the same as they had been before and have continued to remain since (give or take a couple of percentage points): 18 per cent in favour of a republic, 73 per cent in favour of the monarchy and 9 per cent unsure.
    It is a remarkably consistent figure, as any pollster will confirm. Indeed, it has barely changed since the giddy days of Coronation Britain when the Queen could do no wrong and yet 16 per cent of people still favoured a republic. Whatever changes people wanted to impose on the monarchy in that unhappy autumn of 1997 – and they were never short of suggestions – one thing was resoundingly clear. The vast majority did not want to see it disappear. The Princess’s death was followed, within weeks, by the golden wedding anniversary of the Queen and Prince Philip. Addressing a lunch given by the Prime Minister, the Queen acknowledged that monarchs did not always find it easy to read the public mood, ‘obscured as it can be by deference, rhetoric or the conflicting currents of public opinion. But read it we must.’
    By now, the Queen, her family and her officials had a clear target at which to aim five years hence. As one ex-aide puts it: ‘The Golden Jubilee was the culmination of several years of thinking: what would it take to close the door on the nineties?’
    The Queen was almost endearingly keen on avoiding ‘a fuss’ over thefiftieth anniversary of her accession. A huge fuss, of course, was inevitable but her officials did not want an event which was in any way contrived. ‘A lot of effort went in to making it look unplanned,’ admits one. Any suggestion that the Palace was attempting to whip up synthetic support for a battered institution could have proved very damaging. In any case, royal officials were confident that the event would gather its own momentum. Some were privately relieved when the press started predicting a lukewarm public response, ‘ PALACE FEARS JUBILEE FLOP ’ said The Times in January 2002. With such low expectations, the jubilee could only go from strength to strength. It did so before the celebrations had even started, albeit in sorrowful circumstances.
    On 9 February 2002, the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, died at the age of seventy-one following several years of poor health and a series of strokes. Less then two months later, the Royal Family was in mourning again. The public response to the death of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 30 March 2002 took everyone – left, right, royalist, republican – by surprise. As she lay in state in the Palace of Westminster, police soon had to divert the queue to the west of Parliament, over the Thames and back down the other side. ‘As soon as I