The diminutive artist forthrightly outlined to the Queen his vision for the portrait: “I see Your Majesty as being condemned to solitude because of your position,” he said. “As a wife and mother you are entirely different, but I see you really alone as a monarch and I want to represent you that way. If I succeed, the woman, the Queen and, for that matter, the solitude will emerge.” She nodded, examined the study he had painted during eight sittings and said, “One doesn’t know one’s self. After all, we have a biased view when we see ourselves in a mirror and, what’s more, the image is always in reverse.” She assented to his plan to portray her looking “thoughtful and severe, profoundly human,” queenly yet unembellished. “I feel that the inspiration is there,” she said.
They resumed their sittings at the end of October after she returned from Balmoral. In the interval, the world had been riveted by the landing of the first men on the moon. The Queen had become fascinated by these twentieth-century explorers after David Bruce brought
When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on July 20, he carried a microfilm message from the Queen to leave behind. She also sent her congratulations to the crew of
Elizabeth II now had a rooting interest in the
The second lunar launch coincided with Prince Charles’s twenty-first birthday, which his mother marked with a grand ball at Windsor Castle for four hundred guests. It was a high-spirited celebration, and the Queen danced in her stocking feet past midnight. One party crasher, an Oxford undergraduate, scaled a garden wall and joined a group of guests. The Queen saw him and recalled that “he was so drunk that he couldn’t say anything apart from a few incivilities.” Yet after the police arrested the young man, who turned out to be an excellent student, she forgave his act of bravado. She said she hoped that he would not be expelled from college, and would only be “severely reprimanded and frightened.”
The Windsor gala had been the handiwork of Patrick Plunket, 7th Baron Plunket, since 1954 the Queen’s Deputy Master of the Household, who was one of her closest advisers as well as a friend since childhood. Three years older than the Queen, Plunket was a lifelong bachelor, always immaculately turned out, with military bearing and an impish grin. As the coordinator of the Queen’s private social life, he had impeccable taste. He liked to fill Windsor Castle with imaginative floral arrangements incorporating zinnias, nicotiana, and alchemilla with peonies and tall white delphiniums, all dramatically spot-lit. “You must have emptied every greenhouse in Windsor Great Park,” Elizabeth II once said to him. “Very nearly,” he replied. “There’s a little bit left.”
Under Plunket’s watch, Elizabeth II’s guest lists expanded to include names from the artistic world—“people who never in the past would have been there,” recalled a long-serving lady-in-waiting. He was a key adviser in creating a trendy mix for the Queen’s informal luncheons at Buckingham Palace, and he even injected some variety into her weekend shooting parties. “He knew everybody and things like who Princess Margaret didn’t like and who she shouldn’t sit next to at dinner,” said Margaret Rhodes.
But Plunket had a less obvious role as well, of equal importance to the Queen, that was grounded in their deep friendship. Plunket’s parents, Teddy and Dorothe, who had been close to George VI and Elizabeth, had died in 1938 in an airplane crash. Plunket was just fifteen when he and his two younger brothers were orphaned, and the King and Queen took a strong interest in their upbringing. After Eton and Cambridge, Plunket served as an officer in the Irish Guards during World War II and was wounded in Belgium in 1944.
On his return to London, the King made him his equerry, and when Princess Elizabeth became Queen, she immediately asked Plunket to stay on and serve her as well. “She realized quickly that Patrick was someone she could depend on,” recalled his brother Shaun Plunket. “He had a wonderful memory for names and faces, plus the knack of good judgment and an amazing instinct for the right and wrong thing to do, and she relied on that.” In a household where many aides avoided delivering uncomfortable truths, Plunket spoke frankly to the woman he called “my boss”—“often with a smile, and she would smile back,” said Shaun.
A connoisseur with several Rubenses in his collection of paintings, Plunket also advised the Queen on art purchases. Along with Prince Philip, he was a driving force behind transforming the bombed-out private chapel at Buckingham Palace into the Queen’s Gallery, which exhibited royal artwork to the public for the first time in 1962. He shared his enthusiasm and knowledge with Elizabeth II, who came to appreciate her treasures with a zest evident in her after-dinner tours for guests at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace.
It was often said he was the brother she never had. He was certainly a trusted confidant. The Queen knew she could talk to him, even about personal matters, and depend on his total discretion. His cousin Lady Annabel Goldsmith called him “a great protector.” If he thought the Queen looked tired, he would say, “Ma’am, do you feel I ought to close this down, or ask someone to close this down?” rather than, “I think you are looking tired.” He always called her “Ma’am,” and understood who she was and where she stood.
Yet he had an irreverent sense of humor perfectly pitched to hers. At ritualized events, Plunket would wink at his friends or nod at them in mock solemnity, sometimes over the Queen’s shoulder. Afterward, he would regale her with stories, such as the time at a garden party when he found a sticky bun containing an entire set of dentures. He lightened the atmosphere and created a sense of fun, dancing with her when Philip was elsewhere, while never usurping her husband’s role. The consort and the courtier enjoyed each other, and Philip was relieved that his wife had someone so capable to consult on matters beyond his own sphere.
With his wit and unstuffy demeanor, Plunket found a kindred spirit in Martin Charteris, who helped create a more open atmosphere around the Queen. The two men had been with Elizabeth II from the beginning, their admiration for her intensifying as their loyalty deepened. They both had country homes, but in London they each lived near the Queen, Plunket in a small bedroom, bathroom, and office in Buckingham Palace, and Charteris in an apartment on Friary Court in St. James’s Palace.
Although he had served only as assistant private secretary for nearly twenty years, Charteris had his fingerprints on every important decision, and he was close to the Queen’s children, particularly Charles, who felt “Martin was someone he could relate to,” said Gay Charteris. But as the 1960s ended, the long-serving courtier figured his career would conclude where it began. Michael Adeane was just three years older, so when he reached retirement age, a promotion to private secretary “would have been too late for Martin,” said his widow.
“One of the pleasant things about the Royal Household,” David Bruce observed early in 1969, “is the admiration entertained by everyone in it for the Queen. I believe this is thoroughly deserved.… The atmosphere of cordiality in which she swims certainly impresses one as being completely genuine.” She holds her employees to high standards, treats them with respect and fairness, only rarely showing anger.
IN ADDITION TO her cadre of courtiers, the Queen from the outset has surrounded herself with an equally capable group of ladies-in-waiting, organized into a strict hierarchy, with medieval titles and clearly delineated tasks. They are almost exclusively drawn from the aristocracy, many of them are friends of the royal family, and all have shared interests, inbred caution, an intricate understanding of court etiquette, and sociable personalities.
The “head girl” beginning in 1967 was Fortune FitzRoy, the Duchess of Grafton, the Queen’s Mistress of the Robes, although she had nothing to do with what the monarch wore. The position has historically been held by a duchess, and Fortune took over when the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire retired. Fortune Grafton was an experienced hand, having served in the second echelon as a Lady of the Bedchamber—again, bearing no relationship to the monarch’s bedroom—since 1953. The third tier are called Women of the Bedchamber. Both the second and third levels have “Extra” ladies who are pulled in on special occasions, bringing the typical total to eleven.
As the senior lady-in-waiting, Fortune Grafton accompanies the Queen to the most prestigious events and tours, and the Ladies of the Bedchamber work in rotation at home and abroad, while the Women of the Bedchamber focus primarily on dealing with correspondence as well as attending the Queen on various occasions. All the ladies- in-waiting are adept at circulating through receptions, running interference for their boss by engaging overeager
