In 1992, as the marriage of Princess Diana and then-Prince Charles was in tatters, it was Britain’s prime minister, John Major, who stepped in to adjudicate the infamous “battle of the Waleses”.
With Queen Elizabeth II’s blessing, Major forged a bond with Diana, engaging in lengthy private tête-à-têtes as he listened and sympathised and then with the late princess’s viewpoint in his sights, talked to Charles’s camp and also to Her Majesty about the road ahead.
Major’s aim wasn’t to fix Charles and Diana’s marriage, rather to ensure a smooth and amicable separation that wouldn’t destroy the monarchy.
It seems extraordinary for Britain’s leader to take on the role of royal marriage counsellor, but it turns out Major was following a precedent.
British sovereigns have repeatedly looked to their PMs to sort out family troubles, according to an eye-opening new book, Power and the Palace by Valentine Low.
“Queen Victoria got Lord Palmerston to talk to her son the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, when he was being a bit of a bad lad carousing around and consorting with unsuitable women and George V instructed Ramsay MacDonald to talk to his Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, about the prince’s dangerous passion for point-to-point horse racing,” says Low.
Evidently Diana loved her chats with the Right Honourable John Major.
“She used to call him ‘the Hon John'” and saw him as an unbiased mentor,” says Low.
Talking exclusively to the ABC ahead of the book’s release, Low — a former royal correspondent with The Times of London — says this was one of many fascinating themes he discovered as he investigated the mysterious and secretive power dynamic at the heart of the little-understood relationship between the UK monarchy and government.
Major’s private secretary, Alex Allan, told Low that the PM was “very empathetic” in his conversations with Diana and “able to see both sides”.
He was also privately concerned about the princess.
Following the publication of Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story, which we now know was the result of secret tapes recorded by Diana herself, something had to be done.
It was Major who announced to the House of Commons that Charles and Diana were separating, and thanks to advice from cabinet secretary Lord Butler, he also said that the constitutional situation needn’t change: “There is no reason why the Princess of Wales should not be crowned Queen in due course.”
In hindsight that assumption was way off beam and Butler admits “a misjudgement” but Major turned out to be a strong supporter of Diana and continued to keep an eye on her even after the breakdown of the Wales marriage.
John Major took on a secret role as a marriage counsellor to Princess Diana in the months before her divorce from Prince Charles was announced. (By Adam Butler: PA Images via Getty Images)
The queen’s three favourite PMs
Major was also very popular with Queen Elizabeth II, Low says, describing him as “definitely in Queen Elizabeth’s top three favourite prime ministers”.
Former British leader John Major (L) was definitely among Queen Elizabeth’s top three favourite PMs. ( Reuters: Andrew Matthews)
The other two being Winston Churchill and surprisingly, Labour leader Harold Wilson.
Churchill was the queen’s first prime minister and she had “deep reverence” for the aging statesman, who was madly in love with young Elizabeth. Low writes that Churchill would exit their weekly meetings “purring”.
Biographer Sarah Bradford characterised Churchill’s feelings for his monarch as “tender and romantic”, notes Low. “You had this idea that he came away from audiences with a very jaunty look about him. It was romantic with a small ‘r’ in the way that an old man can love a younger woman.”
Winston Churchill is said to have had romantic feelings towards Queen Elizabeth. (Supplied: International Churchill Society)
The queen’s instant connection with Labour firebrand Harold Wilson was very different.
It seems an unlikely union because we assume the royal family has more in common with right-wing politicians, but Low says politics actually rarely came into the relationship between sovereign and prime minister, personality was the thing.
“Wilson talked to the queen like a normal person. One of the things I hadn’t realised until I did the research for the book was how much [Conservative PM from 1957 to 63] Harold Macmillan bored her. He used to lecture her, which she found rather tedious,” Low says.
“There’s a story when Macmillan went up to Balmoral for the summer visit that some equerry or private secretary was deputed to take him for a long walk so the queen wouldn’t be exposed to him for too long.”
That was never the case with Wilson, with whom the monarch would happily spend hours.
“He liked political gossip and I learned that the queen did too. She liked to know what was going on, who was up, who was down, what was around the corner.”
Low cites a particularly amusing incident in the wake of a “scurrilous” story in the London Standard in 1974 about French president Valéry Giscard D’Estaing’s penchant for “lighter ladies of the town” on his night-time walks in Paris.
When Wilson told Her Majesty he was off to France for a meeting with D’Estaing, the queen joked with a “ho ho” and on his return playfully asked about about “ho ho”, suggesting Wilson might himself have been out in Paris with the president, to which the prime minister replied: “Ma’am, there was no ho ho!”
When Wilson lost the 1970 election (he returned to be PM a second time in 1974), of course the queen couldn’t openly commiserate but she did wish him a well-deserved rest.
“Then Edward Heath came along, and he was totally the opposite to Wilson — very stiff, awkward, no small talk. The queen didn’t like that at all. I think she adored Wilson.”
Queen Elizabeth had an excellent relationship with prime minister Harold Wilson. (Flickr: 10 Downing Street)
Thatcher, Blair and Brexit
Her relationship with Margaret Thatcher was more complex. Despite being two women leaders, there was no sense of shared sisterhood. Thatcher was an avowed monarchist and somewhat in awe of Elizabeth, always dropping into deep curtseys. That the two didn’t exactly gel was certainly a source of disappointment for the iconic Conservative leader.
Margaret Thatcher was in awe of Queen Elizabeth and dropped into deep curtseys whenever they met. (By PA Images via Getty Images)
“People talk about, ‘oh, the queen and Thatcher, they hated each other’ but I don’t believe either of them hated the other, I think Thatcher exasperated the queen,” Low says.
“I think she found her difficult.”
When Thatcher first went to Balmoral, she failed to pack suitable footwear for the outdoor activities on the estate.
“She had to borrow a pair of Hush Puppies and multiple pairs of socks”, writes Low, underlining the differences between the two women. The Queen famously loved the outdoors.
Issues between the two were most stark though over the Commonwealth, to which the queen was dedicated. Thatcher in contrast was “naturally suspicious of international organisations that conspired, in her view, against Western interests,” writes Low.
When, finally, a story broke in the Sunday Times claiming that the queen found Thatcher’s policies to be “uncaring”, it went down like a lead balloon at Buckingham Palace.
“The queen was asked by someone close to her if the article was accurate. She said, ‘No, not at all’ and the person asked ‘Well, how did you get on?’ The queen said, ‘Well, she was like all prime ministers. She didn’t listen!'”
When Tony Blair came into office in 1997, he almost immediately had to negotiate the national meltdown following the death of Diana and encourage the queen to come down from Balmoral to grieve with her people. That was a significant blemish on Elizabeth’s reign and looking into it in depth, Low says, he has come to understand a little more about what was really going on behind the scenes.
“The queen did have to be persuaded to change her mind on one or two issues, the famous one about the flag flying at half-mast and coming down to London, and I think there were some pretty bruising conversations that took place in order for that to come about,” Low says.
The methods used to get the queen to do the right thing were convoluted, he says, and included enlisting Charles to speak directly to his mother.
“Blair wanted to persuade the queen midway through that week to have a change of tack, and it was not long into his premiership. He felt that he didn’t know the queen well enough to put these arguments to her, so he put them to Charles instead, whom he knew better and was nearer his age, so there wasn’t that same deference thing,” Low explains. “He used Charles to try and get the queen to change her mind.”
For his part, Blair, like all prime ministers “always wanted to please the queen and have her blessing,” adds Low.
“In the early years a source told me that they felt that the queen’s attitude was, ‘he’s new, he’s got a lot to learn’. But I think she also recognised what he represented, the change in Britain,” he says. “The Gulf War was the thing that damaged Blair’s reputation and I wonder if actually the queen was sympathetic to him about that.”
Blair’s wife Cherie however was not a hit with her majesty. “Cherie could put her foot in it. She was quite gauche and that didn’t go down well.”
The Queen knew Tony and Cherie Blair represented change for Britain but she wasn’t always on board. (By Getty Images: Anwar Hussein)
Low says the most surprising thing he discovered about Queen Elizabeth II was that “she didn’t want Britain to leave the European Union. We’ve always been led to believe that she supported Brexit, but it turns out not to be true. She was a bit of a remainer.”
The other nugget Low uncovered was a story about the current Queen Camilla, who was assaulted on a train when she was a teenager.
“There was a sexual groper on board, his hand was wandering where it shouldn’t. And when she was telling the story to then-prime minister Boris Johnson, she recalled, ‘I did what my mother taught me. I took my shoe off and whacked him in the nuts with the heel,'” Low says. “And then she got off the train, found a man in uniform and [the man who assaulted her] was arrested.”
Meddling in Aussie politics
The biggest change in the relationship between the monarch and government over time has been the balance of power.
Queen Victoria had veto over her prime minister and endlessly interfered in political policy.
That pendulum has shifted and the watershed moment, says Low, was the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936.
“That was when the king wanted to do one thing and the cabinet another, and the cabinet won, that was new,” Low says.
As the Prince of Wales, Charles’s famous “black spider memos” — letters he sent to ministers to put across his own opinions on matters he was passionate about — caused a huge commotion when they were revealed in 2015, the result of a hard-fought newspaper freedom of information battle.
But the letter that stopped Low in his tracks was one Charles sent following the famous dismissal of Australia’s Labor Whitlam government in 1975 by the queen’s representative in Australia, governor-general John Kerr.
Loading…
“When the so-called ‘Palace letters’ [the private communications between the palace and Sir John Kerr] came out in 2020, the overriding view was that the queen didn’t know Kerr was going to do it and didn’t ask for him to do it,” says Low. “I think there was an element of the palace being involved, but they didn’t actively connive in the sacking … they watched on and sat on their hands.
“But to me, the other thing that was unexpected about this matter was the letter that Charles wrote to the governor-general a few months later, saying you did the right thing, you know … a very unwise thing to have done, although I’m sure Charles would have thought it was said in private. I’m surprised it doesn’t get more mention.”
Low says that as King Charles III, those meddling days are long behind him. “Charles is very anxious to prove that he is a good constitutional monarch and will do what his government wants him to do.”
A king out of his mother’s shadow
This month, that will include hosting US President Donald Trump at Windsor Castle in a much-vaunted official state visit.
Certainly, King Charles III is already more involved in politics than his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, but so far that seems to be working out, notes Low.
“I think if you can marshal his passions where they align with your government’s, that’s quite a productive way of going forward. The recent meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, for example, was absolutely with the blessing of the government.”
Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of The Monarchy and 10 Downing Street by Valentine Low is released next week.
Loading