Her Majesty by Robert Hardman Page A

in 1953 when the Queen travelled to Scotland to be presented with the Honours of Scotland wearing an ordinary day dress. Many Scots took great umbrage. She might be Queen Elizabeth II of England but she was Queen Elizabeth I of Scotland. If she was to receive its sacred honours, then they believed that she should look the part and wear evening dress, if not Scottish Coronation robes.
    The oversight was blamed on her Private Secretary, Sir Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles. Nearly fifty years later, as the Queen was preparing to open the newly created Scottish Parliament in 1999, she took no chances. For the first time, she had a woman as one of her private secretaries, Mary Francis, and the former senior Downing Street aide was pleasantly surprised to be involved.
    ‘The Scots don’t forget,’ Mary Francis recalls. ‘But there was no question of the Queen wearing Coronation clothes this time. So we commissioned a Scottish dress designer and, unprecedentedly I think, the Queen asked me to join her and her dresser when they had the discussion with the designer, which was very nice.’
    The result was a three-part creation by Scotland’s Sandra Murray featuring a dress of light green wool, a long-sleeved mauve coat of silk and wool and an Isle of Skye scarf. Not a word of Scottish displeasure was heard.
    For years, the Queen’s wardrobe was the fiefdom of the invincible Margaret ‘Bobo’ MacDonald, the former nursemaid who had been with her since she was a baby. * These days, the Queen seldom troubles thebig-name designers, preferring to leave her outfits to a small in-house team led by Angela Kelly. Diners at a certain Belgravia restaurant often do a double take when they spot the Queen with her wardrobe team enjoying a lively ladies’ lunch in the corner. Kelly is one of a small inner sanctum of trusty intimates who loosely fall into three camps: staff (including the Windsor stud groom who looks after the Queen’s personal horses and her pages), senior officials (including her Private Secretary) and ladies-in-waiting (two of whom have notched up a century’s service between them). ‘The Queen doesn’t really have a “best friend”, it’s just not her,’ says a trusted aide.
    Another Queen Mary dictum is as true as ever: avoid over-familiarity. ‘If the Queen ever feels affronted about something, she has the perfect answer,’ explains Kenneth Rose. ‘She just stares at the person with open eyes, absolutely no expression.’ Even experienced staff occasionally find that they have transgressed the unmarked line through what might seem an innocuous remark. A former official recalls: ‘Once, when everyone had just come back from their Christmas holidays, I said to the Queen: “Did you have a nice Christmas?” I got a very cold stare back. It was the kind of remark that you would make to anyone else but you were not encouraged to make to the Queen. Everybody had the same experience. You’d think: “Wow, we’re getting on really well.” And then she’d do something that just reminded you, that just pushed you back at a distance.’
    It was not a mark of displeasure or rudeness. On another occasion, all was explained: ‘The Queen told me that she was very influenced by Queen Mary who had given her tips about how you behave as a Queen. One of them was that you never allow yourself to get too close to your advisers. It was very clear in the Royal Family generally, but the Queen was very strong on this.’
    To outsiders, it can seem a peculiar code of behaviour but the royal/courtier working dynamic is a unique one. ‘You’re not there to be their mate. You mustn’t cross the line for very good reasons,’ says Elizabeth Buchanan, Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales until 2008. ‘When I got there, I was startled by how much you get to know about their life. People see things that are very intimate. A huge amount of trust is put upon your shoulders and it has to be respected. People might say to me: “How is