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The whole affair put a strain on the marriage which had not been there before.
Even before the declaration was made on 9 April there had been a further pin-prick to
Philip’s self-esteem. The consort’s throne used by his mother-in-law as Queen Consort at
the annual state opening of Parliament was taken out of the House of Lords and sent for
storage at the country house of Lord Cholmondeley, the Lord Great Chamberlain,
because it was (mistakenly) believed that only a female consort could occupy a throne
and share the sovereign’s canopy on that occasion. A male consort would only be
allowed a ‘chair of state’ on a lower level. Philip could be forgiven for thinking that the
fanatical attachment of Government and Palace to what they believed to be correct
protocol was aimed at diminishing himself. He was particularly prickly with the Old
Guard of Elizabeth’s Palace household, headed by the to him stuffed-shirt figure of
Tommy Lascelles, whom Elizabeth had inherited from her father as Private Secretary,
and the charming but utterly conventional Joey Legh, Master of the Household, both of
whom tended to look upon him as an interloper. Philip, said one of his staff, ‘got very
fed up with purple corridors and people telling him what he couldn’t do’. It didn’t help
that, while the Queen’s secretariat moved smoothly in to the offices which were already
there, his own rooms had not been made ready. There was a noticeable gulf between the
two offices. ‘Tommy Lascelles was terrifying, he used to stare at you,’ a young lady clerk
who worked for Philip recalled. ‘None of the women in the private secretaries’ office
were under forty-five, the young ones in Prince Philip’s were regarded as if they were
the Folies Bergère…’ Things improved a year later when Lascelles retired and was
succeeded by Michael Adeane, who worked well with Edward Ford and Martin
Charteris, but, as they recall, Philip still believed in giving the private secretaries a hard
time.
As a sop and in deference to his organizational ability, Elizabeth appointed him to
chair the Coronation Commission. Discussions about the date of the ceremony had begun
even before the King’s funeral. A day in 1952 was ruled out for various reasons – the
restoration of the Abbey would not be complete in time, but more importantly, as
Churchill wrote to Robert Menzies, the Prime Minister of Australia, the seriousness of the
economic situation made it ‘vital that not a single working day should be unnecessarily
lost in this year of crisis’, or, as he put it more succinctly to Lascelles, ‘Can’t have
Coronations with the bailiffs in the house.’ 18 The Government at first favoured May
1953, but on mature consideration the Home Secretary advised the Cabinet that the
choice to be offered Elizabeth should be narrowed down to between 29 May and 2 June
in order to avoid a clash with Derby Day on 3 June, a sacred day in the horse-racing
calendar. The Cabinet advised that on the whole Tuesday, 2 June, was the most suitable
date. Elizabeth, already a fanatical devotee of the turf, quite understood; Tuesday was
to be the day. Lascelles wrote to Colville on 10 April conveying the Queen’s approval of
2 June. Colville then wrote to the Duke of Norfolk, who, as Earl Marshal, would be
responsible for all the Coronation arrangements, a half-humorous letter which
nevertheless showed the overwhelming importance attached to racing by the English
establishment (Churchill himself was a keen racehorse owner). Tuesday, 2 June, he told