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and over 600 Kandyan dancers and drummers. 1 In New Zealand, according to the British
High Commissioner’s report, she was received with ‘adulation’ as was Philip, ‘who also,
in his own right, made a great and lasting impression’. The United Kingdom High
Commissioner in Australia reported similar enthusiasm there. ‘Neither at the time of the
Coronation nor during the Queen’s time in Australia did I ever hear or read any
croaking nonsense that this would prove to have been the last Coronation,’ he wrote. 2
For Elizabeth, there was the ‘smile’ problem again, just as there had been in Canada
on the whistlestop tours and motorcades. Lady Pamela Mountbatten, who was with her,
recalled:
What the Queen did find a strain was that as she was passing somebody it was the one moment in their life
when they could see the Queen and therefore she must be smiling; but she couldn’t maintain that smile for a
motorcade which was lasting perhaps 45 minutes. You get a twitch. So there is a moment when you have to
relax your muscles, and of course that one moment when you’re not smiling disappoints people who have
travelled miles to see you.
‘Isn’t she looking cross?’ Elizabeth would hear people saying as she went past, often
surreptitiously holding up her pearls to avoid having a white ring round her neck by the
evening. People were unashamed in their curiosity, Lady Pamela remembered:
She went through some awful ordeals – the Queen would be in her box looking at the race-course and the
entire crowd between the box and the course would have their backs to the course, and would gaze at her
with their racing-glasses. There is a strain after, say, the first 20 minutes. And the same at all civil balls and
so on. People were so fascinated to see what they might have thought of as a waxwork, actually moving and
speaking. 3
On one occasion, an over-enthusiastic spectator pushed herself between Elizabeth and
her lady-in-waiting. ‘I had to get out my hat pin and poke the damned woman with it to
get her out of the way,’ the lady said. Ladies-in-waiting on tour with the Queen have to
keep just behind her, an extra copy of her speech in their handbags, and to be on hand
to deal with the bouquets with which she is always being presented. Then there is
always the problem of the Queen and the lavatory; the lady-in-waiting is responsible for
gently persuading the cloakroom attendant to allow the Queen to powder her nose in
privacy and then standing guard outside the door. On one occasion in Philadelphia, the
Hon. Mary Morrison had to wrestle outside the door to the ladies’ cloakroom with an
FBI agent clad in a green satin evening dress who was determined to carry out her
mission of watching over the Queen.
In Tobruk Elizabeth and Philip watched as the new royal yacht, Britannia, came into
harbour with Prince Charles, now aged five, and Princess Anne, aged three, on board. It
had been five months since Elizabeth had seen her children, almost a repetition of her
own experience when her parents had gone on their tour of Australia and New Zealand
when she was just over a year old, yet the family greetings in the true Windsor tradition
were formal in public, a handshake from Charles for his mother and no hugs until they