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the main focus of his attack was upon her courtiers. ‘The Queen’s encourage’, he wrote,
‘are almost without exception the “tweedy” sort’ who had failed to live with the times.
While the monarchy had become ‘popular’ and multi-racial (by which he meant in its
relations with the Commonwealth), the royal household had remained ‘a tight little
enclave of British ladies and gentlemen’ who might be ‘shrewd, broad-minded and
thoroughly suitable for positions at Court’, but the same could equally well be said of
people from any other background. In any case, said Altrincham, the fact that the
Queen’s staff was so restricted, socially and ethnically, created an unfortunate
impression. On the social side it seemed ‘utterly absurd’ to him that the presentation
parties for debutantes which should have been ‘quietly discontinued in 1945’ were still
being held every year. ‘Inevitably they made the monarchy seem to be identified with a
particular class.’ When tackled by reporters, Altrincham spoke quite plainly about
certain officials of the Queen’s household, specifically the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of
Scarbrough, Sir Michael Adeane, and the Master of the Horse, the Duke of Beaufort,
describing them as ‘not imaginative, a second-rate lot, simply lacking in gumption’.
The passages of Altrincham’s article which caused the greatest sensation were those
which were interpreted and quoted as direct criticism of Elizabeth, although Altrincham
had intended them to illustrate how her ‘true character’ was being misrepresented by her
advisers who made her behave and speak in a quite unnatural manner. Their motivation
was, he said, that they were afraid that the mystique of monarchy would be threatened
if her public words and actions resembled those of a normal person of her age. Her
speeches were ‘prim little sermons’ and her style of speaking ‘a pain in the neck’. ‘The
personality conveyed by the utterances which are put into her mouth is that of a
priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team, a prefect and a recent candidate for
confirmation.’ Most people who had not read the original article but only garbled
newspaper versions took this as a reference not to the content of the speeches but to
Elizabeth’s voice, which is, like her mother’s, high and girlish with a ‘cut-glass accent’.
Altrincham compounded his sin by appearing to include the revered Queen Mother in
his strictures:
Like her mother she [the Queen] appears to be unable to string even a few sentences together without a
written text. When she has lost the bloom of youth, the Queen’s reputation will depend, far more than it
does now, upon her personality. It will not then be enough for her to go through the motions; she will have
to say things which people can remember and do things on her own initiative which will make people sit up
and take notice. As yet there is little sign that such a personality is emerging…
Altrincham was publicly physically attacked in front of television cameras by a sixtyfour-year-old
empire loyalist, who was lying in wait for him as he came out of
Broadcasting House. The borough of Altrincham in Cheshire from which his father,
Edward Grigg, a distinguished civil servant, had taken his title, disowned him (as soon
as he was legally allowed to in 1963, Altrincham repaid the compliment by giving up his
peerage, becoming known as John Grigg). In the storm of abuse that descended upon
his head, no one listened to Altrincham’s reasons for writing what he did. They were in