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odkin’, Crossman recorded with quasi-disbelief on 23 March 1967, ‘because Queen
Elizabeth I did it with a bodkin and the tradition has been carried on’.
Crossman made a great show of disliking the ‘mumbo-jumbo’ which the involvement
of the monarchy in the workings of government entailed. When Lord President he upset
the traditionalist Duke of Norfolk by refusing to attend the State Opening of Parliament
and backed down only when Michael Adeane pointed out that he could ask the Queen to
excuse him, but added, ‘Of course, the Queen has as strong a dislike of public ceremonies
as you do. I don’t disguise from you the fact that it will certainly occur to her to ask
herself why you should be excused when she has to go, since you’re both officials…’
Crossman was fascinated by Elizabeth, who figures largely in his highly indiscreet
diaries. At Sandringham he noted her skill at doing an enormous and very difficult
jigsaw puzzle which was always laid out on a round table: ‘while she was standing there
talking to the company at large, her fingers were straying and she was quietly fitting in
the pieces while apparently not looking round’. He was surprised by her sensitivity to
other people’s feelings. ‘She asked me how morning sittings were going and I looked at
her in surprise. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “I wasn’t really criticizing.” And I realized how
sensitive she is and that my face must have revealed my irritation.’ In June 1967 seeing
the Queen on the eve of her departure for Canada for Expo 67, he said he hoped she
would enjoy it although the exhibitions were terrible. She said, ‘I’m too small to see
them’, and he had a sudden picture of the tiny little woman looking upwards and only
seeing the soles of the feet of the statues above her as she was traipsed miles and miles
around the red carpet. Some courtiers thought him hypocritical when he asked if he
could bring his family to see round Buckingham Palace and then made rude comments
about the monarchy in the press.
Nineteen sixty-four was in many ways a watershed year. Prince Edward, Elizabeth’s
last child, was born on 10 March. Early in the new year, 1965, Winston Churchill, now
aged ninety and for long an extinct volcano, suffered a massive stroke and he died a
fortnight later on 24 January. At Elizabeth’s instigation he was given a state funeral,
the coffin lying in state in Westminster Hall, as more than 300,000 people filed past. At
St Paul’s Cathedral for the funeral service, Elizabeth, as Mary Soames, Churchill’s
daughter, wrote, ‘waiving all precedence, awaited the arrival of her greatest subject’. At
the end of the service again the family preceded her out of the church, following the
coffin, before it was taken to the simple country churchyard at Bladon, Oxfordshire, less
than a mile from his birthplace at Blenheim. At the graveside was a wreath of white
flowers on which Elizabeth had written in her own hand, ‘From the Nation and the
Commonwealth. In grateful remembrance. Elizabeth R.’ In the same year Richard
Dimbleby, the great interpreter of the royal show, died of cancer. Neither the Queen nor
her entourage seem to have acknowledged the part Dimbleby had played in putting
across the image of the monarchy. He was not given a knighthood; however, the Queen
did send him six half-bottles of non-vintage champagne on his deathbed. In a sense
Dimbleby’s death was as symbolic as Churchill’s, marking the end of an era of public
deference, and even reverence, towards the monarchy. When Elizabeth celebrated the