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‘Her story was just like a nightmare,’ a shocked Charles wrote in his journal on 20
March 1974 after Anne had telephoned him in California, where he was on a visit with
his ship, the Jupiter,
and she told me about it as if it were a perfectly normal occurrence. Her bravery and superb obstinacy were
unbelievable – imagine refusing continually a kidnapper’s demands for her to get out of the car and climb
into his with all the time a pair of pistols being waved at her? Imagine seeing four people shot in cold blood
in front of you and still refusing to get out; to struggle to prevent the man pulling you out of the car while
Mark held on to your other arm until, after what must have seemed an eternity, the police arrived in
sufficient numbers to overpower the man? My admiration for such an incredible sister knows no bounds!
All seemed well, however, with the Phillipses’ marriage; after a stint as an instructor
at Sandhurst, Mark moved to the Ministry of Defence and Elizabeth bought them a
country estate, Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, in 1976. The vendor, ‘Rab’ Butler,
complained humorously that ‘the Queen drove a hard bargain’; the price for the
eighteenth-century house and 733 acres, rumoured in the press to be £750,000, was
nearer £500,000. The couple naturally built stables and Elizabeth loaned them the
money to buy a neighbouring farm. There was a good deal of public muttering and the
usual confusion between Elizabeth’s private fortune and the monies paid her under the
Civil List arrangements (Anne’s Civil List allowance had been increased on her marriage
from £15,000 to £35,000); rumours went around that they had built a swimming-pool
for the horses and Captain Phillips’s comment that they were ‘just like any other couple
with a mortgage’ was greeted with understandable derision. On 15 November 1977, the
morning after their fourth wedding anniversary, Anne gave birth to Elizabeth’s first
grandchild, Peter Phillips. Elizabeth was thrilled; confined, as usual, by her public
duties, she could not be at the hospital for the birth. She was due to hold an investiture
in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace that morning and could not disappoint the
several hundred people waiting for her. At 10.46 a.m. (the investiture was due to start
at 11) Mark Phillips telephoned her to give her the news; as a result, she did allow
herself to be ten minutes late and apologized: ‘I have just had a message from the
hospital. My daughter has given birth to a son, and I am now a grandmother.’ (She did
not, as Mrs Thatcher notoriously did in the same circumstances, use the royal ‘we’.)
Elizabeth’s relationship with her eldest son was growing more and more distant,
partly of necessity, since he spent most of his time away from home in the Navy after
leaving Cambridge, but more importantly from a lack of communication on a deep
personal level. ‘He worshipped the Queen but was in awe of her,’ Mountbatten’s private
secretary, John Barratt, wrote. 2 Their relations were superficially smooth and easy,
based on private jokes and shared experiences, but avoiding anything more serious or
personal as was the established custom in the royal family. Elizabeth, her days and often
also her evenings occupied with unavoidable routine, never took the initiative in
inviting her children’s confidences. Although she was their mother, she was still the
Queen and that invisible aura of distance surrounded her. She could laugh, joke, mimic
when she felt relaxed and in the mood, but she was still self-contained and reserved,