Secret recordings? How the late Queen feared Harry and Meghan leaks

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:11Ahead of May's critical local elections, we're taking the daily tea on the road, visiting key battlegrounds across Britain and answering your questions with four special live events. Join me and Camilla, plus special guests, in London on April 27th, Cardiff on April 28th, Warwick on April 29th, and Worthing on April 30th. You can buy tickets now at telegraph.co.uk forward slash Daily Tea Live.

1:46Royal expert Hugo Vickers met the late Queen over 40 times and he joins us in the studio to talk about his new biography of her.

1:54Camilla: What was her marriage to Prince Philip really like? What's the truth behind giving Andrew that money to settle with Virginia Giffray? And why did the Queen suspect the Sussexes were miked up on one visit to see her? Hugo lifts the lid on life behind palace gates during the reign of Elizabeth II. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominy. And me, Tim Stanley.

2:26Camilla: We have in the Daily Tea studio today Hugo Vickers, author extraordinaire, royal expert. You've written many, many books. This enormous tome, Queen Elizabeth II, A Personal History, I assume, Hugo, is the culmination of many, many years' work. Yes, I sort of claim 60 years of work because I started very early. I mean, the Queen, my mother took me to see the Queen and the Shah of Persia in the state procession in the Mall in 1959. And I enjoyed it so much that I insisted on being taken out of school to see General de Gaulle the following year. What was interesting about his ride up the Mall was at a certain point he suddenly stood up and saluted his old office for Carlton Gardens where he'd been during the war.

3:10And so years later, the Queen came to unveil a walkway panel in the Mall and I asked her whether my memory was right. and she said, yes, with me very much trying to persuade him not to. Really? Because as you can imagine, the thought of an enormous general standing up in an open carriage was the last thing you wanted. Yes, of course.

3:25Camilla: You might fall out. Tim, you were thumbing through some of the photographs. Yes, I was just looking through some of the photos in the book, you younger in 1979 with the Queen at a children's party. This is based upon your private diaries, I believe. Well, quite a lot, yes, because what I found was that, thank goodness, when I first started being a writer and I was writing a book about a woman called Gladys Deak and Duchess of Marlborough. A lot of people told me things which were fascinating, but they weren't relevant to the book. So I started keeping a diary and I kept writing things in. And thank goodness I did, because I don't know about you, but we all forget so much.

3:59Oh, yes. And so there's a lot of conversations with people who knew the Queen and indeed the Queen herself sometimes and other members of the royal family all went into the diaries. And so one of the sources was my own diary. And you met her on over 40 occasions. Yes, I saw her, of course, many, many more times than that. But the first time I met her was in St George's Chapel when I was a school guide there in 1968, when she came to look at the little tomb house being built where they're now all buried. And she just came around the corner with Prince Edward held by the hand. And there was what seemed like a very long silence.

4:34And then she said, are you a chapel guide? Well, I had a thing on me saying chapel guide, so she was onto a winner there. But the Queen Mother then came around the corner a second later and said, and who are you? So I said, Hugo Vickers, ma 'am. She said, oh, yes. So for weeks afterwards, I wondered, had the dean told the queen mother we would meet? No, of course not. It was just her way of making a 16-year-old feel happy. How does a journalist gain access to or win the confidence of a royal? Gradually. Patiently. Patiently, gradually. I suppose that over the years, the things that I've written here and there, they read and they begin to trust you.

5:10Actually, my first job, which was fascinating in this world, when my sort of passion and interest got harnessed, was actually working with the great Hugh Montgomery Massingberg, who is a famous telegraph figure, as later on the obituary editor who revolutionized obituaries. And he did a book called Burke's Guide to the Royal Family, which is a very useful reference book. And I was sent off to do all the standard reference biographies of all the royal family living at the time. Now you'd get it all off the royal website. But in those days, I actually went to all the offices and even to the Duke of Windsor's house in Paris.

5:44And I met Anne Hawkins, who was the Queen's assistant press secretary. And she rather adopted me. And, you know, I found one or two mistakes in the documents they were putting out and things. So gradually, in that sense, I suppose, you know, I became trusted. And she was really helpful. And as the years went by, there were one or two royal household figures who, you know, used to say they sort of created me. and I'm happy to live with that.

6:08Camilla: When you got up close and personal, so to speak, with the Queen, how did you find her? I think what's interesting about Elizabeth II is, on one hand, the most photographed and probably best-known woman on earth, both in life and in death, and yet, on the other, elusive, somewhat misunderstood. What was she actually like, Hugo? Well, the funny thing is, I never risk saying, I was never frightened of the Queen for some reason. A lot of people are. A lot of people are pulverised into silence. And I don't know what it was, but there was something that made me feel that I could occasionally say something to her of interest.

6:46Now, the interesting thing about the Queen was that she loved catching people out. One of her favourite questions was delivered, by the way, with great theatrical timing. Are you sure? Really? Well, you better be.

6:58Camilla: That is quite scary, actually, isn't it? Yes, very scary. She'd used it on ministers and things. Of course, she'd read the documentary. If they hadn't done their research, you know, she liked catching them. I think Prince Philip loved catching people as well. He particularly hated company chairman who delivered slick speeches and really didn't know what they were talking about in factories and things like that. You know, people who swanned in. He hated those people. Luckily, I learned that. But as we're going back to the Queen. So, for example, she had the most amazing random access to facts. And there was one occasion when there was a funeral in one of her relations and I was there for some reason.

7:31and there was a reception at Cumberland Lodge and she came over to talk to me and I said, oh, this is really interesting because Prince William is going to New Zealand and the Maori king is refusing to meet him because he hasn't been given long enough time. And isn't it interesting because when you went to New Zealand in 1953, Sydney Holland wouldn't let you meet that particular Maori king, his predecessor. And the Queen said immediately, well, you know, he's only a bus driver in everyday life. How did she know that? I mean, it wasn't coming up, you know. Yes. And she could always come out with an anecdote or something to, you know, to back up a story.

8:07If you, you know, if you talk to her. But one time I was very lucky to sit. The only time I actually sat next to her at dinner with the Carnarvons at Milford Lake House. There were seven people there only. And I was writing the book about Prince Philip's mother. And I found myself explaining to the Queen the nature of her illness and how she came out of it. And that was really fascinating, as you can imagine. And of course, if you were able to interest the Queen, as indeed her grandmother, Queen Mary, you would have her full attention. I would suspect that if you ceased to interest her or you weren't there, you didn't exist.

8:39So if I saw the Queen, she talked to me as if we saw each other every day. But the rest of the time, I didn't exist at all. And I didn't have a sort of particular access to her or anything. It was only just when I ran into her here and there.

8:52Camilla: But she seemed to be a scary figure, maybe because of her rather austere and serious appearance on stamps and money. But in real life, so to speak, Hugo, a softer character, one with a sense of humour. I mean, when I met her briefly at a jubilee reception at Buckingham Palace, what surprised me about her is how smiley she was and easygoing she seemed. Well, the smiling is very interesting, I think. Going back to the Queen Mother, if you made the Queen Mother laugh, I think you might be wrong to assume you had amused her because she was an actress and she would respond automatically. If you could make the Queen laugh, you could be absolutely certain you had because otherwise she wouldn't, and I rather like that.

9:33She was an executive woman. You know, she was an executive. So if you could get that grand piano smile, gosh, that was so rewarding. She did have a wonderful smile. She had a wonderful complexion too, didn't she?

9:43Camilla: She did. Very good skin. All the royals have good skin. Yes, they do. Is it because they've never been down mines? Well, of course, they've probably been down more mines than we have. Well, they probably have on visits. Shaking a lot of hands down mines. Opening ribbons on mines. Described her life as relatively simple. What did you mean by that? Well, I think she was very grounded. You know, she liked to walk her dogs, feed her dogs. She, you know, famously Tupperware and all that stuff. And, you know, she watched the news on the television and she read the Daily Telegraph and, you know, she listened to the radio at certain times and all those things.

10:14Can we just stop there?

10:15Camilla: She read the Daly Telegraph. We've always known that. I know we have, but it's good to remind ourselves of this. No, it is. It's very important. I'm wondering about my Megxit coverage and what she might have made of it, but we'll get onto that in just a moment, Hugo. All right, but the thing is that I think that, you see, she was two different people. She was the Queen and the woman inside the Queen. So sometimes, for example, if there was a problem, some private secretary produced a document, she would look at it and she would say, what should the Queen do? In other words, a bit like what should a mother or a father do?

10:43You know, you might want to say, oh, we all did that. Occasionally you have to bang the table and say unacceptable. And I think that was very interesting about her. So not what would she like to do. Exactly. But what should someone in my office do? Yes, what should the Queen do? What is the right thing for the Queen to do? And then she would do it. And so, for example, it's actually a rather fascinating sort of saga with E.D. Armin that I unearthed, which was that E.D. Armin wrote to her. The Queen used to have to meet all these mass murderers and things the whole time. She had him to lunch once.

11:11But he invited her to come out to Uganda for the 10th anniversary of independence. Of course, she wasn't going to go, but she asked the foreign secretary for formal advice as to how to reply. And the foreign office picked away at these different things. And the first message was, I send to you and the people of Uganda my best wishes on this auspicious occasion. And a subtle foreign office hand said, I send through you to the people of Uganda, etc. Right. Yes. Right. Right. Interesting. And she would always do that. I mean, the difference between, as you know, a constitutional monarch, if the prime minister gives the queen, gave the queen official advice, formal advice, she was obliged to take it.

11:51But if she advised him, he wasn't obliged to take it, though he'd do jolly well to listen. But she's probably talking very good sense. Can you resolve the debate over who her favorite prime minister was? I don't think, I think somebody once said this, she didn't discriminate between prime ministers. And the interesting thing is that the only thing we know about the relationship between the Queen and her prime ministers comes from the prime ministers, not from the Queen. The thing came up the other day with somebody as an American writer writing about the Queen and American presidents. And Trump has been going around saying he was the favorite president.

12:23And I said, well, don't you think the Queen sent all the presidents away thinking that?

12:27Camilla: I think maybe Melania was the favourite First Lady of Prince Philip, who very much enjoyed driving her around in his Range Rover from memory during Trump 1.0. I was intrigued to read about, well, there's a line in the book where you say that obviously the Queen noted Cherry Blair's reluctance to curtsy, and the Queen Mother was going around in the back row going, stiff knees, stiff knees. That's right. Quite funny. But what you probably maybe didn't know before the book is that when the Blairs went to say goodbye to the Queen, when he stepped down as prime minister, Cherie Blair came downstairs saying, and I curtsied to her.

13:04And I thought, yeah, the Queen wins in the end. Yes, the Queen always wins. And it's so silly. Sorry, I thought interrupting. But I was interested because we'd have got a state visit coming up to, if it happens, you know, in America.

13:15Camilla: Yes, indeed. And Tony Crossland, as a Labour MP, Labour Foreign Secretary, went with the Queen and he wore black tie at the white tie state banquet given by Gerald Ford. And apparently he was perfectly happy to wear white tie, but he'd worn a black tie at the Giscard state banquet in London. So diplomatically, it would have been the most incredible faux pas and insult to the French if he then put on a white tie. So these stupid, sorry. No, nothing wrong with that. Be honest, Hugo. These Labour politicians and their wives sometimes like to make a point, and I think it sort of ties them up in knots, frankly.

13:50They should just get on with it.

13:51Camilla: Well, indeed, we all fondly remember Jeremy Corbyn donning white tie for the visit of President Xi, because, of course, he was quite happy to whine and dine a fellow communist. The other observation you make in the book, that turbulent period, really, that kind of characterised the end of the Queen's reign, unfortunately, turbulence with Brexit being asked to prorogue Parliament by Boris Johnson, then leading into Covid, then, of course, with Megxit mixed in and indeed illness, her own illness and her beloved husband's illness. It's just that relationship with Boris Johnson, a degree of consternation over whether Carrie, who was then not married to the prime minister, should be invited to Balmoral.

14:30Camilla: But I've always been intrigued by the relationship between the Queen and Boris Johnson. I wrote a piece once suggesting that Boris Johnson made the king, now king, then Prince of Wales, rather uncomfortable, that the Queen got on with him quite well. And equally, he looked to her as a bit of a mother figure because at the time, his own mother was in ill health and died. I don't know what you know about their relationship, Hugo. I don't know very much, except that, of course, what was very interesting was that two days before the Queen died, she gave him very sound advice about how to comport himself as an ousted prime minister.

15:04Don't be bitter, go forward, that sort of thing. That's the sort of thing she was really good at. I think she was incredibly supportive to her prime ministers, a simple reason that she was there by hereditary, by accident of birth, and they were elected. So she would always deal with the elected man. And I think he would have been a very, very unwise person to insult an incumbent prime minister in the presence of the Queen. She would always support him or her.

15:29Camilla: Yes. I always feel sorry for presidents because who have they got to talk to, apart from their stockbroker or their priest? but the Prime Minister had this woman who had been there for decades, seen it all before and knew exactly the right thing to say. And they all said that, didn't they? I mean, the ones who've talked have all said that, I mean, Blair even said, you know, apart from his wife, who could he talk to but the Queen? Because it would go no further. There's no record kept, you know, of those meetings. So they can unburden themselves. And, of course, with her incredible experience, she could advise them, well, you say this happened, but, you know, 20 years ago, this is how we dealt with it.

16:03Over to you. Deal with it. Well, of course, I'd love to have been there when she subtly mentioned to Blair when he arrived that she'd been seeing state papers longer than his entire life.

16:13Camilla: Yes, that would have gone down well. Is it problematic, Hugo? And it's almost as if her reign is represented by this book. You've chronicled her life from beginning to end. And I would say nine tenths of this is taken up with the highs and lows of her 75 year reign. And yet even today, there remains an obsession about the final years because they were so turbulent. So we have the Annus Horribilis. Fair enough. We have 1997 and Princess Diana's death. These are kind of landmark royal moments. But then we also have the 2020s onwards. The last few years of her being alive, marred with controversy.

16:55Camilla: OK, politics, Brexit, COVID, but Megxit. And it's probably frustrating to you that when the newspapers have thumbed through your book and looked for salacious headlines, they do largely focus on Harry and Meghan. Well, with great respect, journalists have very short memories. I know we do. We're terrible. OK. Historians and biographers do try to look at the whole picture. But actually, you know, you make a very fair point. But what was interesting to me as I went through her life was this extraordinary euphoria in 1981 at the Charles and Diana wedding. Yes. And it really couldn't be sustained.

17:32I mean, to begin with, and I mean, I lived right through all this. And so to begin with, of course, there's this great excitement. And everybody thought it would sort of calm down and it didn't. And the press, as you know, build people up and then they try and knock them down. And they couldn't do it with Diana for a long time. They tried and it failed. And then eventually, of course, when they realised that things were going wrong, it did work. So you enter this sort of awful phase which goes on and on and on. And there's one thing after another, you know, one divorce after another, one crisis.

18:01I mean, even Major Ronald Ferguson has a sort of little excursion to the Wigmore Club and things like that. Oh, yes, that's Sarah Ferguson's father just for the uninitiated.

18:11Camilla: And you say she found, the Queen found Diana, quotes, tiresome in the end. Yes, well, the whole Diana thing is really complicated. I was very interested in what one of the Queen Mother's ladies in waiting said to me, which was, she said, I could tell you something I saw with my very own eyes at Clarence House. And I could also steer you towards somebody else who was in the room at the same time who will tell you something totally different. So it's very hard to get that balance right. But the Golden Jubilee was a sort of moment. There was sympathy for the Queen losing her mother and sister. And things moved forward a bit.

18:41It really was only when Charles finally married Camilla that it completely settled down. because up until, as you will well remember, up until the day of the wedding, she was the hated mistress. And then, whoops, suddenly she's HRH, the Duchess of Cornwall, and she's the supportive wife. And look, since then, she hasn't put a foot wrong. Everybody loves her. And it was fascinating because up until that point, the press was still needling away.

19:03Camilla: But 1997 was difficult. That summer was difficult. Do you think she mishandled things until the famous speaking to you, not just as a queen, but as a grandmother speech? Well, what's interesting is that quite a number of members of the royal family have died over a bank holiday weekend. Princess Marina, Lord Mountbatten, Prince William of Gloucester. And in those days, it would be a little thing in the paper saying the Queen is breaking off from her holiday and coming down for the funeral. And we all thought, wow, you know, that's amazing. She's coming down specially to pay the respects. With Diana, this evidently wasn't good enough.

19:36But of course, again, from the point of view of the media, it was a very long week. First of all, it got the shock of her death. Secondly, the paparazzi chasing the car. Thirdly, the drunk chauffeur. And finally, where was the Queen? And Martin Chartres, one of her really best private secretaries, he did say to me, he said, I think we were a day late. But as we, I tried to say the whole time, but she's looking after her grandchildren. And we accept that now. But they, God, you couldn't say that at the time. I got my head bitten off left and right.

20:03Camilla: Although she rescued it. She did rescue it with that televised address, right? I think it's the only time she was actually forced to change her plan. and she came down a day before. Then, of course, which I know took a lot out of her making that speech, but of course it was live in the Chinese dining room at Buckingham Palace. And whereas, and you know the world of the media better than I do, people are pretty cynical, you know, when Mother Teresa died, well, the nun's dead, you know, that sort of stuff. But, oh, my goodness, you could have heard a pin drop even in the newsrooms of places like ITN when the Queen was speaking.

20:33And, of course, actually what was wonderful was that the British people, the world, they wanted to hear from their Queen. You know, they really did. And so as a mother figure, what she was doing is what she was did so brilliantly was trying to tell people, you know, calm down. Let's go through the funeral tomorrow and pay our respects and sort of unite after this difficult time.

20:52Camilla: But this is the contradiction. She was a mother stroke grandmother of the nation. We remember that during Covid with the We'll Meet Again speech, which was probably the best public address by a high profile figure throughout the entire pandemic. Yes. Remember that speech? She was also someone who was happy to play with her own image, like at the Olympics, James Bond. But at the same time, we have this image, and let's get into the Harry and Meghan revelations and also the Andrew ones. So she's grandmother stroke mother of the nation, and yet she has complicated relationships with her own family members.

21:27Camilla: The king accuses her of being a bit too distant. She's non-confrontational. Some of the revelations about Harry and Meghan... Well, according to Hugo, the late Queen said to a confidant regarding the Sussex's decision to leave the royal family, quote, and now Harry has opted out, and for what? To be a carer for Archie. And I put it rather more unkindly. I say he couldn't be Captain General of the Royal Marines while lying barefoot under a tree in California. The Queen actually, if you remember, did actually give them a year to think it through to see if it was going to work or not. and then they could possibly come back, as you know, they didn't.

22:07But, I mean, I think it was quite right. You can't be half in, half out. And, of course, the Queen did always do her duty. She saw, let's face it, what happened to her father when he had to step in when his brother abdicated. He'd never seen a state paper in his life. No. And he had a really difficult reign because he had the war in the middle of it and then his health collapsed and things. And so she was, I mean, it was very much duty first in her case. And so to see somebody copping out like that must have been immensely disappointing, especially since he was doing a very good job with the Commonwealth and the Invictus Games.

22:38She gave that couple the entire Commonwealth to explore and that seemed to be brilliant, didn't you think, at the time? Yes, of course.

22:44Camilla: And also he was so good in the Caribbean. There were countries flirting with republicanism. He swept in and persuaded them to keep supporting queen and country. I was in the Caribbean, no doubt you were, when he was on his 2016 trip. Yes. And all the people I talked to, which I'll be honest was maybe two taxi drivers, and boss said, well, we love him. He plays cricket with our kids. No, that's right. We had to go on that trip. Do you remember after I broke the Harry is dating Meghan story and I was trying to avoid him thinking he'd be really angry with me? Actually, he was fine. He went on to be very angry with me, but that's another story.

23:18You say, Hugo, that the Queen even suggested that Harry should wait a year before marrying Meghan and that the Queen would ask her lady in waiting to stay with her during phone calls with Prince Harry. quote, the distress the Sussexes caused the Queen in the last years of her life cannot be overestimated. What was her issue with Meghan? Well, I mean, it's obvious what her issue was, but I mean, the point is that, you know, they could... It's not, sorry, it's not. Well, trust had been broken, basically. And so I think, you know, as far as, you know, having somebody in the room, I think certainly this one time is to stop them taking photographs or being wired, or God knows what they were up to.

23:55Camilla: What do you mean, wired for telly? Yeah, wired for recording. So the Queen thought that they might be wired up to be recording conversations with her for Netflix purposes? It's always a possibility. I'm not saying it happened on that occasion. Hang on, let's break this down. What do you actually think, first of all, the Queen thought of Meghan? What do you think her opinion of her was? I don't know. I don't know what she thought of her, but I suspect that she thought less of her as time went on. Because there's a row over Meghan allegedly being rude to Windsor Gardeners. Tell us about that. Well, that I do know to be true.

24:30She apparently was rude to one of the undergardeners and the head gardener went up to the Queen and reported this and the Queen got into her car and went down and tore a strip off her because you cannot be rude to staff, you know. She didn't know how to behave with staff. I mean, you know much more about Meghan Markle than I do, endless people leaving her employ and so forth. I mean, she'd been rude to the gardener, so she needed to be ticked off, put in her place.

24:53Camilla: Also, there's a story in the book about Meghan requesting that people didn't park in a nearby car park next to a sports field because she, quotes, didn't want to look at cars from the windows of Frogmore House. Well, you probably know where that car park is. I do. I remember we reported on it at the time and it was a subject of various denials until we finally realised it was a true story and indeed published it. I'm with her on that one. Are you? You don't like to look... You want to look out your window and see a whole load of cars. Tim, don't you live in a basement flat? You must see car tyres literally from your kitchen.

25:24Camilla: I can't see anything out of my window. Why? Because you need them cleaned. All I can see is a fence. It's like I live behind the Berlin Wall. Do you know what? I'm going to come round to your house with my method spray. But back to the royals, Hugo. OK, and then also we have Prince Philip in his own unique style, simply referring to Meghan as, quotes, the American. Yes. What do we read into that, Hugo? We read into it whatever you like. What are you reading into it, Hugo? Because I'm getting the impression that the Duke of Edinburgh perhaps saw through Meghan's... You could say that. I obviously couldn't comment, but I suspect you're right.

25:58Camilla: Theatrical ways. I don't know. And then there's the name of the child. Ah. Well, that was Odius, yes. Odius? Yes. Wasn't it rather sweet for them to call their daughter Lilibet after the Queen's nickname? Do you think so? To use the Queen's name that was used by her actual private family? I know, I don't think so. I mean, no, that's absolutely shocking. Did they ask the Queen that they could use her? No, they didn't. She said they did, but no, they didn't. Right. No, the Queen was furious. And the Queen apparently didn't like Meghan's very elegant wedding dress. No, well, she's allowed to have her personal opinions.

26:34I mean, that wedding, of course, was pretty dire, wasn't it?

26:37Camilla: Was it? Was it not? Well, you have a lovely paragraph or two in there about the reactions of the royals to Bishop Currie's very evangelical sermon. It was, yeah, it was passionate. Did you like it as a Catholic? I did enjoy it. Yes, I did. And he's actually an Episcopalian. He's not even an evangelical. He was just American. He was just American. Everyone mistook him being American for some sort of Bible thump, but he's really not. I was broadcasting with NBC that day, and we were obviously off air to take in the ceremony live. And even the Today Show hosts were saying, this is just too much. OK, well, what frustrates me, speaking to two great royal journalists, is things are sold to us on one occasion as this is wonderful.

27:21And then a few months later, it's sold to us as that was terrible. And behind the scenes, we were all saying it was terrible. Well, make up your minds.

27:29Camilla: I quite liked it because I loved the looks that the royals were giving each other. But the message we were told was new blood in the family. She's going to liven and freshen things up. And we're so happy Harry's met someone. I wrote that. And then we started getting reports that they were both behaving badly in the wedding planning on Beyond and that oodles of staff were leaving their positions unhappy. And lo and behold, Buckingham Palace was building up a, quotes, bullying dossier. You know why it all exploded after the wedding? Hugo will agree with me on this. The palace is able to keep a really tight lid on Harry and Meghan's behaviour when it's only being demonstrated within the palace.

28:05Camilla: The palace can control it. If you plan a wedding, you bring in all sorts of outside agencies, people involved in choirs, people involved in flower arranging, people involved in bridesmaid dress fittings. And then people start to leak stuff because they aren't being controlled by the palace. And that's how suddenly the narrative changes. And we hear stories about Meghan requesting that, you know, the musty smell of St George's Chapel is improved with air fresheners. That's what happens, isn't it, Hugo? And what about the, you know, her sound of music, Julie Andrews' solitary walk up the aisle? I mean, the whole thing is you get, she starts off at Cliveden in a car with her mother.

28:48She drops her mother off. She goes down. She does her Julie Andrews walk. She has Prince Charles pick her up under the organ screen and go in. Don't tell me that was the first thing they decided. There must have been screams and yells and rires about all that until they reached their conclusion. And the other thing, of course, which is fascinating, slightly diverting from the Queen, but why didn't Prince Harry meet Mr Markle? Why do you think? Well, there can only be three reasons if you think of it. One, that she was ashamed of him, which I don't think is the case. Two, that he had done something which we don't know about because actually when Prince Harry, one of the interviews, it said that when he rang up to say could he marry his daughter, Mr Markle said you can as long as you never raise your hand against her.

29:29Well, you and I don't live in that world. We don't live in that world. Why would you say that? I don't think that's that. I think somebody put it to me, and I think it's much more likely, that she was worried that he would warn Prince Harry, watch out, you don't quite know what you're getting into.

29:42Camilla: Well, he'd already received that warning from her half-sister and brother, but then you could say she might be much maligned. It was odd that she didn't have any other relatives there bar her mum. Indeed. Coming up next, the Queen's relationship with Prince Andrew, the truth about her marriage to Prince Philip, and why the Duke of Edinburgh nearly sued the TV series The Crown.

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31:48Camilla: Hugo, can we move on to Prince Andrew? If you insist. And we must. I'm sorry, Hugo. It's an occupational hazard, I'm afraid. What's your analysis of relationship between the Queen and her so-called favourite son? Was he her favourite? Well, I think the thing is that Lord Mountbatten used to go around saying that there was a very good reason why there was a 10-year gap between Charles and Anne and Andrew and Edward, which was that Prince Philip wasn't given the Mountbatten name. Well, that's nonsense. They were dying to have another child, and when Prince Andrew came along, they were absolutely thrilled.

32:21And there's a letter from the Queen to one of her cousins saying, you know he's going to get spoiled and I think he did a bit you know and so I do know that the queen got much more a sort of maternal joy out of the two younger ones than the two older ones because she was by then a very much more assured queen yeah and and she wasn't frightened of the nanny anymore and she was able to spend time with them I remember seeing her you know with Prince Edward held by the hand in his little blue coat and I remember seeing Prince Andrew as a little boy giving out a cup at the Windsor horse show when he was about six or eight or something.

32:54And what was interesting also was that Suttle Beaton once went to take a, well, he often went to the palace to photograph them. In 1964, he was photographing the baby Prince Edward. And Suttle Beaton was pretty acerbic. And in his diaries, he wrote a very good account of this. And it's always difficult photographing the Queen because she wasn't photogenic. You looked through the camera, you saw this wonderful vision, it never translated. Whereas you couldn't take a bad picture of Princess Margaret. Prince Philip, as you can imagine, what's he doing? Hasn't he finished yet? I mean, goodness me.

33:22Yes, get on with it. Get on with it. And then also, by the way, what exposure would you use and could I borrow your ladder? You know, a bit of a dilemma there. Princess Anne, apparently very stroppy, so Sussel Beaton said, you know, I know you hate being photographed. Go to the window. Hated looking to the left. Hated looking to the right. And she sort of squammed and wriggled and he took a few pictures. Prince Andrew, at that point, age four, he said, was the politest and nicest little boy, you know, that you could possibly meet. and the politeness was instilled into him. And that is probably the little boy the Queen always saw.

33:52I mean, mothers and sons, you know, there is this bond.

33:55Camilla: Why do you think she gave him that£12 million to settle with Virginia Giffray? First of all, do we know that it was£12 million? I think we've more or less established that. Well, I mean, the simple reason is that, you know, the whole thing was going to eclipse the Platinum Jubilee and this wanted to get the whole thing out of the way. It didn't work, though, did it? And that is what people do in America. you'll find it happens the whole time. People are wrongly accused of things. They pay up because it's cheaper to do that than to go to court and fight it with all the things that come out. But apparently not good enough for the world, you know.

34:26I am intrigued and delighted to read that the Queen really liked Sarah Ferguson.

34:31Camilla: You are obsessed with Sarah Ferguson. It's like Sarah Ferguson and Angela Rayner. You've got this thing for ginger, controversial women. I'm a Jacobite, but for Sarah Ferguson. Okay, fair enough. I want to see her restored. I think the thing is that I've always said that the most successful members of the royal family are the ones that don't compete with the queen. You know, so, for example, Sophie Wessex now, Edinburgh absolutely didn't, and Catherine absolutely didn't, all supportive. Diana, for one reason or another, did compete with the queen. I mean, I don't think she necessarily set out to.

35:00No. But that was the effect. But Sarah Ferguson, just good fun girl and, you know, no competition at all. And I know the queen got on well with her. And the thing about Sarah Ferguson is, you know, she's like a puppy, really. she's either sort of leaping up and licking your face or she's cowed in the corner waiting to be sort of whipped for something she's done wrong.

35:17Camilla: I thought you were going to say, or doing a poo on the carpet. Well, no, I wasn't going to say that. But hang on a minute, Philip didn't share the Queen's admiration for Fergie. He once described her as, quotes, odd and pointless. He also said he chose her, you know. He chose her? He chose her to be... No, but Andrew. Oh, you've made your bed, you lie in it now, son. That sort of thing. Right. This is the other mystery, isn't it? Why couldn't Prince Philip, with all of his no-nonsense ways, have turned around to his errant son at some point between him being branded Randy Andy and Air Miles Andy and said, could you just wind your neck in and stop hanging around with paedophiles?

35:55Well, maybe he did. I don't know. But what I do know, because I've seen the letters, is that he made a very, very spirited attempt to keep the Wales marriage going. because there was a time when I think Paul Burrell had published a letter in which saying something that Prince Philip said something very rude about Diana. And so as I'd worked with his office, I was asked to come into Buckingham Palace and read these letters and they were very moving. I hope one day they can be published in full. Prince Philip's letters to Diana and her replies.

36:25Camilla: Really? So he was basically marriage guidance counsellor? Yes, he was very much keen to try to keep the marriage going publicly even if it was difficult privately. He talked about how difficult it had been for him when he first married into the family and the various, you know, as an outsider. He advised them, you know, to go to the opera together a lot because they both liked music and things like that. We know it didn't work in the long run. But he also said at one point, you know, Charles does find it very difficult to talk to you because every time he has a conversation with you, it ends up in the columns of the, am I allowed to say, the Daily Mail.

37:01Camilla: You're allowed to say the Daily Mail, probably to Richard Kaye, and we must admire him for his journalistic capabilities. So, you know, that doesn't make things very easy, does it? I'm astonished to read that towards the end of the Queen's life, her husband spent so much time living away from her, and you write that, quote, in a sense they had separated. Well, in a funny way, yes. He'd done his bit, you know, he'd been working away for years, and he wanted to go up to Wood Farm. They apparently talked every day on the telephone, and she did used to go up to Wood Farm quite a lot. used to go up by train, more than we realised.

37:32Camilla: That's from Sandringham, just in case anyone needs the geography. Around the corner from where Prince Andrew is moving into, Marsh Farm. Yes, I've been to Wood Farm, I've seen it. It's a modest establishment, but he was very happy up there, sort of painting and reading and carriage driving and things like that. And, of course, the famous time when he overturned his vehicle. Yes. I couldn't resist the one occasion to quote Giles Brandreth, but Giles Brandreth at an oldie lunch shortly afterwards said, Imagine Prince Philip on a speed awareness course, which I thought was a lovely concert. I'd love to see that, yes.

38:04But Hugo, you say he felt he had done his bit. You mean in terms of the job of being a Jew or the marriage? No, no, the job. I mean, listen, he was also at Windsor Castle for Easter. He was around at Christmas. He did a lot of things. And then, of course, when COVID came, the Queen got him back into the castle. And they were together from March 2020 until he died in April 2021.

38:28Camilla: But you are making the point in this book that he did indeed die alone. On the last night of his life, he gave nurses the slip, shuffled along the corridor of his Zimmer frame, helped himself to a beer and drank it in the oak room. Good for him. The Queen was not present when he died. And you say that when she was told she was, quote, absolutely furious that, as so often in life, he left without saying goodbye. Yes, but that, of course, when she was furious, in a way it's sort of tongue-in-cheek in a way, it's like, well, he always left without saying goodbye, so he wasn't telling me to be surprised.

39:04Well, on this occasion, a lot of people die when they're alone. Basically, he died rather suddenly. He got up, didn't feel well, he had a bath and didn't feel well, laid down, and then he just died. So she was in the castle at the time. She wasn't far away.

39:15Camilla: No, but it's amazing because you reveal that he had pancreatic cancer, which is one of the most deadly. So it's astonishing he lived for eight years. Well, he had a very big operation in 2013. I don't know whether you would remember that he disappeared for quite a long time. And in fact, I know that he was sometimes just sort of sitting on a chaise longue, soaking up the sun. And then, you know, if he was well, he would go for a walk and things. And then suddenly he reappeared, I think, in Edinburgh or Glasgow around a couple of months later and resumed his duties. Yes. So he had a huge operation.

39:50and I don't know if I should say this but he had I think a stent in his arm they could just pop steroids onto him if they needed to boost him up

39:57Camilla: and can I ask very delicately whether we should probe any further his very close relationship with his carriage driving partner Penny Braybourne who spent a lot of time with him in his later years I mean she was great she was very good with him and the Queen I remember going to church in the Royal Chapel at Windsor and all three of them were there together. Are we saying anything more about this, Hugo? No, we're not. No, but she's great. I mean, he was fond of her and he was a great support to her when her marriage was in problem difficulties, which, as you know, it was and so on. But yeah, and she spent quite a lot of time up at Wood Farm as well.

40:37And after, I think, certainly after he died, the Queen invited her to the Windsor Horse Show. So everybody happy.

40:44Camilla: Okay. I love this idea of Prince Philip kind of repositioned as the Deirdre, the dear Deirdre of the royal family, helping people with their marital woes. He wasn't happy to finish, though, Hugo, with The Crown. You're not happy with it. You don't like The Crown, do you? I hate everything about The Crown. Why? I agree. Because it was a lavish production with good script, good actors and actresses, but it's fundamentally just totally dishonest and they couldn't care less. Their historical advisor said at one point, there is the truth and then there is the emotional truth by which I think he meant that if you don't like the truth, you just make it up.

41:20So sometimes what they do...

41:20Camilla: Hang on, who is their... Is this a rival author? Remind me who their historical advisor is. I can't quite remember his name at the moment. Yes, this is somebody... This is one of Hugo's rivals. Carry on. He's still around. He refused to debate with me once in public, which I thought was interesting, but presumably he was too busy carrying sort of sacks of gold from Netflix to the bank. Oh, now, Mr. Vickers, honestly. Let's move on. What actually upset Prince Philip, quite rightly, was... I mean, there's a terrible episode where there was this opening scene. There was a sort of a ruggable and a muddy field and some people kicking.

41:52And then it said Gordonson. I thought, oh, God, here we go. As indeed we did, because there was a lot of rain pouring in on Prince Charles's bed. Back in the office, they must have said, hey, boys, you know, Prince Philip must have really hated Prince Charles to send him to Gordonson. We must make his father hate him. So they cooked up a scene whereby there was a fight. His halftime was cancelled. He did not go to Darmstadt. his sister flew over and was killed in a plane crash. And he then went over to the funeral and his father said to him, it's because of you, boy, that we're burying my favourite child.

42:25Well, no fight, no halftime, probably wasn't the halftime anyway. He wouldn't have gone to Darmstadt. Yes, his sister did fly over and her plane in fog hit a chimney at Ostend and she was killed with her husband, her two boys, her mother-in-law, a number of entourage and the little baby she was expecting was born and died in the accident.

42:44Camilla: This was an absolute tragedy. And then Prince Andrew of Greece came to pick up Prince Philip and took him over to the funeral with him. And so how they could be so unkind as to turn that into a saga against Prince Philip, well, I do know that he went to his lawyer. And luckily, I was on the Today Show, Radio 4, and I told this story. To some extent, he was listening, as it happens. And to some extent, I think he felt that the record had been put straight and there's no point in going to lawyers because, you know, with these things, it just gets worse and worse. But it is interesting, in his late 80s, he was across the crown and was incensed by this and might have taken action.

43:19Camilla: Well, I think he was upset on behalf of his family. You know, I think he was very upset about it. And quite rightly, I mean, it was an outrageous thing to do. And I think the people who made the crown should be deeply and everlastingly ashamed of themselves. I've never understood its popularity because so much money was spent on making it look as accurate as possible. And then there are bits in it which are just flagrantly made up. Like there's a conversation between Charles and Diana that never happened. Of course not. Then they're supposed to finally split up and they happen to meet in a kitchen and they have a conversation that sort of foreshadows her death and things like that.

43:53But how about the scene with Geoffrey Howe, for example? Geoffrey Howe lumbers out of bed. He goes down to the House of Commons. Yeah, he'd make a speech. That was more or less fatal. Mrs Thatcher sitting on the front bench looking to press. Sure. Goes back. Members of the House of Commons come and talk to her. Well, Prime Minister, I'll support you. But there's a rumblings in the back bench. is probably that happened. Back to Dennis who says, you know, the game's up. And then, would you believe it, Mrs Thatcher character says, well, I'm going to the Queen to call a general election to save my skid.

44:20Well, she never did that. No. I mean, that is an absolute transgression. And the Queen sacks her in that meeting, in effect, or persuades her to step down. It's all utter nonsense.

44:29Camilla: Although those two ladies didn't get on that well. Well, you say that. I mean, I know the Queen was very upset at the way Mrs Thatcher was removed from office by the Conservative Party. Also, look at this. She got the Order of Merit, which is in the Queen's Gift. She became Lady of the Garter in the Queen's Gift. The Queen made her 80th birthday and the Queen attended her funeral in person. The only other time she ever did that was Winston Churchill. It's also, ironically, a left-wing fantasy. The idea of a socialist monarch who never liked the Prime Minister who the left all hate. Oh, I know.

45:03And I think that's been turned into a fantastical narrative.

45:07Camilla: The Queen was meant to have got on famously well with Harold Wilson. Well, Harold Wilson was a character. But remember, as I said before, it was Harold Wilson who told us that, not the Queen. No, that's right. But she also got on with figures like Robin Cook because Robin Cook was heavily into the horse racing. Well, she attended Wilson's farewell party at Number 10. Yes, she did. Because he was a very unusual prime minister who retired while in Number 10. So it's one of those facts that people sort of leap on as proof that she was secretly Labour. But I think if he'd asked her, she would accept.

45:37I mean, Churchill, when they finally got Churchill to resign after, you know, he was about to resign from 1951 onwards, and he'd finally resigned in April 1955. And then she went to dinner with him that night as well. But interestingly, she told Anthony Eden, I read a book about Clarissa, Anthony Eden's wife, who's a great friend of mine. And she told Anthony Eden, people always said that I was lucky to have Winston as my first prime minister. I wonder if I was. Yes. You know, it's quite interesting that.

46:03Camilla: How do you think Queen Elizabeth II will be remembered in hundreds of years' time? I mean, I'm just thinking of the other great long-reigning queens, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria. Yeah, easy to answer that one. One of your easier questions. It'll simply be remembered as one of the greatest reigns in British history, where you had a woman who, at the age of 21, made a promise to serve and kept that promise faithfully for 75 years. And if we lived another thousand years, we'll never see anything like it again. I think we were all incredibly lucky to live in her reign. I can't think of another reign in history that I'd have preferred to live in under any circumstances, political, economical or whatever.

46:42it has been fantastic and that's largely due to her.

46:46Camilla: Hugo Vickers, your book Queen Elizabeth II A Personal History is out now. Thank you so much for joining in such a fascinating discussion on The Daily Tea. Great to speak to you. Thank you for having me.

47:20We'll be right back.

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