The royals - Kitty Kelley [88]
Those close links were severely strained by the Suez invasion, which had so damaged Britain’s reputation for morality in international politics that the Queen was forced to help pick up the pieces. She made four state visits during 1957 to Portugal, France, Denmark, and Canada. In October her new Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, urged a visit to the United States to try to repair the damage she had allowed her country to wreak on that alliance. “A visit by the Queen is worth one hundred diplomats,” said the Prime Minister, who was eager to mend relations between the two countries. And he wanted to persuade the Americans to share their nuclear weapons technology.
The Queen was not eager to add yet another state visit to her schedule until the Prime Minister shrewdly showed her a cartoon that had appeared in America after it became known that England had duped the United States by conspiring with France and Israel in the Suez invasion. The cartoon showed President Eisenhower sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. The former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II had said he always regarded England as “an old and trusted friend.” Now, obviously distraught, he was holding his head in his hands. The cutline read “Great Britain Is No Longer Great.”
The Queen did not hesitate. She agreed at once to make the five-day visit to America, with stops in Jamestown, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and New York City, where she promised to address the UN General Assembly. She left England, in the words of historian Elizabeth Longford, “like a dove from a battered ark.”
Queen Elizabeth and Philip arrived in the United States on Columbus Day, trailed by a press contingent of two thousand reporters and photographers who were not allowed to talk to her. Their instructions from the Palace included a “recommended” dress code. For women: no black dresses, gloves a must, and a curtsy would be nice. For men: a shirt, a tie, and a deferential bow from the neck. The Palace distributed press releases at every stop but ruled out personal interviews.
“How many people,” asked Philip, “go to President Eisenhower’s press conferences?”
“Up to three hundred,” said the Newsweek correspondent.
The Duke of Edinburgh shook his head. “If we did the same thing, we’d get about two.”
British reporters disagreed. “No dictator ever muzzled the press quite so tightly as the Queen of England muzzles hers today on every aspect of royalty,” wrote Anne Edwards in the Daily Mail.
“We had our orders from Charlie Campbell at the British Embassy,” said Warren Rogers of the Associated Press. “No direct questions to the Queen, no talking to the Queen, don’t even look the Queen in the eye. So at the embassy’s press reception, I talked to Philip, who held forth on a briefing he’d just received from the head of the Atomic Energy Commission. He was so full of himself, he sounded as though he could launch Sputnik I and II with his hands tied behind his back. The U.S. was smarting from getting beaten the previous week in the space race by the Russians, who had launched the first earth satellites. So Philip’s inanities on the subject were of timely interest, and I quoted him verbatim. We both got in trouble: he looked like an idiot for saying the things he said, and I caught hell from the [British] embassy for letting him say them. ‘You should have protected him from himself,’ I was told.
“At first, I was sympathetic to Philip and felt sorry for the guy having to drag along in his wife’s wake. Not being a royalist, I certainly didn’t expect to be impressed by the Queen of England, but after covering the royal tour for thirteen days and nights in Canada and America, I found him to be a pompous ass—and fell in love with her. She was so pretty and shy, so demure. I remember her walking down a cascade of white granite steps outside the U.S. Capitol—there must’ve been a thousand steps—and she never looked down once. I couldn’t believe it. I thought for sure she’d fall on her