on the internet has no provenance. Where I have been unable to ascertain copyright, I can only hope that the author will forgive me.
In the course of writing this book, I have read thousands of words on the Windsors and scanned hundreds of photographs. Rather than bore the reader by listing all of the books, newspaper cuttings, websites, and magazines consulted, I have selected only those from which I derived exceptional pleasure.
Beginning with the basics: George VI by Patrick Howarth, Edward VIII by Frances Donaldson, The Queen Mother by Donald Zec, Prince Philip: First Gentleman of the Realm by Douglas Liversidge, Mountbatten by Philip Ziegler, Philip by Basil Boothroyd, Queen Elizabeth II: A Celebration of Her Majesty’s Fifty-Year Reign by Tim Graham, and The House of Windsor (A Royal History of England) by Andrew Roberts and Antonia Fraser.
For the royal motor cars:
Rolls-Royce and Bentley: The Crewe Years by Martin Bennett, Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motor Cars: From the Dawn of the 20th Century into the New Millennium by Klaus-Josef Roßfeldt, Rolls-Royce State Motor Cars by Andrew Pastouna, and Royal Daimlers by Brian Ernest Smith
For the royal aircraft:
A History of the King’s Flight and the Queen’s Flight: A Celebration of Royal Flying, 1936-1995 by The Queen’s Flight Association, edited by Sqn. Ldr. Brian Sowerby LVO MBE RAF (Retd)
For the royal trains:
C. Hamilton Ellis’s The Royal Trains and Royal Journey: A Retrospect of Royal Trains in the British Isles
As for the Royal Tours, Tom MacDonnell’s Daylight Upon Magic: The Royal Tour of Canada, 1939, Gustave Lanctot’s The Royal Tour of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Canada and the United States, and The William Lyon Mackenzie King Diaries on the National Archives website capture it all.
Deatail of photo from page 103.
Detail of photo from page 101.
When I told my aunt that a title I was considering for this book was One’s Royal Transport (said with an upper-class British accent), she warned me not to be facetious about the royal family. At the age of eighty-five, she had grown up in Imperial India, and the trappings of majesty, whether car, ship, or train, were traditional, reassuring, and immutable.
In the years I was posted to the Canadian Embassy in The Hague, members of the Dutch royal family famously got around by bicycle. There is a (probably apocryphal) story of the Queen of Sweden, who, because she travels without pomp and circumstance, carries in her handbag, in case of accident, a card that reads: “I am the Queen of Sweden.” But this pared-down approach that European (i.e. continental) monarchies take in the twenty-first century is not for the House of Windsor — at least not yet. No longer able to send those who disagree with them to the Tower or claim distant countries as Crown colonies, when it comes to what they ride in and how, this royal family can still give us a lesson in majesty. Each year they carry out about 2,900 official engagements in the United Kingdom and overseas. These involve a significant amount of travel that has to be undertaken in a way that meets presentational, efficiency, and security requirements. The family has successfully accomplished this since the steam engine was invented, and that is what this book is about.
In pre-railway, pre-steamship days, royalty rarely went far from the palace. Contrary to what we see in movies, Queen Elizabeth I did not attend the Globe theatre to enjoy Shakespeare’s plays — spectacle was brought to the palace. To leave it meant moving the entire royal household, which was a major undertaking and rarely done. Although when taken the royal progress lived off the local nobility for food, shelter, and entertainment — in effect bankrupting them and thus ensuring their loyalty — it still entailed a large number of horses and carriages for courtiers and their baggage. Even in the early years of Victoria’s reign, the monarchy was never popular and had to be escorted by troops, on foot and mounted, to provide security as well as pageantry. As for travel away from Britain, whether by land or sea, it was wholly unsafe and uncomfortable, and no dynasty was about to risk its sovereign or the presumptive heir to the throne on a foreign tour.
The first member of the royal family to come to Canada was Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence, the third son of King George III. Serving in the Royal Navy, he arrived in Halifax in 1786 and behaved much as any seafaring officer of the period did — brawling publicly, drinking to excess, and visiting brothels on Halifax’s Water Street. His younger brother Prince Edward Augustus, the Duke of Kent, was hardly an improvement. Banished to Canada in 1791 because he flogged his soldiers incessantly (even for those times), he brought with him his mistress, Alphonsine Thérèse Bernadine Julie de Montgenet. But while in command of the Halifax garrison, His Royal Highness had its fortifications rebuilt and, in thanks, the locals changed the name of Île St. Jean to Prince Edward Island. The Prince returned to Britain in 1800 and nineteen years later fathered the future Queen Victoria.
Her Majesty did not cross the ocean to Canada, disliking travel and barely tolerating the new technology of trains and steamships. But her son Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, changed it all: he toured Canada in 1860, not on a posting but because he saw his role as “Britain’s first salesman.” On tour, he opened bridges, shook the hands of selected Canadians, reviewed regiments, and postulated his government’s views of the current scene. In doing so, His Royal Highness had discovered a role for royalty and set the pattern for all future tours, each monarch utilizing the new technology of the railway, motor cars, and aircraft to do so.
There have been many royal biographies. Other books have painted pictures of the personalities themselves, but on researching the transport of each successive generation, with the idea that objects can speak louder than the people themselves, I was able to understand better the monarch that favoured them. Queen Victoria kept two hundred horses at the Royal Mews, a hundred more at Windsor and Balmoral, and never really accepted trains. With the enthusiasm with which he took to everything, her son Edward VII embraced all forms of transport, even meeting with the Wright brothers. He also favoured the Daimler, a make of motor car that the royal family would use for half a century. His son George V so loved the racing yacht Britannia that he ordered it scuttled when he died. Edward VIII — the only royal matinee idol until Princess Diana — loved jazzy American cars and was the first member of the family to fly. His brother George VI’s choice of transport was less bold, but his consort Queen Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother, was more adventurous, keen for anything from jet airliners to helicopters to a golf
