The Most Private Celeb

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By William Underhill

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More than a million guests have attended her garden parties, she's played hostess at over 90 state banquets, visited almost 130 countries and chatted with an unnumbered horde of awed citizens.

As she celebrates her 80th birthday Friday, Queen Elizabeth II can take pride in an unrivalled record for meet-and-greet hospitality, an achievement matched only by her ability to defeat her subject's curiosity. After more than a half-century on the throne, the Queen remains, for good reasons of policy, a polite and dignified mystery, known to millions as a figurehead and utterly unknown as a personality. Other world-class celebs—including her own son, the Prince of Wales—may like to parade their opinions and lifestyles. Not so the Queen. In the words of a birthday tribute from veteran politician and journalist, Lord Bill Deedes: "Of all the world's public figures she is the most private." Sure, the palace is ready to share with the public a mass of uncontroversial details. We know Elizabeth likes small dogs—she has owned more than 30 corgis—and fast horses. In any one year she has around 25 in training. For holidays, she likes Scotland and for entertainment she's sometimes happy with a jigsaw puzzle. (A few commonplace hobbies won't hurt her prestige. One reason for the popularity of the Queen's grandfather, George V, was his passion for stamp collecting). Other revealing trivia have found their way into the press by accident. A tabloid journalist, working undercover in Buckingham Palace, took pictures of the royal breakfast table adorned with a Tupperware cereal box. We can assume too that she's cool in a crisis. Remember how she chatted calmly to the intruder who made his way into her bedroom back in 1982? (From the same episode we also learn that she presumably sleeps alone). And there's plenty of evidence of a powerful sense of duty. The Queen's official schedule would daunt any 80-something grandmother and she still serves as patron of more than 620 charities and organizations. What remains mysterious are the key attributes of any personality. What makes her laugh—or cry ? Who are her closest friends? What does she make of her children and their often ill-judged choices when it comes to marriage? Does she enjoy her work? Clues are hard to find. Royal-watchers struggle to remember public shows of emotion that go beyond the big smile. Discreet tears at the decommissioning ceremony of the royal yacht Britannia in 1997 made a rare exception. Few if any reliable sources exist to fill those gaps. Real friends keep their public comments bland and, unlike her children, the Queen has managed to keep her staff free of blabbermouths keen to sell their stories of palace life. Don't believe the scores of unauthorized biographies that crowd the bookshop shelves and never trust the racier British press. By convention, the Palace only corrects the wildest and most damaging errors leaving plenty of scope for imaginative reporting. And certainly don't bother to ask. The rules of royal protocol forbid strangers from initiating a conversation with the Queen. If she chooses to chat, she chooses the topic. It's a policy of discretion sanctioned by history. The monarchy, according to the old thinking, depends for its appeal on keeping its distance from the everyday world. In the words of the 19th constitutional theorist Walter Bagehot, "We must not daylight in upon magic." But the detail-lite picture of royal life is also smart politics. If the monarch revealed her favorite cookies, radio show or—heaven forbid—political sympathies, she would at once condemn herself in the eyes of a hefty section of her public. Even diehard opponents of the monarchy admit she's played a smart hand. "Keeping herself remote has to be the right policy," says Stephen Haseler, a politics professor who heads the Campaign for an Elected Head of State. But it's a lesson her heir seems reluctant to learn. The nation now knows the prince's views on everything from architecture and education to organic farming. "Prince Charles is arguing the toss every day," says Haseler, using a British expression loosely translated as "complaining about life." The experience of the Queen's 80 years suggests that real popularity takes a capacity for silence whatever the temptation. The nation's best-loved monarchs may be those they know least.

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