Treetops hotel in the heart of the Kenya forest is renowned as the place where Princess Elizabeth first heard the news that her father had died and that she was to be Queen. This, however, is not quite the full story.
While the princess was certainly at Treetops on the night her father, George VI, died 60 years ago on 6 February, 1952, she was not told until the following afternoon, by which time she had returned to a fishing lodge called Sagana, 20 miles away, that she had been given as a wedding present. It was there, beside a trout stream in the foothills of Mount Kenya, that Prince Philip broke the news.
The princess and her husband had flown from Heathrow to Kenya on 31 January. They were seen off by the king, too ill with lung cancer to make the tour himself. The crowd gave him a sympathetic cheer as he stood in the bitter cold to wave goodbye to his daughter.
It was a dangerous time in the British colony. The Mau Mau campaign had just broken out across the White Highlands. The officials responsible for the princess's tour of Kenya, Australia and New Zealand felt unable to guarantee her safety while she was in Kenya. It was only fear of ridicule that stopped them cancelling the African leg of the trip.
Three days after they arrived, the royal couple travelled up-country to Sagana and from there they drove after lunch on 5 February to Treetops, the game-viewing lodge built in a tree overlooking an elephant waterhole. They planned to spend the night watching wildlife, enjoying a respite from their duties before continuing the rest of their tour.
Treetops is old hat now, but in 1952 it was the only place of its kind in the world. It was the brainchild of Eric Walker, owner of the Outspan hotel in Nyeri, and his wife, Lady Bettie, daughter of the Earl of Denbigh. The two of them were hosts for the visit, along with the naturalist Jim Corbett, after whom the Corbett National Park in India is named. Retired from India, Corbett lived in a cottage at the Outspan previously occupied by Lord Baden-Powell.
Walker was a colourful character of the kind that gravitated naturally towards Kenya in colonial days. Private secretary to Baden-Powell before the Great War, he had been shot down while in the Royal Flying Corps, but had escaped from prison camp with a pair of wirecutters that Baden-Powell had hidden inside a gift of ham. He then walked across Germany to the Dutch border.
Needing money later to marry Lady Bettie, he had sailed four boatloads of liquor to America during Prohibition and sold his cargo over the side, just outside territorial waters. A shootout ashore had led to a warrant for his arrest after a corrupt state trooper had been wounded. Fleeing to Canada, he married Lady Bettie and emigrated to Kenya, where he built the Outspan hotel.
Walker laid down strict ground rules for the Treetops visit. No journalists were allowed, as it was believed the scent of the additional bodies would frighten wildlife. No cameras either, because the princess needed a break. Spearmen at the edge of the forest kept intruders at bay as the royals arrived at the waterhole and climbed the rickety ladder to the three-bedroomed branch hotel at the top.
The nearest elephant was only eight yards away as Lady Pamela Mountbatten and Commander Mike Parker followed. There were baboons, warthog and bushbuck, too. The princess spent much of the afternoon filming with her cine-camera, so engrossed that she asked for tea to be served on the viewing platform rather than miss anything by going inside.
Leopards prowled Treetops after dark. Corbett sat up all night with a rifle at the top of the ladder. The princess was up again at dawn, testing the light with her meter as two rhinos squabbled over the waterhole. After breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, the royals climbed down at 10am for the return to Sagana. "I will come again," the princess promised happily, as they were driven away.
In England, meanwhile, "Hyde Park Corner" was under way, the coded plan for arrangements surrounding the death of the king. At No 10, Winston Churchill was informed at once that the king had died in his sleep at Sandringham, but it was four hours before word reached the princess. A telegram to Government House in Nairobi could not be decoded because the keys to the safe holding the codebook were unavailable.
At lunchtime the editor of the East African Standard telephoned the princess's secretary, Martin Charteris, at the Outspan to ask if the teleprinter reports were true. Shocked, Charteris contacted Sagana, where Prince Philip reacted as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt.
Rallying swiftly, he took his 25-year-old wife for a walk in the garden where, at 2.45pm on 6 February, he told her that her father was dead and she was now Queen and head of the Commonwealth.
She reacted with the same sense of duty that she has shown ever since, immediately discussing the practicalities of getting back to England and writing letters of apology for the cancellation of the tour. Charteris thought her "very composed, master of her fate", as she left Sagana towards dusk that evening.
She was driven to a nearby airstrip, where a Dakota waited to fly her home. The Queen was unmistakably under strain as she emerged from the car, but she managed a subdued smile for the crowd. She boarded the plane with none of the usual pomp and took off at once.
The mask slipped once they were airborne. The Queen left her seat after a while. Her face was set when she returned, but it was obvious to the other passengers that she had been in the loo, having a good long cry.
Nicholas Best is working on the biography of Eric Sherbrooke Walker, the founder of Treetops
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8 January 2012 12:56AM
I guess the real true story is that I thought she wouldn't be here, at least as queen, sixty years later. What is it with the people in this country who continue to love to curtsey, doff their caps, and to grovel in any way to her and her family? It really is time she retired and brought the royal family in this country to a conclusion. Buck House, Sandringham, and the rest of the royal estates could then be sold off or given to the National Trust. Liz could get a flat in Docklands and instead of watching Eastenders she could live in it.
8 January 2012 2:32AM
This young woman was forced by officialdom to travel around the world, further than she had ever before been, knowing that she would never see her father alive again.
How can you say that she has an easy life? She had to inherit this job, which killed her father, and today travels to godforsaken places to make small talk with people from almost every background and outlook and still smile enthusiastically and daintily fly the flag for Britain.
How could anyone not respect that? Her entire life is devoted to the service of this country. She has to be a figurehead and an institution for people to rally round, yet has no barely any influence on decisions which affect her. She can't even vote. Yet does she ever complain, put a foot wrong or object to her role? She carries it out in an exemplary fashion.
All this talk of republicanism is fairly ludicrous. She is respected around the world in a way that Cameron and his utterly incompetent government could never be. What would you rather have, a constitutional republic like almost every other country, with a president who carries out virtually the same role? The royal family is a fantastic asset to the UK, it is far too easy to be critical of an institution which carries out vital work.
8 January 2012 2:47AM
There's an 'opportunity benefit' to having a monarchy.
It saves having presidential elections!
8 January 2012 2:47AM
cheveguara What a puerile comment.
It is testimony of the strength, dedication and duty of this remarkable woman that she has reigned for 60 years and has conducted herself with commitment to the people and where you say "grovel" I would use the word "respect".
People like you make trite dismissive remarks about our monarchy but come up with no real practical workable alternative. If you have a Republic then you need a President - if so who would you choose? Come on let's have some names otherwise go and shut yourself away out of harms way in your own little "Docklands flat".
8 January 2012 3:00AM
Che...
As always dour,
as always the peppered resent,
a true-to-principles façade...
But Che,
you're a growing pain,
ypu can't see for miles...
still a pooed hero,
a tee-shirt frown...
Drop the penny,
flop the hat,
Che no doubt again will give a nice try...
Just go on...
puff your cigar...
8 January 2012 4:39AM
I heard she went mental, screaming "let me out, I tell you". I can't explain her secretary's differing account.
The job and the endless free fags, eh?
8 January 2012 4:49AM
Good question. A separate question, but still, good fun. I vote for the poet laureate. We give them 100litres of sherry at the start and 5k per annum and they are wonderful representatives. Can't remember a duffer. It's worth bearing in mind that the royal lottery brought us within a whisker of having Prince Andrew as the next king.
8 January 2012 5:01AM
We could still call them King or Queen, or just Roay Laureate, if we prefer.
King William the Wordsdworth, King Alfred the Tennyson, King Ted the Hughes, soooo much better than the current bunch.
The governmental role of the royalty is defunct. We all know (ask Greece) that when governments fail bureaucrats take the helm not Phil, Andrew and old Liz.
8 January 2012 5:27AM
A gift "from the people of Kenya"?
Have we really not learned anything about our Empire? This is the kind of glib lie which used to be taken for granted.
I think the last thing the "people of Kenya" wanted at that time was to give our monarch the gift of part of their land!
8 January 2012 5:30AM
We shouldn't knock it. There is a significant market for history as RF like this. Never mind Britain staggered on for 50 years as a failed neo-Victorian empire, a national court of simpering fantasists, complicitly oblivious to loss of monarchical trappings, industries & colonies. Never mind: cue the new mini-series: close-up of Dame Nellie Molestrangler as she emotes over dad's death. Never mind the crap dialog, dig the sets & costumes. Grovellers & fading old queens globally will just lurve it, altho it tends to make cats sick. OGT
8 January 2012 6:05AM
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8 January 2012 6:20AM
Pity her kids didnt turn out as good as she did!
8 January 2012 7:32AM
Except Jim Corbett wrote about it in 1955 in his book "Treetops" just before his death.
Nothing new here
8 January 2012 7:43AM
Old school actors will tell you to leave when you're at your best.
I do wish the present queen would quietly bring the monarchy to a close when she retires--which should be imminently.
8 January 2012 7:44AM
Source?
8 January 2012 8:48AM
Thanks Observer Editorial team. Do you know that, in amongst the Euro crisis, Middle East unrest, Iran nuclear developments, unemployment etc etc the one question I really wanted answered was when did Queenie find her fate?
8 January 2012 8:49AM
The monarchy is anachronistic and upholds a class system that continues to damage England economically, politically and socially.
8 January 2012 8:55AM
I know. How on earth does the rest of the world cope?
8 January 2012 9:03AM
Long Live the Queen
8 January 2012 9:09AM
Maybe you are as mistaken in your view regarding Britain's affection for her Royal Family (affection, note, not grovelling) as you are in your spelling of Che Guevara.
8 January 2012 9:35AM
Reply to '2thepoint'.
'She had to inherit this job, which killed her father'
No, smoking killed her father. The stress of the job (puhleese) did not.
8 January 2012 9:39AM
At the same time British conscripts (17 to 21 years old) were forced by officialdom to travel around the world, further than they had ever before been, some of them never saw their families again because they had been shot and died.
Gosh it's an hard life for some people and all that for a few million a year, rent free housing, servants, paid holidays, private flights...
Why is it that people feel they need some figurehead to worship and lavish praise on, we do not need a Royal or a President, Presidents are political and likely to be just as corrupt and wasteful as a Royal, if we need an ambassador for the country let it be someone who has contributed something to our society, such as a sports person, academic, writer etc.They'd be a lot cheaper too.
The Queen is so understanding that in a time of cuts and hardship she is shoving her wealth in our faces and showing "my best diamonds" 'including a necklace and bracelet of 21 enormous gems given by the South African government to mark her 21st birthday'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/02/queens-best-diamonds-show-jubilee
This is not the first time the Royals have flaunted their wealth in front of people whose lives have been devastated, during the Blitz the Royals were often booed and people shouted "come and live with us for a week and see what this war is really like."
8 January 2012 9:42AM
I respect the views of those people who hold the view that the inherited monarchy has contributed hugely to British society. But struggle to find any evidence that supports that contention. Indeed looking around pretty-well all other countries they seem to manage perfectly well with an elected Head of State. Add to that the fact that the British Monarchy is not just the Head of State but consists of numerous family members all of whom have lavish lifestyles and appear to do nothing (apart from charity photo-shoots) for society.
In addition the continued existence of the British monarchy has supported the maintenance of a class-system which reinforces unearned privilege. It has also maintained the British view that we need to be a world-class military power, "punching above our weight" - why? It has maintained a 'Commonwealth' which is of no value to anyone except giving the Royals an excuse for a winter holiday in the Caribbean (aka Harry + Jamaica in March).
The whole of this would be quite trivial but in my view leads to a society which is distinguished from most other developed economies in the fact that ability and hard work is often overridden by privileged.
8 January 2012 9:43AM
Your 'thinking' is entirely wrong. It might however be your confused mind mixing up what you might wish was the case with what was the case.
When the people of Britain give anything - eg aid to other countries or gifts exchanged on a visit it is done at the behest of the government of the day. We don't have a referendum and then say that the aid comes with the best wishes of 58% (or whatever) of those who turned out to vote.
So it is with gifts of the sort we are talking about here. I am actually old enough to remember this event well. It was indeed a gift made by the legitimate government of the country under the normal pleasantries of international relations.
Might I suggest that you try reading more about things like this before commenting so you might be able to avoid making silly comments that so laughably reflect your own inadequacies.
8 January 2012 9:45AM
An usefully concise summary of a wholly ridiculous argument.
8 January 2012 9:54AM
Only up to a point, getting rid of it won't make much difference to most of us as far as I can see; look at America, economically, politically and socially even more screwed up than we are, or India with the most divisive class system in the world.
8 January 2012 9:59AM
The point in a republic is that all the citizens of the country in question are equally entitled under their Constitution. All are equal. When the UK becomes a republic, hereditary privilege will be a thing of the past. There will be no Sirs nor Lords nor Marquises nor their female equivalents. The division between" them and us" will dissolve.
The UK is infested with class conciousness like no other first world nation. Only by having emigrated to a republic can I recognise the differences in the mindset of the co-operative and consensual people around me and that imposed externally and subliminally at every level and in every aspect of UK life. But you can't understand it any more than a fish understands water.
8 January 2012 10:00AM
Had you had a job, which you did not want, foisted on you because your brother played away, were you shy and living with a stammer, when everyone else smoked, should you think you should not also smoke?
George VI did his best with what was thrown at him.
The Queen has done her best.
If you want a republic, then set up proper debate. Do not descend into hate.
We cannot help into which estate we are born but we can all do our best.
It is governments who spend our money and who call the shots. Take them on.
Brown from the rent-free manse who allowed pay to become so low everyone needed top-ups and Cameron who knows nothing at all about buying a loaf of bread.
8 January 2012 10:07AM
There are a lot of polarized ("black & white") comments here. Surely the truth is that she is a highly admirable person doing a job that is unfortunately anachronistic, not to say rotten.
8 January 2012 10:09AM
ho hum, i rather think the people of kenya didn´t have a say in the matter.
8 January 2012 10:15AM
Oh dear! Are we going to have to put up with theis nonsense all year?
Re-working British involvement in Kenya as if it were anything other than a land-grab kleptocracy is really a step too far.
And the minutiae of who told the Queen what and where etc. are not worth the ink or the pixels.
Get real - get a life.
8 January 2012 10:44AM
Under a constitutional monarchy we are also all UK citizens since the 1948 British Nationality Act.
France, Italy and Germany all still have aristocrats, titles, hereditary estates, and social hierarchies (for those who care).
Constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Holland and Denmark are actually far more egalitarian than republics like France, Italy or America.
8 January 2012 10:51AM
And yet the happiest, most progressive and most admired countries in the world tend to be constitutional monarchies - Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan etc.
All the Royals on the Civil List do a massive amount of public and charity works. The Duke of Edinburgh is 90 and still manages 100s of public engagements every year.
You may think spending all year travelling tens of thousands of miles just to open hospital wings or attend charity fund raisings isn't a "proper job" but the thousands of charities that benefit by tens of millions of pounds through Royal connections would disagree with you.
8 January 2012 10:56AM
France is a republic and there are two lines of aristocrats there. Those descended from the surviving pre-revolution aristocracy and those descended from the aristocracy created by Napoleon., not so very long after the revolution.
8 January 2012 11:13AM
Hmmm...sounds like Kim Il-Liz and Kim Jong-Phil.
8 January 2012 11:29AM
Quite, Robbo. Other people's dictators are always visibly such; the rot in one's own house seems to be invisible to even the Observer / Guardian writer on this occasion.
Could we have an article about the glories of people who have done REAL jobs for 60 years and under much harsher conditions and without palaces and toadies and soap opera sets and such? Wait, no, covering the life of someone who started out as a child labourer and is unable to stop working until death and is a rare survivor in their ugly system wouldn't make such a saleable commodity as this sort of hagiography.
Celebrating sixty years of a monarchy is no different from the North Korean state ceremonies.
8 January 2012 11:48AM
Some people have some silly, very silly ideas. They never appreciate what they've got until they've lost it !
8 January 2012 11:52AM
The monarchy is anachronistic and upholds a class system that continues to damage England economically, politically and socially.
Getting back all the land that has been stolen from us might make a difference, or if the monarchy were made to pay taxes - surely that would be a reasonable start to wealth re-distribution!
I am sure the first great thief of these islands, who stole a great fortune and was made king, couldn't possibly have envisaged that the same con was still in practice over a thousand years later.
The English are sometimes so quixotic.
They were the revolutionary vanguard for a few years then changed their mind...
The English invited the son of the king, that they had executed, to be their new king.
That would not be a credible narrative in fiction.
8 January 2012 12:04PM
So there!
It's not that I entirely disagree with you; but every (relatively) democratic European state has seen the need for a head of state independent of the executive - it makes little difference to me whether that head of state is chosen by election or by the right of succession, except that if it were the former then we should inevitably have an ex-politician as president - and if we did, I have a feeling we should soon be clamouring for a return of the monarchy.
The other model - an executive president - brings problems of its own: notably that such people are always active politicians. There is a need, I think, for a head of state who is not handicapped by a history of activism within a political party. At the very least, the system which obtains in Britain is a viable one - if fissiparous nationalism continues to grow, it may be the only demonstration of unity left to us.
8 January 2012 12:06PM
The monarch turns over all the income from the Royal Estates to the Treasury.
So it is effectively publicly owned.
Oh, and the Royal Family do pay tax these days.
8 January 2012 12:17PM
Having a republic and a president who almost certainly will be corrupt and live a lavish lifestyle on a gravy train paid for by the tax payers, who will to the rest of the world be entirely insignificant.
I don’t understand this jealousy for the Royals life? I for one can’t think of anything worse, losing the basic human right of privacy, no thanks they can have all the money in the world I would hate to live the life that they have. No choice because they are born into it. I’m surprised they cope I would feel so trapped. There are far more important things to be worried about and that need changing.
8 January 2012 12:19PM
I so rarely agree with your posts that it's quite a pleasure to find one with which I agree entirely ... republicanism is a minority sentiment in Britain, and the present incumbents of Buckingham Palace are very important reasons why. The idea that they live in pampered luxury, like George IV - who was something of an exception amongst later monarchs - and do nothing but recline on chaises longues all day while flunkeys peel them a grape, is a product of the imagination of those for whom evidence is irrelevant in their passionate loathing of mere symbols.
We should part company, I think, on the nature of the state itself - although who knows - but what one so often sees in republicans' arguments is a reverse snobbery which reaches hateful proportions, or an anarchistic streak whose principal element is a love of destruction. Neither is useful in building a state or holding it together; neither is relevant to those who believe in something deeper than surface, symbolic change.
8 January 2012 12:29PM
You must have been reading a different article than the one I read, which was a tedious account of the minutiae surrounding the timing of the queen's knowledge of her father's death.
8 January 2012 12:36PM
Oh, but it's very different and you really shouldn't be so silly. I have no intention of standing on the street cheering and waving some stupid little flag for the monarchy, beacuse I couldn't give a toss. However, I am confident that failing to demonstrate my enthusiasm will not result in members of my family or my neighbours denouncing me to the authorities with unpleasant consequences.
That's the difference.
8 January 2012 12:40PM
instinctively, i suppose, i should be a republican, but try as i might i can't see that this woman, as head of state, has ever put a foot wrong. i can't say i hold out much hope for the next incumbent (if it is to be chazzer - god help us).
and of course the greatest gift that the monarchy has ever given to britain is that it stopped thatcher from becoming president, as would have undoubtedly been tha case. imagine that with as head of state, and suddely liz II doesn't look so bad.
jesus - we would have had president blair, as well.
live long, liz !
8 January 2012 12:40PM
The fact that the Queen is still the Monarch at 85 with Prince Philip being 90 could be a reflection on the ability, in their opinion, of Charles becoming King.
8 January 2012 1:05PM
The royal family are the biggest load of free loaders in the country ,forget benefit cheats ,this lot costs more than any.
8 January 2012 1:07PM
Truth is proverbially stranger than fiction. The problem was that Oliver Cromwell turned into a military dictator, and then his son proved incapable of carrying on in any way. The synthesis of the ideas of the English Revolution with the restoration of the monarchy came in 1689, less with the high sounding but potentially ignorable principles of the Bill of Rights than with the pragmatic refusal of Parliament to grant the new ruler(s) funds for more than a year at a time, rather than for life as previously. That put an end to the serious power of kings and queens. "It's the economy, stupid" has always been a valid principle.
8 January 2012 1:10PM
I don't think there is much doubt that the Royal Family have a more luxurious life than 99% of the population.
The downside is that you have to effectively give up a private life for your entire life. You are constantly on show. The day to day "job" of a member of the Royal Family would drive me to despair within a week. The travelling, the always having to be immaculately turned out. The 100s of people you have to make polite chit chat with every day. Always looking interested at yet another welcome song from a group of primary school kids. Attending the Royal Variety Show when you'd rather be in bed catching up on Downton Abbey.
Johann Hari, an ardent Republican, was always very good on the fact that despite its perks being a monarch was a job he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.
8 January 2012 1:53PM
Is it me or have the royal family got a new spin doctor reinventing them as a national treasure what with all that pants last year when one millionaire married another and we paid for it !
All that over christmas with the old git being rushed into hospital by helicopter when most OAPS wait for a crap ambulance service (because of cuts!) and again who's paying for that i wonder.
The royal family is the head of the church which again is now getting its teeth into schools so children will be brainwashed about how great these money grabbing toffs are and how they have a god given right to everything...
Its the rich who are crippling this country not its people ... With the good old queen at the helm.