3 days ago
How Princess Anne is celebrating her 75th birthday
When a previous milestone was looming in the life of Princess Anne, her 21st birthday, the late Queen asked her where she would like to have her party. There was Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, of course, although, with a mid-August birthday, might she prefer Balmoral? 'None of the above,' came the reply. The Princess wanted to hold a 'discotheque party' in Portsmouth on board the royal yacht Britannia.
And so it is this Friday, as the Princess marks her 75th, that the most nautical member of the family (patron of everything from the Royal Yachting Association to the Mission to Seafarers) will be at sea with a cake for two as she spends her birthday with her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, sailing their Rustler 44, Ballochbuie, somewhere off the Outer Hebrides. 'I think our ideal of a break, if we have a break, is to go up to our boat on the west coast of Scotland,' Sir Tim once told me, adding that 'getting wet and cold' was all part of the fun.
Ballochbuie, named after a Deeside forest, is very much like her helmswoman: elegant – in Britannia blue – but understated, and thoroughly dependable in all weather. That last quality has been abundantly clear, through the final stages of the last reign and all through this one. The dutiful daughter who was with the late Queen at Balmoral on the day she died and then escorted her coffin on the journey across the kingdom, through Aberdeenshire, down to Edinburgh, on to London and finally to Windsor, has been an equally dutiful sister thereafter.
Look at the official coronation family photo and note who is standing at the King's right-hand side – the only member of the royal family who elected to ride in the rainy coronation procession rather than travel by car or carriage. It was where the Princess felt she should be, given that her role as Colonel of the Blues and Royals also makes her Gold Stick-in-Waiting. 'The earliest senior personal protection officer, I think, is probably what they would call them now,' she explained to me during a subsequent interview. 'But that's exactly what they were – your last line of defence – although whether the gold stick was ever really designed to do much damage, I'm not quite sure.' Given her defiant riposte of 'Not bloody likely!' to the gun-toting maniac who tried to kidnap her in 1974 (and whom the Mail recently found roaming the streets of London once again), I've no doubt that she'd be pretty quick off the mark with her sword.
When the twin diagnoses of the King and the Princess of Wales left the monarchy stretched to the limit last year, the Queen and all the other members of the family had to help fill the gaps. There was already a post-Covid logjam with honours and that looked set to worsen, since investitures are entrusted to just three people. With the King out of action and Prince William understandably preoccupied, it was the Princess who had to take up the slack.
Famously low-maintenance, she keeps a small office at the back of St James's Palace with one private secretary and one deputy, plus four programme managers who divide the admin and engagement planning between them. On overseas tours, she will often travel with a staff of one.
On her awaydays across the country, the Princess tends to focus on local impact, not national headlines. This is reflected in her strategy at royal garden parties. While, inevitably, the crowds would coalesce around the monarch and the heir to the throne in the middle of the lawn, the Princess would sometimes head straight for the fringes. As she recounted while we were making a 70th birthday film for ITV: 'I would work up the back of the border, which is where the people who didn't want to be seen went. They were almost pretending they weren't there. You know: 'I don't really want to talk to anyone.'' She entirely understands that some people are very happy being unsung. But that does not mean they should be ignored.
Publicity may be important for a constitutional monarchy but she has no wish to court it. Hence her studious non-engagement with her 75th birthday beyond a couple of official photos, a commemorative coin and what her staff had gamely billed as a birthday celebration. There was no cake, and certainly no candles (though champagne was served afterwards), and the invitation talked of a 'Charities Forum'. The 200 guests in the Palace Ballroom, a cross-section of her umpteen organisations, heard earnest updates from across the sector, plus a speech from their patron in which she thanked them all for inviting her on board in the first place. Talking to some of them afterwards, I heard repeated reference to her preference for details and plain speaking. Lord Kakkar KG, chairman of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (still paying out grants of £4 million off the back of Prince Albert's handiwork), mentioned that he was reminded of the very similar approach of the previous president, the Duke of Edinburgh – a comparison that many draw.
It was the Duke who had advised the young Princess not to accept every invitation but to choose her causes carefully. That was back in 1969, making her one of only two people in Britain (and pretty much anywhere else) who have been fully engaged in national and international life since man first set foot on the moon and the Beatles were still in one piece. The other is the King.
Neither shows any sign of slowing down. The King will soon be welcoming the Starmers to Balmoral and the Trumps to Windsor. Once the Princess has tied up the boat, her diary includes an autumn Commonwealth tour as well as many engagements at home, with Royal Navy divers in Portsmouth, engineers in Gloucestershire, a church and a Sikh temple in Warwick, plus some of her regiments. 'I thought I'd got old when the son of the commanding officer, whom I'd met in short pants in Germany, became an officer in the regiment,' she recalled at the time of her 70th. 'Now we're into grandchildren.'
