Around the World: The Queen’s Travels – Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Tribute
When the Queen travels, an administrative machine, a Royal Household in miniature, goes with her. On most visits of importance she is accompanied by two Private Secretaries (the third one being left behind to mind the shop), her Press Secretary, an Equerry or two, two Ladies-in-Waiting, her Dresser (Palace-speak for a personal maid), and her Protection Officer, who works closely with a security contingent from the host country. A reassuring figure in the entourage, carrying his black bag of emergency potions, is the Medical Officer to the Queen Abroad.
Of the two Private Secretaries, one keeps in touch with the government at home, also keeping an eye on the international scene, and the other takes overall responsibility for the on-the-road smooth running of the visit. If the visit is significant enough the Foreign Secretary goes too.
The Household, as many as 40 people for a long tour, sets up its office wherever the Queen stays, in either Embassy, High Commission, guest palace or, before its decommissioning, on the royal yacht, Britannia.
Household
The media once jokingly described royal visits overseas as ‘Windsor Tours’, but those who have to ensure that they run like clockwork would vehemently deny that they are on some kind of holiday. Wherever Her Majesty is, the routine business of being Queen Elizabeth II goes on at the same time, and the regular flow of Foreign Office telegrams and Cabinet papers arrive every day, and have to be dealt with.
The final arrangements are put in place after the ‘recce’, when an advance party of officials returns from the host country, having examined every inch of the royal way, and assessed and resolved, to the best of their ability, every possible protocol and security issue. Security has to be watertight, but it must not interfere with the Queen’s wish that she must be seen by, and meet, as many people as possible, and at the same time be reported doing it, on film (the preferred medium), by broadcast, and in print.
Eventually the result of all this planning is distilled into the Blue Book, a slim volume which slips easily into the pocket of official, Lady-in-Waiting, or policeman. Nobody on a royal tour can afford to be without it, because it tells them in the most minute detail exactly where the Queen and her entourage should be, at any given time. It even reminds people, in side-notes, what they should be wearing. Western women guests invited to the Chinese State Banquet knew that they had to wear ‘Long Dresses’, and, if they had them, a ‘T’, for tiara. Male non-Chinese were expected to wear ‘LS’, lounge suits.
