Shelagh Fogarty
In the summer of 1979 while holidaying in Ireland, the Queen’s cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten died when an IRA bomb exploded on his boat. Well that explosion claimed the lives of four people including the Earl’s 14 year old grandson, Nicholas Knatchbull. Nicky’s twin brother Timothy Knatchbull survived but in his words he’d lost his soulmate and hour-by-hour companion. Nearly two months later and deeply traumatised by events and with their parents still badly injured and in hospital in Ireland, Tim and his sister, Amanda Knatchbull, were given an invitation from the Queen to go and stay at Balmoral.
Timothy Knatchbull
And as we turned the corner, the first corner, we looked down this long, rather imposing corridor – at least it was to a fourteen-year-old boy. The sight that greets me is of the Queen sort of steaming up the corridor towards us, Prince Charles by her side. I immediately felt that I was being somehow collected or gathered in. There was something about her, a sort of purposefulness about her stride which was – it’s difficult to describe – it was little bit like a mother duck gathering in some young. And there was my sister Amanda and I and we were tired at the end of a long journey but we’d also I think, we probably offered a pretty sorry sight after a pretty emotionally traumatic few weeks. The Queen just gathered us up. It was very tender; it was very loving; it was very simple and straightforward. She took us down the corridor with Prince Charles; he was equally attentive and caring.
They were already very special people in my heart but it was the way from that moment on, through the next few days that I was lucky enough to spend there, primarily under her care and at her invitation, around the family. And the way they picked up was just – asking questions, plying us with soup and sandwiches, everyone else – the castle really deserted and silent, and enquiring about the family and catching up on news and then taking us off to bed. I remember just being amazed at how – there’s the queen pulling open my sister’s suitcase and unpacking. I remember my sister going to her and saying, ‘really Mam, if you’ll give me that jumper, I really must – you must go to bed’. That’s how caring and hands on she was. I saw that week the side of her which people often don’t hear about or don’t see for themselves but it’s there.
Shelagh Fogarty
You talking about her stepping in for your mother, in your mother’s absence because she was in hospital. She really did directly take physical care of you didn’t she? You did have wounds that were still very fresh, literally….
Timothy Knatchbull
… that’s right. I got out of hospital after only less than two weeks but the proviso to that was that I had wounds that needed dressing everyday and the deepest of them was on my right leg. So when I got to Balmoral I needed to be mindful that I was going to have to get somewhere to get the wounds looked at and dressed which probably meant getting to a local health centre. But no, the moment the Queen heard about that she made sure that her personal physician came up. I remember sitting rather nervously in my room, waiting for the doctor to come and him sorting out my leg. I remember him saying, ‘Is it OK if I take your boot off?’ I remember thinking suddenly, oh yes, it’s a boot, may be it isn’t very suitable footwear for wearing at Balmoral. Suddenly I thought, I wish I could ask mum if this is the right thing to be wearing, the right shoes. And suddenly I felt very lost without my mum. But in the next moment I realised, wait a moment, this lovely doctor who is being so caring, he was here and just down the corridor waiting, and I knew she would be for a report from him, was the Queen. She was acting like my mum in absence. That immediately bucked me up. She just was brilliant because she never mollycoddled me or fussed over me but she just ….
Shelagh Fogarty
…she kept close.
Timothy Knatchbull
She kept me under observation. I was all gun-ho. I heard they were going off up onto the moor to have a look for some grouse and I wanted to go. She actually said, ‘No, I think it would be a good idea if you stayed in tomorrow. It’s going to be a strong northwest wind. Come out with us middle of the morning. Don’t go out with the men first thing at breakfast.’ So I was rather deflated but actually the next morning, fast asleep at nine o’clock when everyone else was setting out, I was actually very pleased that there she was really being a mothering character and being firm with me, and saying ‘no’ Timmy’ and ‘that’s not allowed’.
Shelagh Fogarty
Well you needed rest still. You didn’t want that but you needed that, didn’t you?
Timothy Knatchbull
Exactly. That was a big part of the healing. It was wonderful food and rest and closeness to people who were loving. I remember at mealtimes, it was a large family group staying at Balmoral and there were visitors and so on. It’s quite an undertaking and certainly a youngster like me wouldn’t expect to sit by the Queen but there she was every meal, she’d have me either on her left or her right where she’d keep an eye on me and it was just very noticeable. I was very chuffed the first time at a meal when I sat next door to her but then I noticed the second meal and the third, the fourth and the fifth I realised she wasn’t letting me far from her sight and it was a lovely feeling. At the end of the evening – I remember on the first evening, it was a little awkward for me because I knew – I was very tired – but I knew that manners were important and I wasn’t going to slouch off or go off to bed. I was going to wait until the Queen went to bed and after she had gone to bed I would then slip away and it would be easy. I noticed that over and above the head of my elder sister, Amanda, who was there really in loco parentis, in place of parents, looking after me, there was the Queen turning round and looking round the room and catching my eye and saying, ‘Oh Timmy, I think it’s time for bed’. There she was, it was in the role of a mother figure, saying go to bed. I was actually incredibly pleased she had done that.
Shelagh Fogarty
It sounds like a few minutes more and your face would have been in the soup – or the pudding at that stage.
Timothy Knatchbull
I think probably that was right.
Shelagh Fogarty
Did she at any stage when you stayed, did she talk explicitly to you about the events that had led to this stay at Balmoral or did she leave that entirely to you to say or not say?
Timothy Knatchbull
She was brilliant, others of my parents friends were brilliant in this respect as well, which is they left it to me to decide if, when and how I wanted to talk about the bomb, about Nicky, Grandpapa, Granny and Paul and so on. I remember on the second or third day we were out on the moors, we stopped for some lunch. We were all pretty tired and cold and we were having a nice sit down and some soup and sandwiches and as we were settling down – again she gathered me in and put me beside her.
She is a very instinctive, natural listener at every level: as a head of state, as somebody who deals with public figures and politicians but also in the way a mother listens to a child. She was particularly good at just drawing out, not actively drawing out, but allowing me to talk above the din and clatter of other people rushing around this small bothy up in the hills. I remember talking to her about the sound of the bomb, which at that stage was still a very dominant memory. In fact it was a subliminal memory that started coming back.
About the next year I got into a syndrome where the sound of the bomb would come back in my imagination like a day dream, not a nightmare, maybe a sort of ‘daymare’ if such things exist where I would be going round my everyday activities and then something small would trigger the sound of the explosion in my head. That became – it wasn’t really upsetting – but it was an unnatural thing and it only faded after many, many years when I went to Ireland and sorted out all of the unresolved memories and grief. But then it was in my mind in a way that I wasn’t quite able fully to articulate but the sound of this explosion, which was so dominant in my imagination, in my memory.
Shelagh Fogarty
It would have gone through your entire body let alone through in your ears.
Timothy Knatchbull
Yes, so it was deeply psychologically unsettling. I remember over lunch she was the first person that I’d explained to, this sense of -. I remember using the word ‘percussive’ to her, which was the first time I’d been able to get out this sense of something tangible – it wasn’t so much a noise you could really hear. All of us on the boat who lived, we had our eardrums blown in by the explosion and that’s how a tearing sound it was. It tour through my whole psyche. So there she was an inspired listener drawing out those memories from me. Not pushing me but just a brilliant, innate listener.
Shelagh Fogarty
And just one more theme before we leave this and it’s Ireland. Your love of Ireland comes across so deeply in your book and I know from my own Irish background that when the Queen visited Ireland my mother was on the phone to me three times a day, sometimes telling me she was nearly in tears watching the Queen in Ireland. My parents are both Irish and came over to England in the 60s and to see the emblem of what used to be the problem in lots of peoples eyes, walking on Irish turf and clearly overjoyed to be doing so herself moved a lot of people. I’m only giving my mother’s example but her joy of doing it was clear, wasn’t it? For all to see. Have you spoken to her about that? I know Prince William has made reference to it, saying she felt she was opening a door that had been closed to her. You must have some understanding of that, given you’re experience and you were eventually able to go back.
Timothy Knatchbull
Well it’s funny you should pick out that day because I remember that day. I will always remember that day. It was a busy day at work. I was in the office and opened up the screen to watch what was going on. Somebody had said ‘I think the Queen’s arriving in Ireland’ and I opened up this little box. I found it difficult to believe this really was happening. Here was the Queen walking down the steps of a plane. She was on Irish soil and they were playing God Save the Queen and then they were arriving elsewhere. There was the Irish national anthem being played. The warmth and the mutual respect. It really – I remember people coming in from other offices and crowding round. It was a seminal moment, a wonderful thing that the Irish did in welcoming her in that way. It didn’t surprise me but it was a wonderful magical moment and I thought she was the most fantastic ambassador and sovereign from the British people who have always had this incredible, deep affinity with our Irish cousins. I remember being excited at this thought, that no one would have got more pleasure from that sight, to be watching those images than my beloved Grandpapa.
Shelagh Fogarty
That was going to be my next question. Imagine what he would have made of that.
Timothy Knatchbull
I know what he would have made of that which is that when things were going really, really well, when he was deeply content, he had this wonderful eccentric habit. Now radio is not a great medium for me to explain this. He used to put his hands together in a symmetrical pattern in front of himself and then apply pressure and squeeze and squeeze and you could see the energy being released through this handclasp in front of him. And you knew if he was doing that he was really happy and he was really satisfied. It was private and I thought to myself, well there he is, perched on some cloud somewhere, looking down on the Queen, looking down on the Irish President and he’s just having the most fantastic hand squeeze.
Shelagh Fogarty
And what struck me when I watched many elements of her trip is she could say, because of those events in 1979 and you were part of, she could say with genuine authority – and she did say it – we have all lost in this and she could say it with real authority couldn’t she? Because she lost Lord Mountbatten, she lost people who were very dear to her on that day didn’t she?
Timothy Knatchbull
Well I’ve got such respect for her because all through these troubles where she must have been watching the suffering of peoples from both nations; the dignity and the composure and the understanding that she’s shown but also she’s never lost faith, she’s never lost hope and you ask me what’s she really like, well the answer is she’s a very funny woman, she’s an instinctive entertainer, a brilliant mimic. There’s laughter around her.
Shelagh Fogarty
You’re not going to tell me who she does are you?
Timothy Knatchbull
That might be tricky! She’s an instinctive, fun-loving, laughter filled person at the centre of family like that. I think that’s something which is not understood widely and it’s why she such a fun person to be around in those circumstances.
Shelagh Fogarty
There’s just one more on the Ireland trip because it was so extraordinary. There was that moment when she greeted everybody at the banquet at Dublin Castle in Irish and it was amazing to see the then-president Mary McAleese just mouth to the entire room, ‘wow’. And it was a ‘wow’ moment wasn’t it?
Timothy Knatchbull
It was a brilliant moment; it was a brilliant TV moment as well.
Shelagh Fogarty
I think you’re right. At that point your grandfather would have been doing the clasp of his hands wouldn’t he?
Timothy Knatchbull
There’s no doubt about it at all. I think that that gift the Queen had and Mary McAleese had of showing symbolically that after everything the nations had been through over centuries, we are at a place now where there is an increasingly peaceful situation in Ireland and that’s a wonderful thing. We must honour it, we must protect it and work at it but it gives me incredible pleasure because the thought of me going on with a lifetime of happy holidaying and visits to Ireland with my kids and getting them to share in the wonderful happy places – which is how I think of Ireland. It’s not a place of sadness and wounds; it’s a place really of a sunlit future for both the Irish people and the British people to share in in the future. The Queen’s played a part in that, God bless her.
