Sighs of Relief as Queen Sets Sail for Home

With their queen safely at sea and steaming home from St Petersburg Friday, British officials could afford to relax for the first time in eight months. The royal visit of the decade had passed off without incident -- or almost.


A trip by the world's best-known monarch to what is possibly the world's most unpredictable country had trembled under the threat of breakdowns in organization, protocol or security.


Some had imagined a diplomatic catastrophe in which President Boris Yeltsin might repeat some of the eccentric antics he got up to recently in Berlin or in passing through Ireland's Shannon airport.


According to a presidential spokesman a special team of Buckingham Palace experts had flown out to brief Russian officials on protocol before the visit and had done "a lot of work."


But in the event, Yeltsin acted throughout with all the decorum of an English gentleman. The Queen's press secretary praised him for being a "very careful host."


And when the feared gaffe did come, it was not the work of Russia's rough diamond president, but of the Royal press corps. Hunting for a flaw in the otherwise smooth proceedings, the pack found one Wednesday in St. Petersburg in the remarks of a biology student who chatted to the queen.


Galina Gusarova, 28, said she told the queen she had studied at Manchester, St. Petersburg's less lovely twin city, and that the queen had said that Manchester was "not such a nice place, but it was really important to have connections between universities."


That was enough for the British tabloids, their appetites already whetted by embarrassing revelations in Prince Charles' authorized biography, released this week. The papers emblazoned the queen's reported non-love of Manchester across their front pages.


"City Fury Over Royal Slur," trumpeted the Daily Mirror.


Ironically the story was supplied to the pop press by the correspondents of the upmarket papers, the Guardian and Independent, who were obliged under pooling arrangments to share even the most trivial quotes.


A palace spokesman said the queen had been misquoted.


But Anne Leslie, covering the visit for the Daily Mail wrote that: "After 42 years of deliberately avoiding saying anything remotely interesting in public, the queen was last night said to have put her court-shoed foot in it."


On occasion, however, the royal visit had been altogether too quiet, as on the day the Queen and Prince Philip stepped out onto Red Square to meet the Russian people, only to find that the cobbled expanse had been surgically cleansed of Russians.


"I thought we were supposed to be meeting Muscovites," muttered Prince Philip.


Officials said President Boris Yeltsin and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov had wanted to show Her Majesty the recently rebuilt Kazan Cathedral at the far end of the square and the planned walkabout was scotched by the Russian side.


But if the Russian officials seemed pleased by the arrangement, the royal couple did not.


The Kremlin's first black-tie banquet also posed quite a challenge. Many of the guests from the Russian elite were reported to be combing Moscow frantically for dinner jackets.


Just before the dinner began Yeltsin was conveniently given a pair of cufflinks by the queen. A palace spokesman said they were to go with two dress-shirts, which were the presents of British Prime Minister John Major in February -- raising the question of what the Russian president had used up until then.


Gifts between heads of state can be a tricky matter. Aware of the possible pitfalls, the queen and president settled for the safe and unglamorous. The queen gave Yeltsin a Spode dinner service with the Russian double-headed eagle inscribed in gold on each piece. He presented her with a samovar and a jewelled clock.