Our samba Queen... and her ‘Greek god’
Stunning, vivacious and dance-mad – with a husband who made Malta swoon ... young Elizabeth’s closest confidante reveals secret of her carefree island life
THERE will be no shortage of pomp and pageantry when the Queen arrives in Malta’s fortress capital Valletta, on Thursday.
She will receive a full ceremonial welcome in the historic St George’s Square before greeting world leaders from 53 Commonwealth countries the following day.
Yet this visit to the Mediterranean will also be a very much more personal affair. Because for the Queen, now approaching her 90th birthday, this is a journey to the past – to a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s that she has described as ‘the happiest days of my life’.
Away from the pressure of a watching public at home, Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, enjoyed a genuinely carefree existence on Malta – and the remarkable extent to which she was able to relax is captured in a series of photographs, many of which have never been published before.
Joining her young husband Prince Philip, who was stationed on the island as a naval officer, she immersed herself in a life of shopping, sightseeing, gossiping and dancing the samba, according to her closest female companion of the time, Lady Pamela Hicks.
It was truly a different world for the Princess. She handled cash for the first time and even enjoyed the novelty of visiting second-rate hairdressing salons. ‘They were magical days of endless picnics, sunbathing and waterskiing,’ says Lady Pamela in a rare interview. ‘Prince Philip was stunning. He really was. A sort of Greek god. And she was beautiful with that marvellous complexion.
‘The Princess really loved Malta because she was able to lead a normal life, wander through the town and do some shopping, and whenever the [British Navy] fleet came in we would rush to the Barrakka [the public gardens on the sea front] to see it – which was always a fantastic sight.’
Lady Pamela, 86, is the younger daughter of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last viceroy of India, who ruled it for George VI, our last king-emperor. Mountbatten was Prince Philip’s cousin.
His daughter, Lady Pamela, was the Queen’s bridesmaid and lady-inwaiting and is uniquely placed to recall just how much the Royal couple loved their Mediterranean island life. ‘It was the only place that she was able to live the life of a naval officer’s wife, just like all the other wives,’ Lady Pamela explains.
‘It was wonderful for her and it’s why they have such a nostalgia for Malta.’
The Queen’s love affair with the island began in 1949 when Prince Philip was made First Lieutenant on HMS Chequers. Later that year, Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, suggested she joined her husband on Malta. So after celebrating Prince Charles’s first birthday, the Princess flew to the island arriving on her second wedding anniversary, November 20.
Accompanying the Princess was her lady-in-waiting Alice Egerton, her detective, Inspector Alec Usher, a footman named Pearce, her maid
Margaret ‘Bobo’ MacDonald and Philip’s valet John Dean.
For the Duke, newly reunited with his young wife during leave, the only fly in the ointment was the ever-present Bobo, who had been Elizabeth’s nurse since childhood, and is described by Lady Pamela as ‘terrifying’.
‘Prince Philip had quite a battle because Bobo used to sit at the end of the bath when the Princess was having a bath and have a gossip.
‘I think Philip had quite a battle to remove Bobo from the edge of the bath and make it possible for him to sit there.’
Home to the Princess on her four visits to the island was the Villa Guardamangia. The grand sandstone house with orange trees in the grounds was leased by Lady Pamela’s family, the Mountbattens.
While the Duke was aboard Chequers, Elizabeth hosted tea parties for officers’ wives, and took to chat- ting on the telephone to some of them. She went to have her hair done in the local salon, which Lady Pamela laughingly recalls was ‘not very good’.
And the Princess found it slow work as she counted change to pay for things – as she was using cash for the first time in her life. Lady Pamela says ‘I’m not surprised she was slow, as she didn’t normally have to work it out. In those days of course it was pounds shillings and pence, and pennies featured in a big way.’
After the birth in London of Princess Anne, in August 1950, Elizabeth returned for her second winter on the island. That December she was joined by her younger sister Princess Margaret who was never averse to a good party or a month in the sun. By then Elizabeth and Philip had taken over the lease of the Villa Guardamangia.
At night, they would head to the Hotel Phoenicia, which opened in 1947, and there the young Princesses perfected her Samba.
In a letter to his elder daughter Patricia, Lord Mountbatten wrote: ‘She dances quite divinely and always wants a Samba when we dance together and has said some very nice remarks about my dancing’.
Lady Pamela says: ‘The Phoenicia was very new then, and the only smart hotel, and so the balls and dances would nearly always be held there. You also dined there – it was the only sort of luxury. It served very good dinner and there was a lovely ballroom. It was the exciting new place. There was also a nightclub at the Marsa polo ground. I sup- pose it was just one of the polo club buildings turned into a club. There were some dances held there.’
The freedom of Malta allowed the Queen to drive through the narrow streets, some of them still bombcratered after the war, in the Daimler her father had given her as an 18th birthday present, while Philip often used his uncle’s official car.
Lady Pamela recalls: ‘I remember one time Prince Philip was very annoyed. He was stopped by a traffic policeman. I think the problem was he was driving my father’s car, which was a new Riley, in my father’s colours, sort of black and gunmetal, and with a naval badge on. The policeman must have recognised the car – which usually was speeding.
‘Philip quipped, “Look, how can I be speeding? I was doing three miles an hour!”
‘The policeman said, “No senor, no senor, you were doing at least five!” And I think he got summoned.’ But by the spring of 1951, the young couple’s life was to change forever. It was clear that the King was ailing, so the Princess returned home, reluctantly leaving behind her home in the sun forever. The King died the following February, and Philip resigned from the Navy.
At the time, Lady Mountbatten, Pamela’s mother, described Elizabeth’s return as ‘rather like putting a bird back into a very small cage’.
All the more reason why, according to Lady Pamela, this week’s trip will be momentous for the Queen.
‘She loves any moment she can spend in Malta because she led such a free, independent life there, without a care in the world,’ she says. ‘The tragedy is that it was for such a short time.’
Lady Pamela Hicks’s memoirs, Daughter Of Empire, are published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
‘Lord Mountbatten wrote that she danced divinely’