Why Elizabeth II did her own make-up on day of her Coronation
ELIZABETH II did not want her personal beauty adviser to make up her face for the Coronation but she did ask her to go to Buckingham Palace early that morning “in case anything goes wrong”.
The rare insight into her state of mind on the historic day has emerged through the recollections of Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde, about his mother, Thelma Holland (née Besant), who was beautician to the late Queen as well as to some of her ladiesin-waiting. He said: “When the Queen was crowned in 1953, she asked my mother if she would go to the palace in the morning. She said, ‘I don’t want you to make me up. It’s a big day for me. I want to be alone with my thoughts on this day. But I’d like you to be there in case anything goes wrong.’”
His comments can be heard in a new podcast, in which he is interviewed by Gyles Brandreth, the writer and former MP, whose books include an acclaimed biography of Elizabeth II. The podcast’s release this weekend marks the birthday of the late Queen, who was born on April 21 1926.
Mr Holland’s Australian-born mother received the royal engagement when she was running a beauty salon in London for Cyclax, a British cosmetics company.
Her clients included ladies-in-waiting and, in the podcast, her son says that she received a summons to the palace after she admired a photograph of the then Princess Elizabeth in a magazine: “My mother said to one of the ladies-inwaiting, ‘I think the Princess with that beautiful skin needs some advice for the future’. One thing led to another…The lady-in-waiting goes back to the palace and says, ‘this very nice lady, Thelma Besant, who does my face, thinks she could be helpful to Princess Elizabeth’.”
He added: “My mother would go to the palace and… give her a face treatment and – whenever [the Queen] went away… on tour – she would be put in touch with [fashion designer] Norman Hartnell, who was preparing the dresses. My mother would have samples of all the dresses and have to match up the lipsticks and the powders and the foundations and the rest.”
Mr Holland told The Telegraph: “The Queen did her own make up [for the Coronation]. That was never known about. I didn’t know about it until… I was going through my mother’s unpublished papers. My mother left an unpublished memoir about it. She wrote about the lead up to the Coronation. She went off to [tailors] Ede & Ravenscroft to get a sample of the Coronation robe because the lipstick [and makeup needed to match. The Queen] went to the Abbey in bright red and she was then crowned and came out of the Abbey in Imperial purple, so there had to be a lipstick which didn’t clash with either…. I still have a sample of the Coronation robe.”
He also recalled that, when the then Prince Charles was a toddler, Thelma sent him a birthday present of a xylophone. The Queen wrote a thank-you letter, which Mr Holland shared: “I know he will greatly enjoy banging on the xylophone, for he already prefers noisy things to woolly things!”