MEMOIRS OF A ROYAL CHILDHOOD
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN’S TEEN YEARS WERE PEPPERED WITH SLEEPOVERS, SKATING TRIPS AND SECRET BOY CHATS, ACCORDING TO THE VIVID RECOLLECTIONS OF ONE OF HER CHERISHED BEST FRIENDS
Very few people have the privilege of claiming they’ve enjoyed sleepovers and gossiping about eligible men with the Queen. But Alathea Fitzalan Howard was fortunate enough to do just that and more after forging a lifelong friendship with her during the Second World War.
Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret spent the majority of the war at Windsor Castle, while Alathea lived with her grandfather at nearby Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park.
A new book called
The Windsor Diaries:
A Childhood With
The Princesses gives a fascinating insight into Elizabeth as a teenager via extracts from Alathea’s personal diaries, which she kept up until shortly before her death in 2001.
The princesses were 13 and nine when the war began, while Alathea was only two years older than “Lilibet” as Princess Elizabeth was then known. She was one of the first people the future queen confided in about her interest in Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, who she referred to as her “boy” aged just 14.
But he wasn’t the only male on the scene during Lilibet’s teens and the book features recollections of the three girls teasing each other about their “beaus”.
Vivid descriptions of the wonderfully glamorous balls that took place at the castle into the early hours give a hint at the social life they enjoyed. In fact, at one point, there was some friendly rivalry between Elizabeth and Alathea over the distinguished Earl of Euston. “She began liking him at the same time as I did, though quite unbeknown to each other,” Alathea noted in her journals when Lilibet was 16. Despite apparently confiding in Alathea that if she really wanted to marry someone she’d “run away”, within two years it
was clear Philip was indeed the one. Princess Margaret even told Alathea how her older sister had been so thrilled when Philip sent her a photo as a Christmas gift that she “danced round the room with it for joy”.
Spontaneous bursts of emotion were rare for Elizabeth. Alathea described her as, “Matter of fact and uncurious and above all untemperamental.” Noting that she lacked the “frivolity and irresponsibility” of her younger sister, she later added that Lilibet was also a “lovable and sincere” friend.
The princess’s passion for animals was very apparent during her teens. As well as owning a pet chameleon, she loved horses and would train her dogs to jump the tennis court nets!
Alathea painted a picture of a very outdoorsy lifestyle, which saw the trio out picking damsons, going for bike rides around the estate, punting, picnicking, practising archery and fishing. On one occasion, she even described how they had great fun “spitting over a bridge into a stream, trying to hit leaves as they floated by”. However, she reflected that it was something that the adults in the royal household wouldn’t have approved of.
During the icy winter months, Lilibet, Margaret and Alathea would go skating on
the lakes at Frogmore House and Cumberland Lodge, enjoying a game of hockey with the policemen and chauffeurs.
By all accounts, the sisters were quite boisterous too. Alathea recorded one incident when a mischievous Lilibet pushed her friend and the royal governess Marion ‘Crawfie’ Crawford hurtling down a steep slope and into a bush. Luckily, they found it funny and “laughed so much we couldn’t get up!”
Dance and art classes were a regular activity for the three girls, while swimming proved very popular, although Alathea observed that the princesses’ plain, black swimming costumes were “awful things”.
She was invited to the castle for tea numerous times, once remarking on the
“enormous” spread which included “cakes galore, ices, cherries” – quite something during an era of rationing.
Alathea was also invited to several sleepovers, and wrote about having “supper in our dressing gowns in the nursery” and talking “till bed”. Card games, Monopoly and charades were played with enthusiasm, while Charlie Chaplin movies and Disney’s Fantasia were enjoyed on the film projector. They spent hours practising for pantos and shows too, with Lilibet playing the piano and doing a tap dance to a song called An Apple For The Teacher for one performance. It wasn’t a success, much to the annoyance of the “rather cross” sisters, with Alathea recalling, “Lilibet played the piano badly and the curtain fell on Margaret’s head!”
As members of the Girl Guides, they learnt how to make a fire, cook sausages on sticks and rustle up fried eggs for their Cook’s Badge. The future queen was “obviously not keen” though, said Alathea, because she kept forgetting to attend and often turned up late.
Like a good Girl Guide though, Lilibet didn’t neglect her chores and her famed enjoyment of washing up perhaps stems from those days, with Alathea claiming she “does more of it than the rest of us put together”.
Shielded from the more intense horrors of war, Alathea still detailed the “wild terror” of hearing bombs exploding in Windsor Great Park, shaking Cumberland Lodge “like a pack of cards”.
One day a German Messerschmitt plane was spotted flying just 4,000ft above during daylight hours, while the mention of a boy tragically killed by a direct hit on one of the lodges highlights how the princesses were often in grave danger.
During air raids, the sisters would spend the night in the castle’s shelter in the cellars,
sleeping on bunk beds, with Margaret always on top.
What’s interesting is the way in which the diaries document how Princess Elizabeth matured from a young teen into an adult. In 1942, Alathea spotted how her royal friend was wearing the first “grown up” shoes she’d ever seen her in – dark red suede slipons. “I’m so glad as her shoes are really v. bad,” she wrote.
Indeed, Alathea was pretty harsh in her criticisms of the royal sisters, tutting at the apparently unflattering hair styles and sometimes “ugly” dresses that Lilibet in particular sported. But her fondness for her is crystal clear as well and she admitted, “I should like always to be Lilibet’s friend whatever happens.”
Her wish came true and the two women remained in touch throughout Alathea’s life, occasionally lunching together and no doubt reminiscing about Lilibet’s carefree years at Windsor, before duty ultimately called.
‘I should like always to be lilibet’s friend whatever happens’