Why you will never, ever Queen see the fidget
She was taught to sit still for hours as a little girl — and her only reward was a biscuit! Tantalising secrets of a childhood as strict as it was bizarre
IN A MAJOR new biography, Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, paints a revealing portrait of Elizabeth II on the eve of her becoming Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. Here, in our final extract from her book, The Queen’s Speech, she explores the trials that shaped the young princess — and the ordeal which left her sick with nerves . . .
THE STRENGTH of character that has sustained the Queen through more than 63 years on the throne, and that next month will make her the longest-reigning monarch in British history, was forged in her earliest childhood. Her nanny, Clara ‘Allah’ Knight, was a no-nonsense farmer’s daughter who had nursed her mother 25 years earlier. ‘Allah’ believed that to spoil the child was to ruin the adult, and so did everything to a strict schedule, from breakfast at 7.30am to bedtime at 7.15pm.
The nanny took her orders not from Princess Elizabeth’s mother, the Duchess of York, but from her grandmother — Queen Mary, the wife of George V. Queen Mary was a formidable character, who insisted that Elizabeth, as a toddler, be taught how to wave and smile. ‘Teach that child not to fidget,’ she would bark. In return for the reward of a biscuit, Elizabeth would learn how to control her bladder for hours on end.
As soon as she could speak, Elizabeth was made to understand she had two lives — one as a little girl and the other as a Princess. Even by the hidebound criteria of the pre-war British aristocracy, her life was regimented.
But her mother also insisted that her children should be surrounded by affection, and so a nursery maid was assigned to work alongside the despotic ‘Allah’. Her name was Margaret MacDonald and, at 22, she was a much more easy-going character.
Elizabeth nicknamed her Bobo, and the maid became the closest confidante and friend of her childhood. They remained devoted to each other until Bobo’s death in 1993.
Outside her family circle, the Princess was timid and shy to the point of gaucheness. She spent just seven-and-a-half hours a week with her governess and was considered by royal watchers in the Thirties to be ill-educated, despite her sharp and decisive mind.
Elizabeth lived with her parents and sister Margaret, four years her junior, at 145 Piccadilly, on the south-east corner of Hyde Park. Weekends were spent at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, where they passed much of their time in the garden, enjoying country life with their pets.
At the family’s Scottish retreat, Balmoral, Elizabeth spent summers with her grandparents, the King and Queen, and learned to stalk and shoot deer.
Margaret was born in nearby Glamis Castle, and when they were very young both girls loved to watch the Highland Games at Braemar.
They would attempt to escape from ‘Allah’ and run onto the field, oblivious to the danger of being hit by a hammer or caber. At Balmoral, they would stage their own Games, dancing on the lawns and throwing whatever they could find.
Their father was an introspective man, daunted by the world beyond his home, who spent as much time with his family as possible: he referred to the tight-knit unit as ‘we four’. They had little room for outsiders, and in London Elizabeth mixed with a few, carefully vetted, upper-class children.
The Duke and Duchess enjoyed a weekly visit to a cinema at nearby Marble Arch to see the l atest Hollywood films. They would phone the manager to warn him of their plans, dine early and slip into their seats at the back of the auditorium when the lights were low. As the final credits rolled, before the lights came back up, they would make their escape unnoticed.
The Duke was physically fragile, with that now famous stammer, and when his older brother Edward VIII announced his abdication in the winter of 1936, the future king admitted he ‘ broke down and sobbed like a child’.
Elizabeth saw her mother almost crumble under the strain and her father reduced to helpless misery, and she was too old not to be affected by the terrible despondency that engulfed her family.
Once the family had moved into Buckingham Palace, life resumed a more even keel, not least because the Princesses were distanced from the influence of their grandmother.
At the outbreak of war, the Princesses were sent to Birkhall on the Balmoral estate, far from danger.
They could not bear to be so far from their parents, though, and in 1940 they moved into Royal Lodge at Windsor, a pink-washed house with a weed-filled swimming pool and flat-roofed pagoda. In London, bombs damaged Buckingham Palace on September 9, 1940.
Four weeks later, a direct hit destroyed Elizabeth’s childhood home, 145 Piccadilly. The King was forced to reassess his family’s safety.
Their mother had been adamant that, as much as possible, they should have an ordinary childhood unblighted by t he everyday problems of war, so Royal Lodge had no camouflage and the children were excused from carrying gas masks. But that could not continue: it was decided that only the ancient battlements of Windsor Castle were sturdy enough to protect the Princesses. ‘Suddenly we were asked to pack and move to the castle,’ Princess Margaret recalled. ‘We packed for the weekend and stayed for five years.’
The girls still led privileged lives. They had bicycles and a menagerie of pets including an aviary of bright blue budgerigars, two grey ponies called Comet and Greylight and an assortment of dogs.
One was a corgi called Jane, who had two puppies on Christmas Eve, named Carol and Crackers by Princess Elizabeth.
The Princesses became preoccupied by the war. They pored over newspapers, knitted garments for the troops and spent weekend mornings in the allotments, ‘digging for victory’ by growing produce.
When the air raid sirens sounded and the Princesses took shelter in the castle dungeons, Elizabeth listened to the distant pounding of the anti-aircraft guns and worried about her parents in London. She became an expert planespotter, a talent she retains to this day.
In 1940, she gave her debut radio performance. The BBC head of children’s broadcasting, Derek McCulloch, known as Uncle Mac when he presented Children’s Hour, petitioned the Palace to have Elizabeth introduce a new series of broadcasts aimed at young listeners in North America and Australia.
McCulloch recalled that the Princess gave a perfect broadcast. At the first rehearsal, the King — who suffered agonies in conquering his stammer for radio — listened outside the makeshift studio and rushed in as soon as the speech was over.
‘ She’s exactly l i ke her!’ he exclaimed — meaning the Princess sounded as she did in ordinary life.
The broadcast was made on Sunday, October 13, 1940, with the microphone placed on a mahogany table at Windsor. At the end, the Princess signed off with the words: ‘My sister is by my side and we are both going to say goodnight to you. Come on, Margaret, say goodnight.’
And a small, rather pompous voice chipped in: ‘Goodnight, children, and good luck to you all.’
In New York, the broadcast was so well received that switchboards at some stations were jammed with
Even by the standards of pre-war aristocracy, her life was regimented In 1940, a direct hit destroyed the family’s home
Margaret acted as chaperone during Philip’s visits ‘My whole life will be devoted to your service’
requests for a repeat. The Star newspaper reported that children had quickly latched on to a new catchphrase: ‘Come on, Margaret!’
The Princesses’ friends were no l onger hand- picked f rom the aristocracy. Instead, local children were chosen as companions from the Royal School, which provided education not only for the offspring of castle staff, but for a number of evacuees from London.
Elizabeth was horrified to see that one of the youngsters, from the East End, did not have proper shoes. Though her pocket money was rationed, the Princess took the little girl shopping in Windsor the next day and bought her sturdy brogues, paying for them in cash.
On another occasion, she discovered that one of the children could not attend ballet classes because she did not have slippers. The Princess produced a pair of her own, insisting she had grown out of them, to save embarrassing the girl.
Keen to keep not only the Princesses but all the Windsor staff and their children happily occupied, George VI hit upon the idea of staging pantomimes.
With his daughters’ love of dressi ng up, singing, dancing and mimicry, it seemed ideal, and he entered into the spirit as the whole family made expeditions round the castle ‘hunting for junk’.
The schoolmaster wrote the scripts and on one occasion the Royal Horse Guards band provided the music. Performed in the castle’s Waterloo Chamber to an audience of several hundred, the pantos were a joyous release from wartime life, and the King and Queen burst into song with everyone else. By 1943, the painfully shy Princess Elizabeth was being prepared for her next role, honorary colonel of the Grenadier Guards, carrying out her f i rst troop i nspection on Salisbury Plain.
She was plagued by anxiety. ‘What shall I do with my handbag?’ she asked one of her mother’s ladies-inwaiting, Delia Peel.
As the royal car neared the parade ground, Elizabeth’s face blanched and she was on the verge of being sick when Lady Delia fished into her own bag and produced the last of her sweet ration, a barley sugar, to suck.
That worked, and the Princess walked up and down the ranks as if she had been inspecting troops all her life. On the way back to Windsor, they passed Stonehenge and Elizabeth asked if they could stop to have a look.
‘No, we can’t,’ replied Lady Delia. ‘It’s not on our schedule.’ The Princess’s life was as constricted as ever.
When Elizabeth turned 16 — despite the King’s reservations — she joined the women’s branch of the Army, the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) as a mechanic with the rank of subaltern. She l earned how to strip an engine, change a wheel and drive a three-ton ambulance. Nonetheless, she still had to return to the castle every night. The war’s end brought greater freedoms, such as the VE Night celebrations on May 8, 1945. The Princesses escaped into the crowds outside the Palace with a party of 16 friends.
Elizabeth recalled walking for miles amid the celebrations: ‘ We were swept along on a tide of happiness and relief.’
Fearful of being recognised, Elizabeth, who was in her ATS uniform, pulled her cap over her eyes — until she was scolded by an officer in the party. ‘He said he refused to be seen in the company of an i mproperly dressed officer,’ she said.
The Princess, now 19, was never allowed out alone with a young man. If she had male company, it was always in a party of at least four.
She had her own car, with its distinctive numberplate HRH1, given to her by her father, but she could never drive it without a detective in the back and a bodyguard following in a second vehicle.
There was, however, a suitor in her life. Though she had met the young Prince Philip of Greece briefly twice before, it was not until she visited Dartmouth Naval College in 1939 that they began corresponding. Encouraged by his uncle, the ambitious Lord Louis Mountbatten, Philip became a regular visitor at the royal palaces.
Despite her parents’ concern that she was too young, Elizabeth never looked at another man. But there was always a chaperone when she and Philip took sherry in her pastel pink apartments before dinner, and it was usually Margaret.
If Philip and Elizabeth were invited to the same parties, the most they could hope for was a couple of dances. She could not discuss her feelings openly, but she constantly played a recording of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, especially one song — People Will Say We’re In Love. It is still a favourite of hers.
Their engagement was announced on July 10, 1947, shortly after her 21st birthday. The night before, she had been at a magnificent comingout party at Apsley House on Hyde Park Corner, where successive Dukes of Wellington had lived. It was the last function she attended as a single woman.
Four months l ater they were married, and inside a year their first child, Prince Charles, was born.
Elizabeth’s life seemed happier than ever. But the King’s health had been gravely affected by the war. Heavy smoking contributed to lung cancer, which had incapacitated him, and by 1951 he was seriously ill. His left lung was removed.
The Princess delayed a monthlong official visit to Canada until she knew the operation was a success. To make up time, Philip suggested they fly to Montreal.
The government had deep reservations about the heir to the throne using transatlantic air travel, but after Philip made personal appeals to the prime minister Clement Attlee and leader of the Opposition Winston Churchill, the trip was given approval.
The 17-hour flight was the beginning of a gruelling visit that ranged from the Atlantic to Pacific coasts and back, a total of 10,000 miles. The Princess made 50 speeches, several in French. Back in Britain, t he King’s cancer had been diagnosed as terminal.
He looked weak and pale as the Royal Family gathered at Sandringham for Christmas.
On January 30, 1952, the Royal Family attended a performance of South Pacific at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was an emotional occasion for the next day Elizabeth and Philip were embarking on a sixmonth tour of East Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
The following morning, the King — bareheaded on a bitterly cold day — insisted on seeing the couple off f rom London Airport, now Heathrow. It was the last time Elizabeth saw him alive.
As a precaution, the Princess had been given a sealed dossier containing the draft Accession Declaration, to be opened in the event of the King’s death. A Royal Standard was also tucked away in the luggage, as were the black mourning clothes always packed among the Royal Family’s personal baggage.
At sunrise on February 6, 1952, the Princess was on her hotel balcony in Kenya with a cine camera, filming a rhino silhouetted against the dawn. At almost that moment, her father passed away, in his sleep, at Sandringham. Philip later broke the news to his wife, minutes after he was informed of the King’s death by his equerry, Michael Parker.
According to Parker, he looked as though the whole world had dropped onto his shoulders.
‘He took the Queen up to the garden and they walked up and down the lawn while he talked and talked to her.’
In London, Churchill’s private secretary, Jock Colville, recalled that after the news was announced he went into the bedroom of the great man, now prime minister once more, and found him alone with tears in his eyes.
‘I had not realised how much the King meant to him,’ said Colville. ‘I tried to cheer him up by saying how well he would get on with the Queen, but all he could say was that he did not know her and that she was only a child.’
Child she was not. Two days after her father’s death, she addressed a large gathering of Privy Counsellors and Commonwealth representatives at St James’s Palace.
‘There must have been 200 present in the large room next to the picture gallery,’ recalled Lord Chandos, the Colonial Secretary.
‘The door opened and the Queen in black came in. Suddenly the Privy Council looked immeasurably old, gnarled and grey.
‘The Queen made one of the most touching speeches to which I have ever listened and I, li ke many others, could hardly control my emotions.’
Speaking steadily, in her strong and somewhat high-pitched voice, the Queen concluded her address: ‘My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than I shall always work as my father did throughout his reign, to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples, spread as they are all the world over.’
Her words echoed an earlier pledge she had given on her 21st birthday, in Cape Town: ‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of the great imperial family to which we all belong.’
It i s a pledge that has been unbroken for an extraordinary span of time, upheld by Britain’s longest-reigning and surely most beloved monarch.
ADAPTED from The Queen’s Speech: An Intimate Portrait Of The Queen In Her Own Words by Ingrid Seward, published by Simon & Schuster on August 27, at £20. © Ingrid Seward 2015. To pre-order a copy for £14, visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808. Offer until August 22, P&P is free.