The Windsor Diaries: A Childhood with the Princesses, by Alathea Fitzalan Howard

The Windsor Diaries: A Childhood with the Princesses

By Alathea Fitzalan Howard

Hodder & Stoughton £25

This is an enthralling book. In 1940, aged just 17, the author started a diary, writing it up every day without fail until great old age, some seven decades later. Born in 1923, she died in 2001.

It is artless, candid, often funny and sometimes truly moving. While aware that so personal a document would interest future generations, she did not want it published during her lifetime, but willed it to Isabella Naylor-leyland who, with the help of expert editing, has written a most touching foreword.

Alathea Fitzalan Howard was the daughter of Lord Fitzalan of Derwent. Had she been male, she would have been the heir to the Dukedom of Norfolk. She twigged early on that her father was ineffectual and pretty dull (‘He talks only about that most boring topic, After The War’), and a glamorous and brittle but lukewarm mother she found hard not to dislike. Brought up in the highest Roman Catholic and aristocratic circles, she has a perspicacity not limited by her lineage.

Still, while just out of the schoolroom, she daydreams of which duke she’ll marry: ‘I adore Hugh Euston [later the Duke of Grafton] … if only he had a bit of money.’ There are no flies on her as the war approaches; she’s convinced the world is facing collapse.

At the outbreak of war, the family moved from ‘dear 18 Hans Place’ to her paternal grandfather’s royal grace-and-favour house, Cumberland Lodge. The Lodge is on the far side of Windsor Great Park from the castle, where its four close-knit royal occupants were sitting out the conflict.

Though older than the princesses, but still childish, somewhat clumsy and not conventionally attractive, Alathea was victim to bouts of serious self-harming. One detects a (then unrecognised) bipolar aspect to her documented mood swings. ‘I am a lonely stranger in my family. I’ve always lived with hard people,’ she writes.

So it’s little wonder she formed a deep friendship, bordering on obsessive, with one to whom such problems were totally alien, Princess Elizabeth: and, in a more playful vein, with her much younger sister, Princess Margaret.

Early on, considering their diverse natures, Alathea observes, ‘Lilibet is placid, unemotional, conscientious and, above all, untemperamental’. Margaret, with her frivolity and irresponsibility, is ‘killing; she’s an angel, that child’.

The three shared tutors, cooking (‘L made jam puffs and we ate them after. She loves washing up. I hate it’) and drawing lessons. There were weekly dancing classes taken by the eagle-eyed (‘I missed a step and had to stand at the back’) Madame Vacani. Alathea wore her ‘flat slippers, as they make me look shorter’. Being taller than Princess Elizabeth was always a worry. They acted together too: ‘Margaret was a scream!’

Outdoor activities consisted of rainy walks and energetic games supervised by Crawfie – Marion Crawford, the princesses’ nanny. All three idolised Crawfie, who made everything fun: schooling ponies, fishing (fruitlessly, as ‘the King’s dog ate all our bait’) and swimming in the Royal Lodge pool – ‘Both L and M have hideous, black, Bath Club bathing costumes.’

After Girl Guide get-togethers – ‘MILES away; we hiked back to the castle’ – Alathea would ‘tidy’ in one of the girls’ rooms before nursery supper, or join the household for a film screening.

She was an acerbic movie critic. ‘I HATE funny films,’ she comments – understandably –after a George Robey comedy. She approves of Bette Davis in The Letter, but she rates Down Argentine Way – surely one of

the campest films ever made – merely ‘Not bad.’

What she particularly enjoyed was a zippy game of Racing Demon with Queen Elizabeth. But the family’s repetiton of jokes they had heard on the wireless – ‘on all day’ – annoyed her. Slapstick humour was never Alathea’s métier. As Isabella Naylor Leyland tellingly puts it, ‘She loved to laugh but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.’

It’s her eye for detail that captivates. At a Windsor Castle ball, Queen Elizabeth wears – exactly the early image we have of her – a white crinoline sprinkled with silver. Alathea adds that both princesses wore smaller versions, all by Norman Hartnell, and that Margaret, then all of 11, stayed up till 3.15.

It comes as a surprise to read that, while she was integral to this juvenile clique, Alathea frequently went to London theatres and parties. She went on to the Nut House, a louche Soho club, ‘when we couldn’t get into the 400’. She longed to be kissed while searching for possible suitors (of whom she is candidly critical). Her pursuit was spurred on by her sharing Lilibet’s secret: as early as 1941, when the princess was only 14, ‘her boy’ was Prince Philip.

Being three years older than Princess Elizabeth, Alathea became a nurse, locally at first; she could still be part of castle life. When the Royal Family move back to Buckingham Palace, there is less contact.

She harboured unrealised hopes of becoming a lady-in-waiting to her friend. But Princess Elizabeth’s marriage to ‘her boy’, and later the Coronation, created a more formal distance between them.

Their friendship continued for Alathea’s long life, during which she learned fluent German, Spanish, French and Russian – for what reason, we will, one hopes, find out in further diaries.

Re-reading these Windsor years, she touchingly wrote, ‘I have to say, I don’t really find myself sympathique.’

She’s wrong about that. As I said, there are no flies on Alathea.