Family Bonds

Long a devoted grandmother herself, as a baby the Queen also inspired devotion in her own grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary.

In her 1986 “Friend” series celebrating the Queen’s sixtieth birthday, Margaret Cameron recalled how the then Duke and Duchess of York had to leave baby Elizabeth behind when they took a six-month tour of the Commonwealth in 1927.

“The baby’s grandparents looked after Elizabeth,” she wrote, “and she completely captivated them, especially King George and Queen Mary.”

So much did our future Queen enchant her grandfather that a visitor to the King and Queen’s Bognor Regis residence once witnessed a delightful scene, according to the same feature.

“It was . . . at Bognor Regis that the visiting Archbishop of Canterbury found the King on his knees! Not praying, but pretending to be a pony while his granddaughter led him along by his beard!”

Pictures of Queen Mary with her granddaughter also attest to the close bond between them.

“Queen Mary was much more motherly and approachable with her grandchildren than she’d been with her own children,” Margaret Cameron wrote, “and undoubtedly the girls were fond of her.

“There was nothing they enjoyed more than sallying forth with her on visits in London, though Queen Mary, with her strong sense of royal duty, saw these outings not so much as a treat as early tuition for the girls for the life that lay ahead of them.”

That childhood training in royal duty from her loving grandmother and mother has served our Queen well throughout her reign.