Western Morning News (Saturday)
I pray that God will help me discharge worthily this heavy task that has been laid on me so early
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S DECLARATION OF SOVEREIGNTY
AS her twenties began, the young Princess was being swept along in the exciting and blossoming romance with her dashing suitor.
Now the war was over the prospect of a gilded future with Philip lay ahead.
The future Queen and one of London society’s most eligible bachelors were a perfect pairing in many ways.
Philip, a member of the Greek royal family, had an impressive military record from his service during the Second World War. He saw action in the Battle of Crete and the conflict at Cape Matapan and was even mentioned in dispatches.
And as well as his sporty physique and handsome features, the impressive naval officer had charisma to spare.
Elizabeth and Philip had met for the first time in 1939 when little Lilibet was just 13 and accompanying her father the King to Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where Philip was a cadet.
Philip was said to have larked around, playing croquet and tennis, with witnesses describing the Princess as “pinkfaced” when the dashing young man came aboard the King’s yacht for food.
She was said to have been attracted to his “Viking” good looks and they kept in touch by letter when the Prince served in the Royal Navy on board the destroyer HMS Wallace.
Rumours of an engagement between the pair were rife in the summer of 1946 but the Palace issued denials.
The King and Queen wanted their daughter to wait until her 21st birthday before an announcement and there were misgivings among members of the court. One described Philip as “rough, illmannered, uneducated”.
In the meantime, along with Princess Margaret, Elizabeth took her first trip abroad on a tour of South Africa.
The King’s private secretary, who accompanied the sisters, described Elizabeth’s “healthy sense of fun”, recalling her mischievous habit of poking her mother with an umbrella if they were running late.
Elizabeth celebrated her 21st three days before the end of the tour and, less than three months later on July 10, 1947, the King and Queen announced “with the greatest pleasure” her betrothal to “Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN”.
A WEDDING TO REMEMBER
The date for the wedding was set for November 20. With rationing dragging on in the wake of the war, there was concern that an extravagant royal wedding might appear distasteful.
But Winston Churchill said it would be “a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel” and the public – as well as the press – got behind the celebrations.
In a nod to restraint, the Princess used ration coupons to buy the material for her dress. The Government gave her 200 extra.
Her gown, inspired by Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece Primavera, was designed by dressmaker Norman Hartnell and encrusted with more than 10,000 pearls.
Such was the public interest in the dress that Hartnell’s manager slept in the workroom to guard against spies.
And the finished article didn’t disappoint, with the radiant Princess looking picture perfect as she walked down the aisle at Westminster Abbey. By then Philip was “HRH”, having renounced his Greek Orthodox religion and the titles of his birth, taking on instead the mantle of Duke of Edinburgh and signing up to the Anglican Church.
The party afterwards – with a pareddown list of 150 guests – took place at
Buckingham Palace, where the couple waved to the crowds from the balcony and guests feasted on a four-tier, 9fthigh wedding cake.
That night the newlyweds travelled by train to the Hampshire home of the new Duke’s uncle, Earl Mountbatten, before honeymooning in Scotland. They received more than 2,500 gifts and 10,000 telegrams of congratulations from around the world.
In the months after their wedding the couple remained at Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen and, on November 14 the following year, Prince Charles was born in the comfortable surroundings of his mother’s bedroom at the Palace.
STARTING FAMILY LIFE
Elizabeth’s little family moved into Clarence House but before long the Duke was sent to Malta with the Royal Navy and his wife joined him, leaving baby Charles behind. Splitting her time between Malta and London, the Princess enjoyed relative normality for the next year or so, and gave birth to her second child, Princess Anne, in August 1950 at Clarence House.
But her carefree life as a young mother was to be short-lived. The following year, doctors discovered her father had lung cancer. The Princess was to take on more of his duties. And with the expectation her husband should be by her side, Philip’s naval career was cut short.
I think, ‘Oh, poor girl, her father’s died’. So I go over to her, give her a hug and think, ‘Oh my God, it’s the Queen’ so I go into a deep curtsy. And she says, ‘I’m so sorry. It means we’ve all got to go back…’ She was only thinking of all of us.”
BECOMING QUEEN
After a tour of the US and Canada, the couple spent one final Christmas with the King at Sandringham, in 1951 before flying to Africa. It was there, in a remote part of Kenya on February 6, 1952, Philip broke the news her father had died – and she was to be Queen.
He had been told by the Queen’s private secretary as news of the tragedy was broadcast across the world.
Lady Pamela Hicks, former lady-in-waiting to the Queen, later recalled how Philip asked his wife to take a walk in the garden at the Sagana Lodge residence where he told her of her father’s death.
Lady Pamela said: “As she comes into the room. I think, ‘Oh, poor girl, her father’s died’. So I go over to her, give her a hug and think, ‘Oh my God, it’s the Queen’ so I go into a deep curtsy. And she says, ‘I’m so sorry. It means we’ve all got to go back…’ She was only thinking of all of us.”
The grieving daughter boarded a flight back to London within hours and the next day, before the King was in his grave, she read a declaration of sovereignty at St James’s Palace: “I pray that God will help me discharge worthily this heavy task that has been laid on me so early in my life.” The Queen was 25 and it was more than a year before the Coronation took place. But those early months were intense as she got to grips with her monumental role. At her Coronation on June 2, 1953, celebrations took place around the Commonwealth. Televisions were affordable for ordinary people for the first time and overnight the number of TV licence holders doubled from 1.5 million to three million.
This allowed the whole nation to watch the dawn of a new age for the Royal Family.