Jane Dismore - Princess: The Early Life of Queen Elizabeth II

Princess

Princess

The Early Life of Queen Elizabeth II

Jane Dismore

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Copyright 2018 by Jane Dismore

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dismore, Jane, author.
Title: Princess: The early life of Queen Elizabeth II / Jane Dismore.
Description: Guilford, Conn. : Lyons Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004753 (print) | LCCN 2018003221 (ebook) | ISBN
9781493034635 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493034628 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain, 1926- | QueensGreat
BritainBiography
Classification: LCC DA590 (print) | LCC DA590 .D57 2018 (ebook) | DDC
941.085092 [B]dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004753

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To my family

Contents

Introduction

Philip once met an Australian man who said: My wife is a doctor of philosophy and much more important than I am. Philip said: Ah yes, we have that trouble in our family too.

Queen Elizabeth II in a speech in Australia, 1954

When the Queen joked about her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, she was twenty-seven, he was thirty-three, and they had been married for six years. He clearly coped with being married to the most famous woman in the world, for in November 2017 they celebrated their seventieth wedding anniversary, at the ages of ninety-one and ninety-six.

Famously she fell in love with Prince Philip of Greece, a handsome cadet in Britains Royal Navy, when she was thirteen. They married in 1947 when Elizabeth was still a Princess, Philip was pursuing a successful naval career, and there was no indication that she would become Queen as quickly as she did. At their Golden Wedding in 1997, she said of Philip, He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, sustaining her through decades that in 2016 saw her become the worlds longest-reigning monarch. But she had a solid foundation. With previously unpublished material and interviews from friends and relations who have known her since childhood, here is a fresh look at her life as Princess. Born in 1926 into one of the few remaining European monarchies, her early life was as stable as Philips was turbulent, sustained by devoted parents who wanted their daughters to have as normal a life as possible. Much loved but never spoilt, despite her privileged existence, Princess Elizabeth learned the notion of duty in the difficult years after the Abdication and during the Second World War. Growing up, she often looked wistfully from castle windows and through palace gates to the world outside. Here is the rarefied world into which she was born, the people who shaped her future and the Prince who would support her through it.

Chapter 1

Suddenly a Queen (1952)

I was 41 when I succeeded my father, and many thought that young. But Queen Elizabeth is only 25 how young to assume the responsibilities of a great Throne in these precarious times and she has the good wishes and support of us all.

On 8 February 1952, the Duke of Windsor prepared to leave New York to attend the funeral of his brother, King George VI. Standing next to his black-attired wife on the deck of the Queen Mary, he read a prepared speech to a crowd of journalists and television cameras. Although he spoke of his sorrow at the loss of his brother and respect for his reign, the world knew it was the Dukes abandonment of that great Throne that had led to his niece being placed upon it. When she became Britains longest-reigning monarch on 9 September 2015, aged eighty-nine, the Queen said the title was not one to which I have ever aspired. While longevity was not an unreasonable expectation at her birth, given that her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria had reached eighty-one, it was certainly not envisaged in 1926 that it would ever accompany the title of monarch. Even when the Abdication established her destiny at the age of ten, no one, including Edward VIII as the Duke of Windsor then was, could have imagined she would accede to the Throne so young. But as he recognised in his speech, his brother had been harassed by the dangers and tribulations of a second world war, and beset by more than his share of political strife. What he did not mention was the strain that the Abdication itself had placed upon the shy, stammering Bertie, Duke of York, who had been ill- prepared for his role as King. Faced with such circumstances, a shortened life was perhaps not surprising.

How different Elizabeths life might have been. We were both brought up very much as country children really, and if she hadnt had the bad luck, if you like, to become Queen, she would just have been a country lady. She loves her dogs, shes really interested in her horses she is basically a country girl. The Queens first cousin, the Hon. Mrs Margaret Rhodes, spent her childhood summers in Scotland with Princess Elizabeth and her younger sister and lived with them at Windsor Castle for much of the war. There are people who think it must be wonderful to have lots of money and live in a big house with lots of servants but you could never wake up one morning and say What a lovely day, lets take a picnic to the seaside. You just cant. Your life is totally organised and you know from months ahead exactly what youre doing every day. And the inevitability of having to read those red boxes every day of your life, regardless of whether youre on holiday or not, and make decisions...

Her life as Queen began with cruel suddenness on 6 February 1952 when her father died. At twenty-five, she was the same age as Elizabeth I had been when she came to the Throne, but unlike the Virgin Queen, she was enjoying her fifth year of married life. With two young children, and her husband pursuing the naval career he had enjoyed before they married clinging [to it] with the tenacity of a barnacle to a ships keel, as a contemporary royal chronicler observed she had been spending weeks at a time with Philip in Malta, where he had command of a ship, and enjoying the luxury of a little privacy. Although they had undertaken duties that the Kings poor health left him unable to fulfil, he had seemed to be recovering after a lung operation in September 1951 and was planning a trip to South Africa in the coming March. It was misplaced optimism.

The death of George VI occurred during the night as he slept on his own in his ground-floor room at Sandringham. He had enjoyed a good days shooting, followed by a relaxed dinner with his wife and daughter, Princess Margaret, who would always remember her parents joking together that evening. He went to bed early because he was still convalescing and was seen by the night watchman opening his window. And then, said Princess Margaret, he wasnt there anymore. His long-standing servant James Macdonald found him dead in bed when he took in his early morning tea. He had died peacefully from a coronary thrombosis.