* White Lodge, Richmond Park, built by George II in 1727–9 ‘as a place of refreshment after the fatigues of the chace’, was Queen Mary’s family home before her marriage; she was eager for her son and daughter-in-law to live there too. They moved in but soon found it too far from central London. White Lodge subsequently became the Royal Ballet School and remains the site of its Lower School.
† Lance-Corporal Norman Jepson had written a sixteen-verse ‘Ode to Glamis’ in Elizabeth’s autograph book, celebrating her as ‘a maiden charming and rare’.
* Elizabeth suffered from frequent throat and bronchial problems.
† Captain (later Lieutenant Colonel Sir) Giles Sebright (1896–1954), equerry to the Duke of York 1922–3 (in succession to James Stuart). Succeeded his uncle as thirteenth Baronet in 1933. Anne Cameron was his girlfriend at this time.
* Madame Handley Seymour, London couturier and Elizabeth’s choice to make both her wedding dress and her Coronation robes.
† Frogmore House in Windsor Home Park, purchased by Queen Charlotte in 1792 and later home to various members of the Royal Family. The Duke and Duchess were to spend part of their honeymoon there. The mausoleum which Queen Victoria built for Prince Albert and herself is in the grounds.
* James Stuart married Lady Rachel Cavendish (1902–77), daughter of ninth Duke of Devonshire, on 4 August 1923.
† Michael and David Bowes Lyon, Arthur Penn, Francis Doune, Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton, Rachel Cavendish, Katie Hamilton, Elizabeth Cator, Mary Cavendish (1903–94), daughter of Lord Richard Cavendish, married 1925 twenty-eighth Earl of Crawford and Lady Hermione Herbert (1900–95), daughter of fourth Earl of Powis, married 1924 Duca della Grazia.
‡ Prince Alfred, Duke of Connaught (1850–1942), third son of Queen Victoria.
§ Princess Mary and her husband Lord Lascelles.
* The new Duchess’s five-year-old niece, daughter of Jock and Fenella Bowes Lyon.
* Billy Merson (1879–1974), popular English music-hall actor and songwriter.
† The Duchess had developed whooping cough while on honeymoon.
* The shooting lodge in Angus of the Dalhousie family.
* On 18 October 1923 the Duke and Duchess set off by train to Belgrade for the christening of the son and heir of Alexander, King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the new Yugoslavia) and the wedding of their friend, and Alexander’s cousin, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (formerly of Serbia) to Princess Olga of Greece. The Duke of York was godfather (koom) and the Duchess godmother (koomitsa) to the baby.
† Fred Astaire (1899–1987), film and Broadway dancer, choreographer and singer – and one of the greatest stars of the early twentieth century. He had a successful dancing partnership with his sister Adele. Subsequently his most celebrated dance partner was Ginger Rogers.
* Queen Marie (1875–1938), the former Princess Marie of Edinburgh, granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a flamboyant character. She married King Ferdinand of Romania (1865–1927).
† H. M. Bateman (1887–1970), prolific cartoonist and caricaturist, most famous in the 1920s and 1930s for his ‘the man who …’ series.
* Nightclub and cabaret at the Metropole Hotel.
* Rented by the Duke and Duchess of York for winter weekends and to enable the Duke to hunt with the Pytchley and Whaddon Chase.
† Probably the statue of Buddha in the grounds of Sandringham.
* Probably Grace Vanderbilt (1899–1964), the daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt III and his wife, Grace Graham Wilson.
† Noel Edward Buxton (1869–1948), MP for North Norfolk, Liberal 1910–18, Labour 1922–30; Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1924 and 1929–30; created first Baron Noel-Buxton, 1930; advocate of temperance legislation, writer on Balkan affairs.
* Colonel Clive Wigram, later first Baron Wigram of Clewer PC GCB GCVO Royal Victorian Chain CSI (1873–1960), soldier, courtier, Assistant Private Secretary then Private Secretary to King George V 1910–36, Acting Private Secretary to King George VI 1936–7.
† Later the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability. Queen Elizabeth was Patron from 1923 until the end of her life.
* HMS Wryneck had taken the Duke and Duchess to and from Ulster on their successful official visit in July 1924.
* Sir Thomas Edwin Scott (1867–1937), eminent military and colonial service officer; Governor of Aden, 1920–5.
* In April 1923 Mollie Ellis, the daughter of Major A. J. Ellis DSO, was kidnapped and her mother was murdered in their military bungalow in Kohat in the Khyber region of Pakistan. The New York Times reported the story under the headline ‘Captive English Girl is Seen with Savages’ (New York Times, 18 April 1923). Mollie was freed ten days later thanks to a knowledgeable and brave Englishwoman, Lilian Starr, matron of the Peshawar Military Hospital. She rode into the Tribal Territories, found where Mollie was being held and, with the help of village elders, managed to persuade the kidnappers to hand her over (Roderick Martin, Tavistock District Local History Society, West Devon Magazine, August 2010).
† Siolo Plain, beyond Meru, near Mount Kenya.
* Martin (1884–1937) and Osa (1894–1953) Johnson, photographers, film-makers, explorers and authors. The Johnsons came from Kansas and captured the American imagination with films and books of their adventures around the world, including in Africa and the South Pacific. When they met the Yorks they were on their second African safari.
* The river paddle steamer in which the Duke and Duchess spent a month (5 March–6 April) sailing down the Nile from Rejaf in Southern Sudan to Kosti.
* Captain Courtney Brocklehurst (1888–1942) was married to Lady Airlie’s daughter Helen, and the Duchess had danced with him at her first ball in January 1918. He was Game Warden of the Sudan; Major R. H. Walsh was his assistant. They led the team that accompanied the Duke and Duchess through the Sudan.
* Lady Constance Frances Bowes Lyon, daughter of thirteenth Earl of Strathmore (1865–1951), married 1893 Hon. Robert Francis Leslie Blackburn (1864–1944); he became Lord of Session as Lord Blackburn, 1918–35. Their son, Leslie, had just died of appendicitis.
† Kodok, formerly Fashoda, in the south Sudanese state of Upper Nile, the capital of what used to be known as the Shilluk kingdom. The Shilluks are a Nilotic people, the third-largest minority ethnic group in southern Sudan after the Dinka and the Nuer. They were led by a king and the society was strictly hierarchical. As today, their principal wealth lay in their herds of cattle, which were always used as currency as well as to provide their main food, milk. Many Shilluks were converted to Christianity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
* Master of the Nasir.
* RMS Maloja, P&O liner built in Belfast and launched in 1923 to run between Sydney and London. In the Second World War she served first as an armed merchant carrier and then a troop ship.
† E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866–1946), prolific writer of forty-three novels and stories, many of which were filmed. Among his most famous titles were Monte Carlo Knights, The Great Prince Shan and The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss.
* Andrew Elphinstone (1918–75), younger son of Sidney and May Elphinstone. A talented pianist; Rector at Worplesdon in Surrey, 1953–68. Married 1946 Jean, widow of Captain Hon. Vicary Paul Gibbs.
† Duke of York to King George V, 4 May 1925, RA GV/PRIV/AA61/250.
* RA EDW/PRIV/MAIN/A/2516.
† RA GV/PRIV/AA61/252.
‡ A. J. Balfour, first Earl of Balfour KG OM PC DL (1848–1930), Conservative politician and statesman; Prime Minister, 1902–5; Foreign Secretary, 1916–19; author of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. His home was Whitingehame House in East Lothian. In the Second World War it was converted into a school for Jewish refugee children who came to Britain through the Kindertransport.
§ The Duchess was pregnant with her first child, Princess Elizabeth. The aversion to alcohol passed.
* Reginald Baliol Brett, second Viscount Esher (
1852–1930), politician and influential friend and adviser of King Edward VII and King George V. A frequent guest at Balmoral.
† The British Empire Exhibition at Wembley which had opened in May 1925 with the ceremony at which the Duke of York had struggled to make his speech. The exhibition closed on 31 October 1925.
* Anne Beevers (1862–1946). Following the death of her husband she trained as a midwife and became a private maternity or monthly nurse, cherished by many society mothers. She was engaged by the Duchess, who called her ‘Nannie B’, for both her confinements, and they remained in touch until Mrs Beevers’s death.
† Lady Helen Graham (1879–1945), daughter of fifth Duke of Montrose, the Duchess’s sole full-time lady in waiting from 1926 until 1933. She continued to serve her as Queen until shortly before her death. The Queen wrote of her, ‘I loved & admired dear Nellie – she helped me through so much when I was young & silly. She was such fun too.’ (Queen Elizabeth to Lady Delia Peel, 27 August 1945, Althorp Archive)
* RA QM/PRIV/CC11/87.
† Clara Cooper Knight (‘Alah’), employed by Lady Strathmore to look after Elizabeth soon after her birth in 1900. She stayed with the family thereafter, working first for Elizabeth’s elder sister, May, and then for the Yorks when Princess Elizabeth was born. She died at Sandringham in 1946.
‡ Catherine Maclean, the Duchess’s dresser; Victor Osborn, the Duke’s valet.
* Assistant to the Game Warden of the Sudan, Captain Brocklehurst; accompanied the Duke and Duchess on their journey down the Nile in 1925.
* After the death in December 1925 of Queen Alexandra, who had lived in Sandringham House, the King and Queen had moved into the ‘big house’ from their less spacious quarters in York Cottage near by.
† The Duke and Duchess had found the drive to and from White Lodge in Richmond time-consuming. They were offered 145 Piccadilly to rent; while it was being renovated they stayed at the Strathmore home, 17 Bruton Street. No. 145 Piccadilly remained their London residence until the end of 1936.
* The Marland Oil Company was founded in Oklahoma in 1917 by an American oil explorer, E. W. Marland. Within a few years it was thought to represent 10 per cent of the world’s oil production. In 1929 it merged with the Continental Oil Company.
† Stanley Melbourne Bruce CH MC FRS PC (1883–1967), Australian politician and diplomat and eighth Prime Minister of Australia, 1923–9. In 1947 he became first Viscount Bruce of Melbourne.
‡ Logue Papers.
* The Prince of Wales, Prince Henry, later Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, later Duke of Kent.
† HMS Renown and her sister ship Repulse were the fastest capital ships ever built when launched in 1916. Renown did not see action in the First World War but was in full service during the Second World War. She covered Arctic convoys and took Winston Churchill to meetings with other Allied leaders.
‡ Field Marshal Frederick Rudolph Lambart, tenth Earl of Cavan (1865–1946), Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 1922–6. He was appointed by the King to be chief of staff for the tour, and his wife Joan acted as lady in waiting to the Duchess.
* ‘Tortor’ was Victoria, Hon. Mrs Little-Gilmour, née Cadogan (1901–91). She acted as lady in waiting on the tour and remained a lifelong friend.
† Lord Cavan had broken a bone in his foot.
* Diamond Hardinge, now Abercromby, who had been gravely ill for several years.
* Sir Truby King (1858–1938), celebrated New Zealand physician and medical reformer, recognized particularly for his work on infant care.
* Sir Harry Batterbee GCMG KCVO (1880–1976), political secretary to the Duke for the tour, served as UK High Commissioner to New Zealand 1939–45.
* See p. 51.
* Soldiers and acquaintances from wartime Glamis.
* Both the Queen and the Duchess were correct. The Duke wrote to his father at the end of the tour: ‘I was not very nervous when I made the Speech, because the one I made outside went off without a hitch, & I did not hesitate once. I was so relieved as making speeches still rather frightens me, though Logue’s teaching has really done wonders for me as I now know how to prevent & get over any difficulty. I have so much more confidence in myself now, which I am sure comes from being able to speak properly at last […] Elizabeth has done wonders & though I know she is tired she never had a return of her tonsillitis & went about with me every day. I could never have done the tour without her help; that I know, & I am so thankful she came too.’ (12 May, 12 June 1927, RA GV/PRIV/AA/62/30)
* Broadway musical set in the Canadian Rockies.
† Edith Day (1896–1971), American performer who starred in many musicals and enjoyed many successes on the London stage. Her name graces a cocktail made with gin, grapefruit juice, sugar and an egg white.
‡ Lily Elsie (1886–1962), Edwardian actress and singer who enjoyed great success in The Merry Widow, 1907.
* The Duchess received the Freedom of the City of Glasgow in the morning and later opened the Housing and Health Exhibition.
* Built at Ypres in Belgium as a memorial to the missing. It was completed in 1927 and contains the names of 54,896 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres salient in the First World War and whose bodies were never found.
† D’Arcy Osborne had recently been posted to the British Embassy in Lisbon.
* A Lost Lady, novel by Willa Cather (1923); Uncle Tom Pudd, novel by Laurence Housman, brother of A. E. Housman (1927); The White Wallet, poems by Pamela Glenconner (1912), one of the literary circle known as the ‘Souls’.
† Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten, first Earl Mountbatten of Burma KG PC GCB OM GCSI GCIE GCVO DSO FRS (1900–79), born Prince Louis Francis of Battenberg. Uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He had a distinguished naval career, serving in both world wars; in 1947 he was appointed Viceroy of India, and after independence served as its first Governor General in 1947–8. He then returned to the Navy, was largely responsible for creating the Ministry of Defence and became the first Chief of the Defence Staff. He married in 1922 the Hon. Edwina Ashley (1901–1960), daughter of the first Baron Mount Temple.
* Sir (Francis) Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell CBE CH (1892–1969), writer of many novels, poetry and a five-volume autobiography. The Duchess had met him through Mrs Ronnie Greville. She enjoyed his personality and his writing and they became good friends; he was one of her principal correspondents.
* Sir Horace Rumbold (1869–1941), the British Ambassador to Germany, 1928–33, and his wife Etheldred.
* Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932), prolific English crime writer, playwright and novelist. He was the co-creator of King Kong and wrote 175 novels and 24 plays, including The Four Just Men. He was one of the most popular writers of the time.
† Birkhall, a charming house on the Balmoral estate, was acquired by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1849 for the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII). Surrounded by birch trees, with the River Muick running through the garden, it was a lovely, private spot. In 1856 it was lent to Florence Nightingale when she returned from the Crimea. It was a perfect family home for the Yorks in the 1930s; in 1947 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip used it for part of their honeymoon, and they lived there in the summer until the death of King George VI in 1952. It was then enlarged and lent to Queen Elizabeth and, after her death, taken on by her grandson, the Prince of Wales.
* The King was still convalescing after a serious chest infection from which he had nearly died in 1928.
† Arthur Grant, son of Queen Victoria’s stalker, entered royal service as a boy in 1865, and was head stalker at Balmoral from 1902 until his retirement. He was a great favourite of King George V, and died in 1937 aged eighty-seven.
‡ The ‘Wee Frees’, members of the Free Church of Scotland, had criticized the Duke and Duchess for inspecting an ambulance on a Sunday.
§ Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49), American poet and writer of macabre stories, died at the age of fort
y in a Baltimore hospital after being found unconscious in a public house that was being used as a polling station. The cause of death was variously ascribed to alcoholism, drugs, rabies, suicide or even murder.
* Sitwell’s new book, The Man Who Lost Himself, was dedicated to Margaret Greville, ‘in all affection and because she is so constant a friend’.
† The Foundling Hospital in London, established by Thomas Coram in 1741. It became the first public art gallery, displaying works donated by Hogarth, Gainsborough, Reynolds and others to support the work of the hospital. The present Foundling Museum was created in 1998.
‡ Battersea Power Station, constructed on the south bank of the River Thames between 1929 and 1933.
* The Duke and Duchess had rented Naseby Hall in Northamptonshire for two seasons so that the Duke could enjoy the hunting.
† Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg (1887–1969), Queen Consort of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. In 1931 the Spanish Royal Family was forced into exile when republicans came to power and declared the Second Spanish Republic. Known as ‘Queen Ena’, she was the grandmother of King Juan Carlos, King of Spain from 1978.
‡ A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, published 1929 to great acclaim. The Man Within, Graham Greene’s first novel, also published 1929.
* Sir Henry Simson (1872–1932), obstetric surgeon at the West London Hospital who had attended the Duchess at the birth of Princess Elizabeth in 1926.
† Thomas Timothy Thynne, second son of Viscount Weymouth, later sixth Marquess of Bath. Born 13 October 1929, died 14 September 1930.
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