The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  To Queen Mary’s delight, in 1944, Princess Elizabeth became a Councillor of State, signing her first Acts of Parliament when the King was visiting his forces in Italy, and again playing her part in the Council of State when he was visiting Montgomery’s army at Eindhoven. Queen Elizabeth had written to Queen Mary on 25 September 1943: ‘I am so glad that you approve about Lilibet being made a councillor of state. When Bertie was away in Africa one felt how silly it would be if she could not take any part until the age of twenty-one.’66

  Sheltered though she had been, Princess Elizabeth had more understanding of foreign affairs than most girls of her age, since she had family ties throughout Europe and in Russia. So she watched the progress of the war from the black days of the Blitz, to the fight back and the North African offensive with a personal interest.

  When Germany overran Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete, her own family and friends were involved – for instance, the young King Peter of Yugoslavia was the King’s godson, and she herself had fallen in love with Prince Philip of Greece when she was still a girl of thirteen. She had met Prince Philip when she and Princess Margaret went with their parents for a weekend visit to Dartmouth College, where the King had spent uncomfortable years as a young man. Prince Philip was eighteen, and hardly noticed her then; but for Princess Elizabeth he was, and would always be, the chosen one. Marion Crawford went to Dartmouth with the family and remembered Prince Philip that, a

  fair-haired boy, rather like a Viking, with a sharp face and piercing blue eyes, came in. He was good-looking, though rather off-hand in his manner. He said, ‘How do you do,’ to Lilibet, and for a while they knelt side by side playing with the trains. He soon got bored with that. We had ginger crackers and lemonade, in which he joined, and then he said, ‘Let’s go to the tennis courts and have some real fun jumping the nets.’

  Off they went. At the tennis courts I thought he showed off a good deal, but the little girls were much impressed.

  Lilibet said, ‘How good he is, Crawfie. How high he can jump.’ She never took her eyes off him the whole time. He was quite polite to her, but did not pay her any special attention.

  They met again during the weekend and Prince Philip impressed the little girls enormously with his appetite when, at tea with the Queen, he ‘ate several platefuls of shrimps and a banana split among other trifles’.

  As they sailed away, Princess Elizabeth watched him through her glasses until he ‘became just a very small speck in the distance’.67

  Prince Philip’s uncle was King Constantine, who succeeded to the throne of Greece on his father’s death in 1913. Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice, was the daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria, the eldest child of Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Alice. In 1917 the Battenberg family name was changed to Mountbatten. The link with the Mountbatten family was to be of the greatest importance, not only to Prince Philip, but also in later years to his son, Prince Charles.

  Prince Philip was brought up in Paris until the age of eight. When his parents separated, his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, became his guardian. After prep school at Cheam, Surrey, he was educated at the progressive school run by Dr Kurt Hahn, first in Germany, then at Gordonstoun. The regime at Gordonstoun was tough and demanding, both physically and mentally, but Prince Philip thrived on it. At Gordonstoun, Prince Philip was, as Dr Hahn wrote in December 1938, ‘universally trusted, liked and respected’. An experienced and discriminating judge of men, his assessment of Prince Philip’s character is important.

  He has the greatest sense of service of all the boys in the school. Prince Philip is a born leader, but will need the exacting demands of a great service to do justice to himself. His best is outstanding – his second best is not good enough. Prince Philip will make his mark in any profession where he will have to prove himself in a full trial of strength. His gifts would run to waste if he was soon condemned to lead a life where neither superior officers, nor the routine of the day forced him to tap his hidden resources.68

  His hidden resources were in fact to be tested at the naval college at Dartmouth, which he entered in 1939 and where he was in his first year when he first met Princess Elizabeth. At this time neither Dr Hahn, nor his officers at Dartmouth, had any inkling that he would one day become the consort of the Queen, so their praise was untainted by sycophancy.

  During the war Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip wrote to each other and the Prince came to stay at Windsor on his rare leaves. His photograph now appeared on Princess Elizabeth’s bedside table, and she followed his progress with intense interest.

  The war dragged on but on D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allied invasion of France began and in August Paris was liberated after four years of Nazi occupation. By September the Germans were retreating throughout Europe, and the Allied advance across the Rhine on 22 March 1945 brought victory in Europe.

  Now that the King knew the war was nearly over he allowed Princess Elizabeth to enrol in a vehicle maintenance course at Camberley, Surrey, as a subaltern in the ATS, where she completed the course, passing all the tests. She delighted in showing off her new mechanical expertise when the King and Queen visited her at Camberley.

  On 28 April Mussolini was hanged in Milan and on 30 April 1945 Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker. On 7 May the German Chief of Staff surrendered unconditionally.

  The balcony at Buckingham Palace had seen many royal appearances to cheering crowds, but never had there been so triumphant a day as on 8 May 1945. The King, Queen and Princesses, with Churchill, came out again and again to the roar of a vast crowd. That evening the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, escorted by young officers, slipped out to join the exuberant crowds. As the King indulgently said, ‘Poor darlings, they have never had any fun yet.’69

  For the present writer and many others in the crowds outside the Palace, there was a certain flatness after the rejoicing. The King and the royal family felt this too. The war with Japan was not yet over; servicemen and women were still abroad; and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten RN was still serving in the Far East.

  The Palace to which the royal family returned after the war was still battered and dusty: the State Rooms had to be quickly refurbished, pictures rehung and the private apartments redecorated. Princess Elizabeth was now fully occupied in establishing a routine that she would later follow as Queen. Family life was still important: the early-morning visits to her parents’ rooms before their nursery breakfast continued right up until the days before her wedding.

  Now Princess Elizabeth’s days were, Crawfie wrote, ‘so full of functions and duties that cannot have been other than oppressive for a girl of nineteen’. In fact, the Princess accepted her new role with remarkable equanimity. She

  had her own suite and household at the Palace, which really meant that one of the housemaids and a footman made it their particular duty to look after her.

  Her bedroom was pink and fawn, with flowered chintz and plain white furniture. Nothing at all magnificent or ornate. She never took a very personal interest in furnishings or decorations, the way Margaret did. She tended to accept gratefully anything that was done for her, and settle down happily in a sitting-room arranged by someone else.

  This has been done so often at the Palace, where there is so much of everything already, though most of it is appallingly out of date. With mounds and mounds of furniture around already, furnishing a room tends to mean adapting things. It would be extravagant to buy more. So it boils down to rearranging a few whatnots and valuable antiques that would be wonderful in a museum but are somewhat depressing in a private apartment. One of the subjects Alah and I agreed on wholeheartedly was one day voiced by her as we moved out of sight some truly amazing candlesticks.

  ‘What we need here, Miss Crawford,’ she said grimly, ‘is one really good fire.’

  At ten o’clock Princess Elizabeth would ring for her Lady-in-Waiting to help with her growing pile of correspondence. ‘Most afternoons,’ wrot
e Crawfie, ‘she would either open some bazaar or visit factories or hospitals. She always managed to find a little while to go into the garden with the dogs and mostly I joined her.’

  Crawfie tried to arrange some light relief: “We started the madrigal classes again, and now we got together thirty or forty young people. They came into the Bow Room, and after singing we had sherry and biscuits.’70 Even the Queen’s horse-loving friend, Lord Porchester, joined the singers. But, closeted, as she often was, with her father in his study, Princess Elizabeth was learning the heavy responsibility that awaited her.

  Princess Margaret, however, was still young and undaunted by the cold, dusty Palace, echoing with the noise and confusion of the rebuilding. Crawfie recalls:

  On wet days when we could not get out, Margaret would say, ‘Let’s explore.’ Then we would wander off round the Palace, to the war-scarred and shut-off apartments where the workmen were busy. During the war the glass chandeliers had all been removed for safety, the pictures and ornaments packed away. Now they were back, waiting to be unpacked and returned to their places, and sometimes we took a hand. It was fun undoing the beautiful crystal pieces and china figures. There was no saying what we might find next. We polished with our handkerchiefs the bits we unpacked. Often as she worked, Margaret would sing in what she called her ‘village-choir voice’. This caused considerable amazement among the workmen who passed by.

  And one day, pottering through the half-dismantled rooms, we came upon a very old piano. Margaret was delighted with this find. She dragged up a packing-case, sat down and proceeded to play Chopin. As she touched the notes, great clouds of dust flew out.71

  As for the King and Queen, they felt jaded and worn out, finding it ‘difficult to rejoice or relax as there is so much hard work ahead’.72 London and many other cities lay in ruins, food and clothing were scarce, there was still rationing, and demobilization would present many problems. Above all the Japanese had still to be defeated and the King was one of the few who held the heavy secret of the atom bomb.

  To add to his worries, the wartime coalition of Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties broke up with the dissolution of Parliament on 15 June. To the surprise of the King, and also of the Labour Party, Churchill lost the election and the Labour Party swept into power with a working majority of 180. Even Clement Attlee, the new Prime Minister, had been surprised by their success. For the King, who disliked change, it meant unexpected readjustment to a new set of ministers; and the King and Queen were conservative by nature, though the King was always scrupulously careful to be seen to be above party politics.

  There would be no more intimate Tuesday luncheons at the Palace with Churchill and it would be some time before he got the measure of Clement Attlee. But in fact they had much in common. After Haileybury College and Oxford and a legal career, Attlee had come into politics because of his work among the deprived in London’s East End. He became MP for Limehouse in 1922 and held the seat until 1950. The King, when Duke of York, had also had experience of work among underprivileged boys when he was involved in the Industrial Welfare Society. His annual boys’ camp, which brought together public school and working boys, was a major interest until his accession. Both were shy men and there were some long silences in their Tuesday meetings at Buckingham Palace – quite unlike the early chats with Churchill. (A Labour MP once said that conversation with most men was like a game of tennis – words flew back and forth. With Attlee it was like throwing biscuits to a dog – ‘yup’ and they were gone.) Gradually, however, they talked more easily and each learned to respect the integrity of the other.

  John Colville, Churchill’s Private Secretary, praised Attlee’s total honesty, quickness, efficiency and common sense.

  The King, however, could never understand Attlee’s phlegmatic calm in the face of crisis. To the present writer Attlee once remarked, ‘Secret of success for a minister? Don’t be a worrier. Eden was a worrier. Made him ill.’73 And the King was a worrier.

  From now on the word ‘worried’ rang like a refrain through the King’s letters. He was now the elder statesman. His government was new, and though Attlee and the senior ministers had some experience of government during the wartime coalition, they were setting off into uncharted waters, powered by the knowledge they had the people’s mandate to introduce democratic socialism. The ministers who had been in the coalition Cabinet during the war were exhausted, and the King felt strongly his own responsibility. As Attlee said, ‘the old pattern is worn out, it is for us to weave the new’. And the King worried about the rebuilding of Britain, about the shortage of materials and food, and about the economic situation. With the end of America’s Lend-Lease programme Attlee had to cut imports of food, cotton, tobacco and petrol, and reintroduce rationing. The King had sympathy with some of his aims but throughout Attlee’s period of office he felt that the Labour government was going too fast, and it was his duty ‘to be consulted, … to encourage, … to warn’: this meant that he felt he must follow in detail every stage in its progress. The problems were immense: there were one million servicemen and women to be demobbed and employed, and houses had to be built without building materials. Attlee tried to reassure the King – they were giving more permits to build. ‘But where are the houses? I asked him. The delay is very worrying … As to clothing, the P.M. told me all available stocks go to the demobilised men … I said we must all have new clothes and my family are down to the lowest ebb.’74

  Gradually he learned to understand and value other Labour leaders. He was interested in the fellow stammerer, Aneurin Bevan, who ‘thought modern houses should be built as homes not “just boxes of bricks”, and designs must suit environments’.75 The King showed good judgement in his assessment of Ernest Bevin. He wrote to Queen Mary, ‘I was much struck by his knowledge of the foreign affairs subject.’76 He approved Attlee’s choice and regarded the forthright minister with amused affection, observing how his immense bulk overlapped the gilt chairs in the Palace. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he laughed with tolerance at an official banquet for Mrs Roosevelt at Buckingham Palace when Bevin sent some glasses flying.

  On Saturday 28 July 1945, in the Bow Room at Buckingham Palace, the new Prime Minister and some of his colleagues stood to receive their seals of office. That evening Attlee and Bevin, the new Foreign Minister, flew off to take the places of Churchill and Eden at the Potsdam Conference. In August the King was one of the few to know that a decision had been taken that would bring relief to the Allies but a terrible devastation to the Japanese. On 6 and 9 August, two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, putting an end to the war with Japan. On 15 August – VJ Day – once again crowds surged down the Mall to cheer the royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. On 2 September the Japanese surrender was finally signed in Tokyo Bay on the USS Missouri, in the presence of the Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia, Lord Louis Mountbatten. His nephew, Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, was also present on an historic occasion he has never forgotten.

  It was clear to the King that, on top of all other disturbing changes, he must now face the possibility of losing his daughter, on whose companionship and help he had come to rely. It would be some time before he gave his consent to Princess Elizabeth’s engagement. He liked Prince Philip and respected his competence as a fellow sailor, and his lack of a fortune was not important. But the King’s close, happy family life was of supreme importance to him, and he was reluctant to see it broken. Perhaps the difficulty Prince Philip experienced in becoming naturalized was not unwelcome to the King.

  Encouraged by Lord Mountbatten, Prince Philip had some time earlier begun the lengthy proceedure to become naturalized, renouncing his membership of the Greek and Danish royal families, and on 18 March 1947 the naturalization of Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN, was announced in the London Gazette. In fact, Prince Philip was already a British citizen because of his royal descent, his mother, Alice, being the granddaughter of Queen Victoria’s daughter, Alice.


  In the face of national and international crises the King’s own domestic problems were minor. Nevertheless Buckingham Palace was in urgent need of repair after nine bomb attacks, and, aware as he was of national shortages, he found it difficult to come to decisions about its rebuilding. Little maintenance work had been done during the war and now the Ministry of Works produced many schemes for improvements, most of which had to be rejected. There had been a proposal in 1943 for a small royal kitchen and coffee room. This proposal was to be dropped in 1947. In 1944, they also abandoned a plan to build a new staff block near the Royal Mews with bedrooms and recreation rooms and a dining room. Instead, it was proposed in 1945 to ‘install central heating and h/c water in all bedrooms and to improve staff quarters’.77

  The repair of the swimming pool was scheduled to begin in September 1946, to be finished early in 1947. This went ahead.

  The destroyed east end of the Pavilion is to be reinstated and all necessary repairs carried out to the floor and walls of the swimming pool. The work will entail re-roofing a considerable portion of the Pavilion and renewing engineering services, including infiltration plant and repairs to the squash court.78

  Careful though he had always been to avoid any personal extravagance, the King authorized this work to be started in the autumn of 1946. This was greatly to the pleasure and surprise of the two Princesses. Perhaps it was not simply paternal indulgence: the King also found swimming a great relaxation in times of stress. The work was done in conjunction with the repairs to the North Colonnade and boundary wall.

  The other problem to be solved was that of the other bombed Nash pavilion, that had been turned into a chapel. Various proposals were submitted. At first the King had wanted it designed on the lines of a chapel in Chester, but another plan of 1945 was to keep the