Like the trumpeted ‘simplicity’ of the Princess’s pre-war upbringing, however, the reality was somewhat different. Most of the ‘normality’ of her early adulthood was a product of the ambition of observers to present her as somebody with whom genuinely simple and normal people could identify. The only hard, publicly available evidence was that she was untypical – in particular that she was rich and about to become richer, with a Civil List income rising from £6,000 per annum to £15,000 on her majority, a sum over which she would have full control. She was also untypically, even uniquely, famous: one newspaper suggested that the twenty-one-year-old Princess was ‘unquestionably the most publicized young woman in the world,’ easily out-distancing Shirley Temple, her nearest rival.60
Privately, the Princess felt no particular need to pretend to be what she was not. Indeed, her reluctance to step outside her own class in her social relations caused her royal grandmother, who continued to watch her progress carefully, some disquiet. At the beginning of July, Jock Colville recorded a conversation with Queen Mary in the garden at Marlborough House, in the course of which the elderly lady, nearing eighty, ‘said many wise things’ about her grand-daughter, ‘including the necessity of travel, of mixing with all the classes (H.R.H. is inclined to associate with young Guards officers to the exclusion of more representative strata of the community) and of learning to know young members of the Labour Party.’61
Yet there was also, perhaps, a quality that did not entirely belong to the categories of cliché or necessary myth. Unremarkable in capacity, abnormal in experience, wealth and friends, the Princess nevertheless possessed an attribute which radio listeners and filmgoers believed they could hear and see for themselves. This could best be described as ‘wholesomeness’ and stood in unremarked contrast to the decadence associated with the former Heir Apparent to George V. The Princess’s involvement in the Guides and ATS, her outdoor interests and pursuits, and her supposedly happy upbringing, had already been the stuff of wartime propaganda. After 1945, a belief in the Princess’s decency, straightforwardness, honesty, rather than in any visible talent, did much to elevate the idea of Monarchy during anxious years when – against ideological trends, or pre-war expectations – its psychic power seemed to soar. When Lord Templewood, who as Sir Samuel Hoare had been a Cabinet minister at the time of the Abdication, wrote of the ‘growing influence of the Crown,’ and of its ‘moral power,’ which was now ‘so firmly established that we can look forward with undoubted confidence to the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Second,’62 he expressed a common feeling, for which the Cape Town broadcast had provided confirmation, that the institution would remain in clean hands.
The future of the Monarchy, however, was also linked to the question of who the Princess would marry. By now, an engagement to Prince Philip was assumed. During the South African tour, the BBC – planning ahead – began to consider a talk on the Princess ‘by someone who had known her since childhood’ to follow a betrothal announcement, and a similar one on the Prince.63 But no announcement was made, either on Princess Elizabeth’s birthday, or on the Royal Family’s return. To damp down speculation, the couple tried to be seen less together – thereby sparking rumours that the relationship had been broken off.64
One royal adviser recorded that, during a meeting with the Princess’s grandmother, Princess Elizabeth’s coming engagement had been discussed and that Queen Mary evidently had grave doubts about it.65 Perhaps there was a last minute rearguard action by opponents of the match. If so, it swiftly collapsed. Prince Philip’s small sports car began to reappear at the side entrance to Buckingham Palace,66 and on July 8th, the Palace declared its hand. ‘It had long been rumoured,’ noted Colville.67 A few weeks after the official announcement, the Princess’s private secretary wrote of the lobbying that had taken place against the Prince by his critics. Whether they had been unable to block the engagement, he wrote, ‘because, as they think, the Queen’s usually good judgement has failed her, or because Princess Elizabeth was so much in love as to overcome her parents’ antipathy to the match, I do not know’.68
* This is the Queen’s own spelling. Others have ‘Porchie’.
Chapter 7
UNCLE DICKIE had prepared the ground well. The press reaction to the betrothal, at a time when the Princess’s popularity had never been greater, was one of unqualified enthusiasm. Newspapers vied with each other to point out, not only that ‘this was clearly a marriage of choice not arrangement,’ but also that it was an extremely suitable match, made all the more so by Philip’s British bearing and attachments.1 ‘An effort had obviously been made,’ as Colville drily observed, ‘to build him up as the nephew of Lord Louis Mountbatten rather than a Greek Prince.’2 The effort came primarily from Dickie, and it worked. Glucksburg antecedents took a backseat. Profiles focused on Philip’s British relatives, education and service record, which made a neat package. As one account put it, the Prince was ‘thoroughly English by upbringing, has that intense love of England and the British way of life, that deep devotion to the ideals of peace and liberty for which Britain stands, that are characteristic of so many naval men’.3 Others tactfully suggested that, although technically a member of the Greek Orthodox Church into which he had been born, Princess Elizabeth’s fiancé had ‘regarded himself’ as a member of the Church of England since entering Dartmouth;4 that he did not look Greek; and that his royal rank was a bonus – even though the naturalization had set aside any significance it ever had. Meanwhile, in Athens, the continuing Greek royal family – which had leaked the news of the engagement the day before its official release – had no doubt about its own reaction. Philip had hit the jackpot.5
Philip himself acquired a valet and a detective, who accompanied him wherever he went. He also received a degree of public attention which he had never been subjected to before, and which he would now have to put up with for the rest of his life. His face, shown on all the newsreels, became recognizable everywhere. So did his car – suddenly everybody in Britain seemed to know that he drove a black, green-upholstered sports car with the registration HDK 99, and they looked out for it. For the time being, however, he continued to live on a lieutenant’s pay. According to his valet, his wardrobe was ‘scantier than that of many a bank clerk,’ and often didn’t include a clean shirt.6 His naval wardrobe wasn’t much better. Appraising the King’s future son-in-law at a royal garden party a few days after the announcement, Lady Airlie noted, not entirely disapprovingly, that his uniform was shabby, with ‘the usual after-the-war look’.7 For a short time, the image of the Prince as a genteelly poor, male Cinderella became a newspaper staple. Crawfie – who had been won over by the Prince from the beginning – took secret delight in the raffish style he introduced into the Palace, and in the pursed lips of servants and courtiers when he arrived hatless, with flannel trousers, and in an open-necked shirt with rolled-up sleeves.8
In August, after the King and Privy Council, including the Prime Minister, Archbishop of Canterbury and Leader of the Opposition, had formally approved the match (as they were required to do under the 1772 Royal Marriages Act), Lieutenant Mountbatten joined the Royal Family at Balmoral. Here the Court was able to assess, soberly, the new recruit. According to one below-stairs tale, Philip annoyed the King when they were in Scotland by bobbing a mock curtsey at him while wearing a kilt.9 Whether or not the story is true, it fits in with a picture of the Prince’s uneasy first summer in possession of the prize, regarded with caution by the King’s aristocratic friends, and potentially as dynamite by his courtiers. Jock Colville – in mellow mood, after his own first Balmoral working holiday – recorded his impressions of the royal life north of the border. He was struck by the contrasts with austerity London, even as experienced in Buckingham Palace. ‘There was luxury, sunshine and gaiety,’ he wrote, with ‘picnics on the moors every day; pleasant siestas in a garden ablaze with roses, stocks and antirrhinums; songs and games; and a most agreeable company with which to disport oneself.’ The company included Lord and Lady Eldon, the Salisburys, the Duke of Kent, David Bowes-Lyon, and Lady Violet Bonham Carter’s son Mark – several of them avowed disapprovers of the Prince.
Colville and Philip overlapped for