The Queen. Ben Pimlott

that there was a tendency to forget all about it, ‘and particularly has this been the case in what may be described as official circles’.⁹ It was partly because the memory of the episode was acutely painful to the King and Queen, as well as to Queen Mary, but it was also because of the embarrassment Edward VIII’s abdication caused to the dynasty, and the difficulty of incorporating an act of selfishness into the seamless royal image. Burying the trauma, however, did not dispose of it, and the physical survival of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor – unprotected by a Court, and often teetering on the brink of indiscretion or indecorum – provided a disquieting shadow, reminding the world of an alternative dynastic story.

      By contrast, the existence of ‘the little ladies of 145 Piccadilly’ gave the new Royal Family a trump card. If, in the eyes of the public, the Duchess of Windsor was cast as a seductress, the little ladies offered cotton-clad purity, innocence and, in the case of Princess Elizabeth, hope. It greatly helped that her virtues, described by the press since babyhood, were already well-known. What if she had inherited her uncle’s characteristics instead of her father’s? Fortunately the stock of attributes provided by the sketch-writers did not admit of such a possibility. The ten-and-a-half-year-old Heiress Presumptive, it was confidently observed, possessed ‘great charm and a natural unassuming dignity’. The world not only already knew, but already loved her, and hoped that one day she would ‘rule the world’s greatest Empire’ as Queen.¹⁰

      The discovery that she had become a likely future Monarch, instead of somebody close to the throne with an outside chance of becoming one, seems to have been absorbed by Princess Elizabeth gradually. Although her father’s accession, and the elimination of doubt about the equal rights of royal daughters, placed her first in line, it was not yet certain that she would ever succeed. When Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent was told of her expectations at almost precisely the same age in March 1830, she was reported by her governess to have replied ‘I will be good’. According to Lady Strathmore, when Princess Elizabeth received the news, she ‘was ardently praying for a brother’.¹¹ It was still imaginable: the Queen was only thirty-six at the time of the Coronation in May 1937, and shortly before it a rumour spread that she was pregnant.¹² Increasingly, however, a view of the future with Princess Elizabeth as Monarch was widely accepted. There was even some speculation that Elizabeth might be given the title of Princess of Wales.¹³ According to her sister, the change of status was something they knew about, but did not discuss. ‘When our father became King,’ recalls Princess Margaret, ‘I said to her, “Does that mean you’re going to be Queen?” She replied, “Yes, I suppose it does.” She didn’t mention it again.’¹⁴

      There was also the matter of where they lived. According to Crawfie, Princess Elizabeth reacted with horror when she was told that they were moving to Buckingham Palace. ‘What – you mean for ever?’ According to Princess Margaret, the element of physical disruption was limited. 145 Piccadilly was only a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, and they had often gone over to see their grandparents, and to play in the garden.¹⁵ Perhaps the distrust was more in the mind of the governess, who likened setting up home in the Palace to ‘camping in a museum’.¹⁶ The living quarters were, in any case, soon domesticated after the long era of elderly kings and queens. Elizabeth’s menagerie of toy horses acquired a new setting; and a room overlooking the Palace lawns, which had briefly been her nursery in 1927, was established as a schoolroom.

      More important than the change of location was the ending of a way of life. In the months before the Coronation, public attention became unrelenting. Outside the railings at Buckingham Palace, a permanent crowd formed. Inside them, it was impossible to keep up the illusion of being an ordinary family. At 145 Piccadilly, there had been few visitors, most of whom were personal friends. At the Palace, the King had to see visitors or take part in functions for much of the day, and the Queen was busy every afternoon. Before, the little girls had been able to take walks in the park and play with the children of neighbours. At the Palace, royal headquarters of an Empire, there were no neighbours and different standards applied. A famous anecdote illustrated the change. Princess Elizabeth discovered that merely by walking in front of a sentry on ceremonial duty, she could make him present arms; and having made the discovery, she could not resist walking backwards and forwards to see it repeated.¹⁷

      There was a sense of constraint, as well as of power. According to Lajos Lederer, the accession brought an immediate change to Princess Elizabeth’s previously relaxed sittings for Strobl. A detective now accompanied her everywhere, a policeman was always outside, and she ‘no longer referred to Mummy and Papa, but spoke of the King and Queen’.¹⁸ The Queen seems to have been responsible for taking customary formalities seriously, and seeing that her children did so too. According to Dermot Morrah (a trusted royal chronicler), she insisted ‘that even in the nursery some touches of majesty were not out of place, an argument that had the full approval of Queen Mary’.¹⁹ One ‘touch of majesty’ involved the serving of nursery meals by two scarlet-liveried footmen. In addition, though nursery food was mainly ‘plain English cooking,’ the menu, for some reason, was in French.²⁰

      The biggest strain for the Royal Family, however, was the almost intolerable pressure placed upon the new King as he came to terms with his unsought and unwelcome role. ‘It totally altered their lives,’ according to Lady Mountbatten. ‘To begin with, the King would come home very worried and upset.’²¹ George VI’s speech impediment, always a handicap, became a nightmare, and every public appearance a cause of suffering. Although British journalists tactfully avoided mentioning it, foreign ones were less reticent. To the American press, suspicious that the real reason for the Abdication was Mrs Simpson’s American nationality, he remained ‘the stuttering Duke of York’.²² The Queen had always taken pleasure from public occasions, and continued to display a much-admired serenity: but the King at first seemed so gauche and unhappy that doubts were raised about whether he could get through his Coronation.²³

      HE MANAGED it none the less. In the early spring of 1937, British newspapers which had loyally kept silent about Mrs Simpson, now loyally built up George VI as a ‘George V second edition’.²⁴ Yet there was a sense of him not just as the substitute but also as a reluctant Monarch. Kingsley Martin summed up the mood thus, apostrophizing the thoughts of a supposedly typical member of the public: ‘We would still prefer to cheer Edward, but we know that we’ve got to cheer George. After all, it’s Edward’s fault that he’s not on the throne, and George didn’t ask to get there. He’s only doing his duty, and it’s up to us to show that we appreciate it.’²⁵ Martin noted a feeling of relief and sympathy, as much as of rejoicing, and of healing a personal wound.

      The Coronation itself had a wider function than the consecration of a new King. It was also Britain putting its best face to the world – the more urgently so because of the international crisis which overshadowed the royal one. Many commentators, viewing the celebration with its hotch-potch of religion, nostalgia, mumbo-jumbo and military display, saw it simultaneously as a reminder to potential aggressors of British imperial might and a reaffirmation of British freedom. For such purposes, the Empire was unblinkingly described as if it were a democratic, almost a voluntary, association.²⁶

      Comparisons were proudly drawn between the symbols of liberty parading through the streets of London, and the choreographed vulgarities of European fascism. One fervent royalist saw George VI’s Coronation as ‘a pageant more splendid than any dictators can put on: beating Rome and Nuremberg hollow at their own bewildering best, and with no obverse side of compulsion or horror’.²⁷ The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski reckoned it a sound investment, as ‘a ceremonial display of the greatness, power and wealth of Britain,’ generating ‘an increased feeling of security, of stability, and the permanence of the British Empire’.²⁸ Even the Left was impressed. Kingsley Martin agreed with the view that the British Establishment had upstaged Goebbels – and suggested that the propaganda purpose of the procession and festivities was to show that the Empire was still as strong and united as in 1914, and that Britain suffered from less class conflict than any other nation.²⁹

      Much depended on the central actor, who made little secret of his deep anxiety about the whole proceeding. Afterwards the King told the