Young Elizabeth by Kate Williams

Author:Kate Williams [Williams, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion Books

8

‘After all, she is only nineteen’

Playing tag with midshipmen on board HMS Vanguard on route to South Africa, 1947

ON 8 MAY 1945 THE crowds around the Victoria memorial outside Buckingham Palace were greater than they had been for the Coronation. Winston Churchill arrived in an open car, briefly spoke to the crowd, then entered the palace for lunch with the King and Queen. The people wanted more. ‘We want the King’ came the cry. The royal family emerged on to the balcony to tumultuous applause, eight times in total. The King wore his naval uniform and Princess Elizabeth was in her ATS uniform. Each time the people saw them, a great cheer went up – then they began to sing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. Churchill later appeared and gave the ‘V’ sign to the crowds.

That night, fourteen-year-old Princess Margaret suggested they venture out on to the street. Swept up in the excitement of the moment, the King and Queen agreed. Margaret and Elizabeth, still proudly wearing her ATS uniform, along with fourteen or so others including Madame de Bellaigue, Crawfie and some Guards officers, set off together, escorted by an equerry. Afraid of being recognised, Elizabeth pulled her uniform cap low over her eyes, but one of the officers declared he would not be seen with another officer who was improperly dressed, so she had to adjust her cap. All around them, people were dancing, crying, hugging and kissing and the party wandered to Parliament Square, then Piccadilly and as far as Park Lane, before visiting the Ritz and Dorchester Hotels, crossing Green Park and returning to the palace. For much of the route, they were swept up by the crowds and had to run. After repeated failures to go out incognito the Princess was finally free and unrecognised. All around her were, as she recalled, ‘lines of people linking arms and walking down Whitehall and all of us were swept along by tides of happiness and relief’. They danced too – doing the ‘Lambeth Walk’ and the ‘Hokey-Cokey’. They even stood outside the palace and cried ‘We want the King’ with the crowds. It was a brief and exhilarating moment of freedom.

That night, lights shone around the palace. As Princess Margaret later said in a television interview, ‘Suddenly the lights came on and lit up the poor old battle-scarred palace,’ she remembered. ‘My mother was wearing a white dress with a tiara . . . and it all sparkled and there was a great roar from the crowd, which was very exciting. VE Day was a wonderful sunburst of glory.’

On 9 May, the sisters went incognito again. As Elizabeth wrote, ‘Out in crowd again – Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Pall Mall, walked simply miles. Saw parents on balcony at 12.30 a.m. – ate, partied, bed 3 a.m!’ On the following afternoon the Princesses went out to visit bombed-out districts of the East End and appeared once more to the cheering crowds on the balcony that evening.

‘It was a nasty shock to live in a town again,’ Princess Margaret recalled.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.