The Royal Family with their dogs in the grounds of Royal Lodge, Windsor. Photo: Lisa Sheridan/Getty Images How had Elizabeth transformed from the shy girl who was just 10 when she became heir presumptive after her uncle Edward VIII abdicated on December 10, 1936, making way for her nervous, stammering father, King George VI? ‘Lillibet’, as she was known to the family, had grown up with her younger sister, Margaret Rose, in a typical upper-class nursery on the top floor of a five-storey Mayfair house, No 145 Piccadilly (destroyed by a bomb in the second world war). He has an air of authority and thoughtfulness surprising in an infant Winston Churchill The house was filled with servants: butler, butler, two footmen, a housekeeper, a cook, a boy from the steward’s room, three kitchen maids, a dresser for her mother, a servant for her father, a night watchman, a odd job man, plus an RAF orderly and a scout to man the phone. Elizabeth and Margaret had a nurse, ‘Allah Knight’, and a young Scottish nursery maid named Margaret MacDonald, known as ‘Bobo’, who would remain one of Elizabeth’s closest confidants for more than 60 years. She was a neat, independent girl. her toys neatly arranged in glass-fronted cupboards, the ponies in a passage outside. Winston Churchill, who first met her at Balmoral in September 1928 when she was two and a half years old, was struck by qualities beyond her neatness:[She] he’s a character,” he told his wife. “He has an air of authority and thoughtfulness surprising in an infant.” Her doting father compared Elizabeth’s attitude to her great-grandmother’s dignity: “From the first moment of the conversation,” he told author Osbert Sitwell, “she showed so much character that it was impossible not to wonder that history would not repeat itself.” .” Princess Margaret, Queen Mary, Princess Elizabeth and the Duchess of York watch Trooping The Color in 1935. Photo: ANL/REX Shutterstock Orderly, thoughtful and authoritative, the young Elizabeth already understood the monarchy firsthand. In 1935, she and Margaret, identically dressed in pink, had ridden in their grandfather’s silver procession and witnessed the crowd’s ecstatic reaction to their simple, unassuming sovereign. Her grandmother, Queen Mary, archbishop of the British monarchy and keeper of the royal flame, ensured that the children’s education included royal history and the geography of the British Empire and took them on weekly cultural missions, either to a museum or to the Tower of London and the Royal Mint. “Is arithmetic more valuable to them than history?” asked their governess, Marion Crawford (nicknamed “Crawfie” by the princesses). “They will never make their own household books.” Or, “Shouldn’t they have a more spiritual game than Racing Demon?” Most important, perhaps, to Elizabeth’s development as a down-to-earth person was her close, happy family life – “The four of us”, as her father liked to describe them – organized by her tough, intelligent, charming mother, which skillfully presented their image as such to the world. For Elizabeth, the crucial ingredient was a romance with her handsome third cousin, Prince Philip of Greece. She met and fell in love with Philip in July 1939, when she was 13 and he 18. After the end of the second world war, they married in the dark austerity of Britain, “a flash of color on the hard road we must travel”. , as Churchill put it. The Duke of Edinburgh dances with his wife, Princess Elizabeth, at a square dance held in their honor in Ottawa in October 1951. Photo: Keystone/Getty Images Her father’s courtiers despised him as a penniless outsider who hadn’t been to the right school (Gordonstoun as opposed to Eton). “They were bloody with him,” said one of his cousins, condemning him as “crude, uneducated and probably infidel.” Elizabeth was not disturbed by their opposition. she loved him and was determined that his should be the guiding spirit in their married life. Philip was forced to abandon a promising naval career (he had a heroic war) for his role as a husband, walking two steps behind his wife and sitting lower on occasions such as the state opening of parliament. When their first child, Prince Charles, was born in 1948, he was not allowed to take his father’s family name of Mountbatten. “I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba,” broke in a frustrated Philip. After becoming Queen on her father’s death on 6 February 1952, Elizabeth ensured that Philip made important family decisions, including sending Charles to Gordonstoun, which he loathed. They shared a love of the outdoors and country sports. As a child, Elizabeth told Croffy that when she grew up she would marry a farmer “and have many cows and horses and dogs and children” (note the order of importance). A lasting image of her in later life was of her on horseback, dressed in jodhpurs and jacket, with a 1950s silk scarf on her head. He became an expert in breeding and training horses and dogs, accompanying Philip to shoot and “raise” the dead birds. Her real passion was racing, inspired by her grandfather, who would take her to visit his horses at Sandringham. She later had her own stud. The only time she was seen expressing wild enthusiasm was at matches, jumping from her seat, arms raised, fists clenched, a big smile on her face. The Queen watches her horse Sign Manual win the Dreweatts Handicap Stakes at Newbury Racecourse in 2013. Photo: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images Without an intellectual, her evening study after a day devoted to public engagements and reading state papers would be her uniform and books. On the morning of her coronation, just before she left Buckingham Palace for Westminster Abbey, one of her ladies-in-waiting asked if everything was alright, thinking the Queen might be dreading the ceremony. Her Majesty replied that everything was fine, her trainer had just called to say that her horse Aureole had done very well in his last training session. In her audience with Churchill, her first prime minister, more time would likely be spent discussing their mutual interest in the games than the state of the nation. The queen may not have enjoyed literature, but she was keenly interested in politics and world affairs. “She liked to know who was up and who was down,” wrote James Callaghan, prime minister in the late 1970s. More seriously, in her long reign she met US presidents from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, UK prime ministers from Churchill to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, popes from Pius XII to Francis, and heads of government – particularly from Commonwealth countries – with whom he had private one-on-one meetings. Then-US President Barack Obama talks to Queen Elizabeth II during a state banquet at Buckingham Palace in 2011. Photo: Lewis Whyld/AFP/Getty Images Her face lights up and she becomes really attractive, so you understand how much things are being kept under control Sir (David) Owen Since her 21st birthday in Cape Town, when she had devoted herself to the service of the Commonwealth, she had taken a special interest in Africa. “The Queen was sympathetic to the black cause in Rhodesia and South Africa,” said Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s senior minister. It was a cause, however, that did not always appeal to British leaders such as Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, she never visited apartheid South Africa again and only returned 48 years later, in March 1995, when she was warmly welcomed by Nelson Mandela and crowds holding placards reading “Welcome back!” Queen Elizabeth II with Nelson Mandela on a tour of South Africa in 1995 Photo: Times Newspapers Ltd/Rex Features The Queen liked to laugh, one of her friends told me. She had a quick sense of humor and was an excellent mimic, a trait she inherited from her mother. David Owen, foreign secretary in the Callaghan government, described how on the royal yacht Britannia when the last guest went, the Queen would kick off her shoes, put her feet under her skirts on the sofa and talk about the people who were there. evening in a lively way. “Her face lights up and she becomes really attractive,” he said, “so you see how much she’s in control.” Susan Crosland, wife of Tony, Owen’s predecessor as foreign secretary, described as “positively comfortable” the three days she and her husband spent in Britain in 1976, traveling from Bermuda to Philadelphia to mark the 200th anniversary of its signing Declaration of Independence. There was “great affection between Elizabeth and her two ladies-in-waiting … intimacy and little jokes.” He also noted the complete naturalness of her behavior in front of the Croslands. On one occasion, when Philip was talking about something, the queen said to him “very abruptly”: “O Philip, shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” After a night of rolling over huge waves in a force nine gale off Bermuda, the Queen joked about the night before: “I’ve never seen so many gray and gloomy faces around a dinner table.” Then he paused to mock Philip, an admiral of the fleet: “Philip was not in the . . .
