Well it’s all too terribly, terribly exciting: 60 glorious years on the throne of England and almost more than that in my consciousness. I first became aware of the then Princess Elizabeth when I was a young evacuee in Ilfracombe. In my parents’ sudden mad rush from London to escape the Blitz, unnecessary things like toys were left behind. I made do by playing with conkers and skipping on an old frayed rope but it was all rather boring until the woman next door produced a treasure — an old cutting-out book from the 1937 coronation of King George VI. Inside were two pretty cardboard figures of the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, aged about 11 and eight. How lovely the cutouts were, in their dainty modest undies, and how much fun it was to press them out from the book and carefully try on the stylish outfits. I wiled away so many hours dressing them up in their little kilts and pale jumpers and cardigans or lacy party frocks and having imaginary conversations with them that by the time the doodlebugs stopped raining on London and we were taken back home again, the little princesses and their tissue outfits were in tatters.
A few years later, and Princess Elizabeth was preparing for her wedding to Prince Philip, whom my father rather rudely referred to as ‘Phil the Greek’. I however thought that Prince Philip was as handsome as any movie star (eat your heart out Montgomery Clift) as I cut and pasted pictures from newspapers and magazines of Philip and Elizabeth into a special scrapbook I kept just for them. The wedding was so outstandingly glamorous in an England still suffering from postwar austerity and rationing that I and my fellow schoolmates (and indeed the whole country) were gripped. Princess Elizabeth looked radiant in her engagement pictures. At 21, she glowed and we all wanted to be just like her, marry a handsome prince and live happily ever after. The wedding was also a fairy tale, but with a slight twist — it was especially moving when the newspapers reported that the Princess had saved up all her clothing coupons to buy the fabric for her magnificent gown.
The coronation, with its gold coach drawn by gleaming white horses, had more pomp and ceremony than any Hollywood movie could ever aspire to. One unforgettable moment was watching a carriage pass by containing a very large woman and a very small man. Noel Coward reportedly was asked, ‘Who’s that woman?’ ‘The queen of Tonga,’ he replied. ‘And who is the man sitting beside her?’ ‘Her lunch,’ said Sir Noel.
As I got on with my life, Queen Elizabeth got on with hers. She gave the country and the Commonwealth her full commitment, and an heir plus two spares. The birth of her fourth child, Prince Edward, coincided with the birth of my first. Once again I started a scrapbook, this time for Tara, including all the major events of that year and pictures of the Queen with her baby, which were the tenderest moments we saw of our monarch. She almost seemed to set the trend for emotions, and her most admired one was her unflappability in the face of grave difficulty. Her customary stoicism was mirrored by Prince Philip whose ‘let’s just get on with it, don’t make a fuss’ attitude was emblematic of people’s point of view towards life in the mid-20th century. Few people could do what our Queen does with such elegance.
A question that often surprises me is ‘Why are you still working? Wouldn’t you like to just lie around and put your feet up?’ The very idea! I’m sure no one would dare address such a fatuous remark to the Queen, who’s in robust health. She’s the one to whom people should be asking, ‘What’s your secret?’ Don’t tell me shaking hands with over 4,000 people a year, standing still for hours on end without showing a flicker of discomfort, and attending over 400 functions without showing the faintest hint of ennui is not an outstanding achievement by itself, without counting the innumerable times she has led the country by example and sound advice. When she bestowed upon me an OBE in 1997, I had already met her several times and she greeted me with such a warm smile that I felt as though we were rather good acquaintances. There’s only one question I’ve been dying to ask her: ‘Ma’am, what’s in the handbag?’