Queen: Expert on monarch’s ‘pre-emptive tying up’

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Lady Pamela was part of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s entourage during their Commonwealth tour started in late January 1952. In her role, she witnessed how the trip abruptly came to an end. 

The younger daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten recalled in his memoir Daughter of ‘Empire: Life as a Mountbatten’ how Prince Philip, who had been informed about the King’s death before his 25-year-old wife, reacted to the sad news.

Lady Pamela said Martin Charteris, Princess Elizabeth’s private secretary, “went in to tell Philip”.

The Duke of Edinburgh “lifted his newspaper to cover his face in a gesture of despair” after learning the news.

Acknowledging the devastating impact the death of her below father would have on Princess Elizabeth, Philip said: “This will be such a blow”.   

While how exactly Prince Philip broke the news to his wife is not known, Lady Pamela recalled how composed was the new Queen when she spoke to her aides.

Lady Pamela wrote: “[She] remained completely calm and said simply ‘I am so sorry. This means we all have to go home’.”

The royal couple were in Kenya at the time of the King’s death and had to scramble back to England within just hours.

They returned aboard the royal BOAC Argonaut aircraft, which only stopped in Lybia to refuel and to allow the new Queen’s aides to pick up mourning outfits. 

Landing for the first time in England as its sovereign, the Queen was welcomed on the tarmac by several dignitaries, including then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The death of King George VI changed the life of both the new Queen and Prince Philip, who had to leave his promising career in the Navy to fully dedicate himself to supporting the Crown and the sovereign.

70 years later, the Queen still remembers her Accession Day for both the beginning of her reign and the passing of her beloved father.

In a statement shared on Saturday evening by Buckingham Palace, the Queen said: “Tomorrow, 6th February, marks the 70th anniversary of my Accession in 1952. 

“It is a day that, even after 70 years, I still remember as much for the death of my father, King George VI, as for the start of my reign.”

The monarch recalled her father also in a portrait released on Sunday, which shows her dealing with one of the Government’s red boxes she receives daily.

In the snap, the Queen smiles while holding a pen and having a series of documents displayed in front of her.

Near her, there is a black-and-white portrait of her father taken in the late 1940s.  

King George VI died in his sleep at Sandringham – the reason why the monarch normally spends the anniversary of her accession to the throne in quiet reflection on her estate in Norfolk.

This year’s Accession Day anniversary marks a historic milestone, as the Queen has become the first-ever English sovereign to have reigned for 70 years.

But it also marks the first time the monarch spends the anniversary of the death of her father without Prince Philip, who died in April last year.

The Queen is the longest-serving female sovereign in history and, if she remained on the throne until her 100th birthday, she would become the first-ever monarch to ever reign for 75 years. 

The sovereign is indeed looking ahead to the next months of celebrations for the Jubilee while signalling with her latest portrait she intends to carry on with her duties.

But she has also put in writing her hopes for her son Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to be one day supported by the public as she had been over the past seven decades.

Moreover, in her recent statement, the Queen expressed her wish for Camilla to take on the title of Queen Consort rather than Princess Consort once Charles becomes King.   

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