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no small talk and used to lie in the bath before dressing for a ball wondering what on
earth she was going to talk about. ‘She was a shy girl who didn’t find social life easy,’ a
friend at the time remembered. ‘I don’t think she particularly enjoyed being a young
girl, all that sort of stuff… She quite enjoyed it once she could get going but it didn’t
come absolutely naturally to her, she hadn’t the temperament and needed confidence.’
There was another reason why Elizabeth was not particularly interested in parties.
She was not, like most girls of nineteen, looking for a man of her dreams. She had
already found him and, just like her father when he fell for Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon,
she would not consider anyone else. On the night of 15 August 1945, VJ Day, there was
a dinner-party at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the ending of the war with Japan. The
King, Queen and Princesses made their appearance on the balcony and then the two
girls, as they had on VE Day, went out with a party of young Guardsmen to join the
celebrations on the street and to shout for their parents to come out again on the
balcony. But, as she cheered the final ending of the Second World War, Elizabeth’s
thoughts were in the Far East where First Lieutenant Prince Philip of Greece, RN, was on
duty aboard the destroyer HMS Whelp. On 2 September 1945 Whelp with Philip aboard
escorted the USS Missouri into Tokyo Bay for the signature by the Japanese of the formal
instrument of surrender. By the end of the year Philip and his ship were heading home.
That Christmas Allah Knight died of meningitis at Sandringham. Elizabeth’s prolonged
girlhood was over.