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5
A Princely Marriage
‘A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.’
Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution
Elizabeth was now nineteen. As a mark of her transition from childhood, she was given
her own suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace, with two ladies-in-waiting, Lady Mary
Strachey and the Hon. Mrs Vicary Gibbs, and a full programme of public engagements.
She also had her own housemaid and a footman, Cyril Dickman, who had been the
nursery footman at Windsor and would be, as Palace Steward, the head of her domestic
staff when she became Queen. Bobo remained with her as her dresser; Crawfie and
Antoinette de Bellaigue were also still in the background, emphasizing the continuity of
the secure nursery and schoolroom life she had always known. She was now allowed to
choose her own clothes and the decoration of her rooms, but since she was not
particularly interested in either, these things tended to be decided by her mother and
Bobo, although Norman Hartnell provided guidance over her first ‘grown-up’ dresses.
The result was that her bedroom was decorated in her mother’s favourite colours, pink
and beige, with flowered chintzes and white-painted furniture, while her clothes
followed her mother’s taste and were often more suited to a thirty-year-old than a girl of
nineteen. One object, however, showed that in one most important matter she was
determined to make her own choice. Prominent on her desk stood a photograph of
Prince Philip of Greece, his Viking features concealed behind a bushy beard which he
had acquired on the Pacific Station.
Philip was twenty-five when he returned to England on 20 March 1946. As a
handsome, experienced naval officer, Philip was intensely attractive to women. Apart
from his physical appeal, he was good company. ‘He was very amusing, gay, full of life
and energy and he was a tease,’ his cousin said. Even before he had first met Elizabeth
at Dartmouth in 1939 there had been girls in his life. He had enjoyed a relationship with
a beautiful young Canadian debutante, Osla Benning, in the summer of 1939 and almost
become engaged to her, but rumour had it that the ever-vigilant Mountbatten, with
other prospects in mind, had put a stop to it. When Philip and Mike Parker had been
based together in Australia on the Pacific Station during the last year of the war, there
had always been ‘armfuls of girls’ on their nights out ashore, according to Parker. News
of their escapades had reached the ears of senior courtiers at the Palace. One confided