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handled on that basis. The Civil Service union had secured recognition at the Palace in
1946, but its influence was weak because of the resistance of the older staff.
In return the staff were extremely well treated and there was a great sense of
community fostered by the Buckingham Palace Social Club, which held weekly dances,
whist drives and social gatherings. By the standards of austerity in Britain outside the
Palace walls, life was good for the staff. John Gibson, a boy from the back streets of
loyalist Belfast who joined as a kitchen porter in 1946 and later became a footman in
the Edinburghs’ household, found the Palace surprisingly shabby and old-fashioned. The
carpets in the corridors were worn and in the freezing winter of 1947 the only heating
came from coal fires. John Dean described his room there as ‘extremely old-fashioned’,
furnished only with a plain iron bedstead, a dressing-table and armchair, a washhand
stand with jug and basin and a bathroom down the corridor. He was, however, looked
after by an elderly chambermaid who called him ‘Sir’.
Elizabeth now had her own household and access to Foreign Office telegrams, which
arrived in boxes specially made for her. Her first Private Secretary was Jock Colville,
who had served as Private Secretary first to Chamberlain and then to Churchill. In the
spring of 1947 he was invited by Tommy Lascelles to become Elizabeth’s Private
Secretary. There was no interviewing, no overt headhunting for jobs like these. Colville
was a member of the magic circle of courtiers and aristocrats, known at court almost
since his birth as the son of Lady Cynthia Colville and the grandson of the Marquess of
Crewe. His training had been in the Foreign Office, traditionally regarded as a seed-bed
for royal officials. Colville knew enough about court life not to want to become a
permanent part of it; spurred on by Churchill, who pronounced ‘it is your duty to
accept’, he joined on the basis of a two-year secondment, which meant that he could
return to his diplomatic career. The Princess’s ladies-in-waiting included Lady Margaret
‘Meg’ Egerton, whom Colville later married, recruited in the same apparently informal
way after the shy Princess had stayed with her family in March 1946 for a race meeting.
Prince Philip’s Private Secretary was quite definitely his own personal choice and as
unlike the aristocratic courtier model as he could find, Commander Michael Parker, RN.
After their return from honeymoon their joint household expanded, to be headed by
General Sir Frederick Browning as Comptroller from January 1948. Always known as
‘Boy’, Browning, married to the writer Daphne du Maurier, was a dashing war hero and
a survivor of the disaster at Arnhem. He was exceptionally handsome (the society
photographer, Baron, said that he was the best-looking man he had ever photographed)
and wore his clothes with style. A member of his staff described him as ‘delightful,
boyish, very short fuse, a great disciplinarian but very kind and greatly loved by the
Household and particularly by the domestic staff’. ‘He was an outstanding man,’ another
said, ‘a natural gentleman.’ He had been recommended to Philip by Mountbatten, whose
Chief of Staff he had been on his South-East Asia Command. ‘Boy has drive, energy,
enthusiasm, efficiency and invokes the highest sense of loyalty and affection in his
subordinates,’ he wrote. ‘His judgement in all matters that he understands is absolutely
sound, and he would sooner die than let his boss down… he is not a “yes man” or even a