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ostensibly to protect the Princess from wild elephants but also, unknown to her, from
possible attack by the Mau-Mau terrorists who might be in the area. Unconscious that
her father had died, she and Philip returned to Sagana Lodge, their wedding present
from the people of Kenya, to prepare for their journey down to Mombasa to embark on
the SS Gothic for New Zealand and Australia. No news came from Buckingham Palace
nor even from the BBC. Sir Edward Ford, the King’s Assistant Private Secretary, believes
that the Palace telegram announcing the King’s death which had been despatched to
Kenya was never sent because the telegraphist took the agreed code ‘Hyde Park Comer’
as the address and not the message, while at the BBC the men in charge had decided that
only the distinguished broadcaster John Snagge had a voice of sufficient dignity for such
an announcement but couldn’t find him. Michael Parker was alerted by telephone as to
what had happened by Martin Charteris, who had heard the news from a journalist at
the Outspan Hotel where he had gone to lunch. Parker crept around outside the house to
attract the attention of Philip and beckoned him out on to the lawn. The news struck
Philip like a thunderbolt; it was a moment he had been dreading – the end of his
independent life. ‘He looked as if you’d dropped half the world on him,’ Parker recalled.
‘I never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life.’ It was 2.45 p.m. local time, 11.45 a.m. in
London, when he told his twenty-five-year-old wife that she had become Queen of Great
Britain, her Dominions and her possessions beyond the seas. Martin Charteris, who had
dashed up from the Outspan Hotel immediately after telephoning the news to Parker,
found the new Queen ‘very composed, absolute master of her fate’. She was sitting at
her desk, drafting papers, letters of apology for the cancellation of the tour, a slight
flush on her face the only sign of emotion. ‘What are you going to call yourself?’ he
asked. ‘My own name, of course – what she replied.