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anxiety to compensate for it were to influence the course of their and their children’s
lives.
The most wounding blow for Philip came only three days after the King’s funeral. On
18 February 1952 an agitated Queen Mary sent for Jock Colville. Prince Ernst August of
Hanover had returned from a family gathering at Broadlands and told her that
Mountbatten had said to a party of royal guests ‘that the House of Mountbatten now
reigned’. Queen Mary had spent a sleepless night worrying over this and was greatly
relieved when Colville assured her that he doubted if the Government would
contemplate any such change. Colville informed Churchill, who immediately consulted
the Cabinet that day. The Cabinet ‘were strongly of the opinion that the family name of
Windsor should be retained’ and invited the Prime Minister ‘to take a suitable
opportunity of making their views known to Her Majesty’. 11 On the 20th they were
informed by Churchill ‘that it was the Queen’s pleasure that she and their descendants
should continue to bear the family name of Windsor’, and the Lord Chancellor was
deputed to prepare a draft proclamation on the lines of George V’s 1917 pronouncement
on the House of Windsor. 12 Philip subsequently had what a courtier described as ‘a huge
row’ at Sandringham with the Lord Chancellor over it – ‘He really minded about it’ –
and followed up with a ‘strongly, but ably, worded memorandum’ objecting to its
intended declaration that the royal family remained the House of Windsor. According to
Colville, this annoyed Churchill, who ordered Colville to attend no less than two
meetings with the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Home Secretary and the
Leader of the House of Commons, ‘to draft a firm, negative answer’, which was finalized
and passed by Churchill on 12 March. Presumably because of the fierce behind-thescenes
row that the question had aroused, it was decided not to make it the subject of a
public proclamation, but instead a declaration by the Queen to the Privy Council which
would subsequently be published in the London Gazette. 13 On 7 April the Lord Chancellor
produced a memorandum for the Cabinet which recorded the Queen’s amended draft
declaration. The message was unequivocal: ‘I hereby declare My Will and Pleasure that I
and My children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and
that my descendants who marry and their descendants, shall bear the name of
Windsor.’ 14
Why did Elizabeth deliver what amounted to a slap in the face to her husband?
Mountbatten, whose tactlessness had brought on the whole affair, attributed it to his
enemy Lord Beaverbrook’s malign influence over Churchill, ‘coupled with Winston’s
disenchantment with what I did in India’. Paranoia about Dickie Mountbatten’s
ambition was certainly rife. Just before the King’s death, John Gordon reported to
Beaverbrook that one of the Greek royal family had told him that the Mountbattens
(‘dangerous people’) were ‘determined to be the power behind the throne when
Elizabeth succeeds’, but thought they would not succeed as ‘Elizabeth was developing
into a strong-minded woman who would not be controlled by him’. Gordon reported
suspicions that the Mountbattens were trying to get Philip pronounced King or King
Consort. 15 But Philip himself, according to Arthur Christiansen, editor of the Daily