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forward by Martin Charteris. Whether Elizabeth was pressured into it, or whether the
idea was, as she said, ‘close to her heart’, she sent a private message of gratitude to
Macmillan via Butler saying that the decision had taken ‘a great load off her mind’.
When consulted on 2 February, some members of the Cabinet ‘expressed serious regret
that this step had to be taken but, while recognizing the dangers of criticism and
unpopularity, particularly attached to the husband, none felt that the Queen’s wishes
should be refused’. 24 None the less, they did insist that the royal declaration should
‘make it quite clear that the Queen and her children would continue to be styled and
known as the House of Windsor’. 25 Suspicions of Mountbatten’s ambition were strong,
rightly as it turned out. In 1973 when Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips, her
name appeared on the marriage register as ‘Mountbatten-Windsor’ in direct
contravention of Elizabeth’s declaration of February 1960.
The year 1960 had begun well for Elizabeth, not only because of the birth of Prince
Andrew and the delight of having a baby in the nursery again, but also because the
perennial problem of her sister’s love life seemed to have come to a happy conclusion.
After the Townsend affair had ended, one by one all Margaret’s male friends had
married and by 1956 it seemed that only the archetypal chinless wonder, Billy Wallace,
the millionaire son of one of George VI’s wartime ministers, was left. After he
repeatedly asked the Princess to marry him, she finally consented as much out of the
fear of finding herself left ‘on the shelf’ at twenty-six as from any real desire to become
Wallace’s wife. Then, to her outrage, the foolish fellow had a fling on holiday in the
Bahamas, neglected to tell his royal fiancée that he was home until she tracked him
down, and then blurted out the truth to her. To his great and continuing surprise she
threw him out. Margaret was on her own again.
Elizabeth felt as responsible for her sister as she had when they were both in the
nursery at No. 145 Piccadilly. Now that ‘us four’ had become ‘us three’ and the headship
of the family had descended upon her, she felt even more responsible. Indulging
Margaret had become a family tradition, even when she was behaving badly, as she
often did. ‘Ever since the breach with Townsend,’ Lascelles told a friend, ‘[the Princess]
has become selfish and hard and wild.’ ‘She [Elizabeth] gets angry with her but Family is
all important to her and from that point of view Princess Margaret is one of the First
Eleven,’ a friend said. Subconsciously jealous of her sister, Margaret was not above
cocking the occasional snook at her even now that she was Queen. Their relationship
was much the same as it had been when they were children. At a picnic at Balmoral,
Margaret might throw a dishcloth into her sister’s face. One woman minister found
Margaret’s manner to Elizabeth ‘informal to the point of coarseness’. After one state
banquet at the Palace the women retired together as was the custom. The minister
thought that the Queen looked particularly pretty in a gossamery evening dress with the
Garter Ribbon as a sash across the bodice and complimented her upon it. Whereupon
Margaret said to her sister, ‘Darling, that does show your bosom up too much…’ On 20
November 1957 Elizabeth celebrated her tenth wedding anniversary with a ball at
Buckingham Palace, but on that evening her sister chose to take a party to the Coliseum