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Heiress
‘I thought it all very, very wonderful and I expect the Abbey did too. The arches and beams at the top were
covered with a sort of haze of wonder as Papa was crowned…
HRH Princess Elizabeth, ‘The Coronation Diary,
On 17 February Elizabeth and the nursery retinue moved from No. 145 Piccadilly, her
home for ten years, to Buckingham Palace. It was a short distance but a huge step in a
life which could never be ‘normal’ again. No. 145 had faced directly on to a street along
which ordinary people, cars, buses and horse-drawn carts passed on their daily business.
Buckingham Palace, the official headquarters of the British monarchy, stood aloof, a
huge stone pile with a vast forecourt distancing it from the public. Beyond the railings
and visible from all points of the compass, Queen Victoria sat enthroned on a huge and
elaborate monument of white marble, a constant presence and reminder of the past,
while beyond her the wide Mall designed as a ceremonial approach to the Palace
stretched down to Admiralty Arch, another memorial to his mother erected by Edward
VII.
Everything at Buckingham Palace was on a monumental scale. Successive royal
ancestors of Elizabeth had added to the original Buckingham House, bought by George
III in 1762 for his nineteen-year-old Queen, Charlotte. George IV had begun to remodel
the house and turn it into a palace on his accession in 1820. His favourite architect,
John Nash, created a new facade on the western front overlooking the gardens and
another on the east with wings on either side. Inside, at first-floor level, he designed a
magnificent series of state rooms. On the death of George IV in 1830 Nash lost his job,
having vastly exceeded the original estimates while the Palace was not even ready for
occupation. The next monarch but one, Queen Victoria, became the first sovereign
actually to live at Buckingham Palace, moving in on 13 July 1837, just under one
hundred years before her great-great-granddaughter came to live there. The Palace
became considerably more pompous under Victoria and Edward VII; the golden Bath
stone of Nash’s building was hidden behind a massive new grey east front, which is the
public face of Buckingham Palace.
The huge house, like the American White House, is not just a home for the family but
also an administrative centre and a theatre for state entertainments. Some three
hundred people work there; it has its own post office and a postman who delivers letters