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throne they were taking her education more seriously. ‘I have started my daughter on
Latin,’ the Duchess of York had told Osbert Sitwell in January 1935. Elizabeth was often
there when her parents entertained diplomats to lunch; on one such occasion in 1937,
Sir Miles Lampson, British envoy to Cairo, was amused to see the King fiddling with the
knobs of his recently acquired television set, unable to make it work. ‘Long before most
children do,’ Crawfie wrote, ‘Lilibet took an interest in politics, and knew quite a bit
about what was going on in the world outside… The King would also talk to his elder
daughter more seriously than most fathers do to so young a child… It was as if he spoke
to an equal.’
Her parents were anxious that she and her sister should as far as possible feel that
they were ordinary children and a part of the world beyond the Palace walls. The result
was the formation of the 1st Buckingham Palace Company of Girl Guides (at Elizabeth’s
insistence two Brownies were added to the Palace Company, so that Margaret, too
young to be a full-fledged Guide, should not feel left out). The idea was that it should be
a substitute for going out to school, so that the Princesses should meet and play with and
compete with other children on an equal basis. As an exercise in democracy it was
somewhat limited. ‘They were all duke’s daughters and Mountbattens – it wasn’t at all
democratic,’ one former member said. The other girls were expected to curtsey to the
Princesses; the first meeting, Crawfie recalled, was spoilt by the attendant nannies and
governesses, while the children wore their best party frocks and white gloves. Some of
the more pampered children were shown up in a game which involved taking off their
shoes and piling them in a heap in the middle of the floor, then finding them, putting
them back on and racing to see who could get back to the starting line first. ‘This never
went very well,’ Crawfie wrote, ‘as quite half the children did not know their own shoes!
Lilibet and Margaret told me this with scorn. There was never any nonsense of that kind
in theirnursery.’
The Guides met every Wednesday evening at five o’clock at the Palace. Patricia
Mountbatten, eldest daughter of the King’s cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was the
leader of Kingfisher patrol with Elizabeth as her second in command. ‘She was really
efficient,’ Countess Mountbatten recalled, ‘very organized, and very responsible, keen
and enthusiastic. She told me years later that she was rather frightened of me. I was
terribly taken aback.’ Guide activities took place in the Palace gardens with George V’s
summerhouse as headquarters, or at the Palace swimming-pool. Elizabeth apparently
enjoyed it, but some of the less practically minded and co-ordinated girls dreaded the
prospect of Wednesdays and ‘those awful team games’. Elizabeth Cavendish ‘used to feel
positively sick’ at the thought as did Diana Legh, daughter of Sir Piers ‘Joey’ Legh, the
Master of the Household. ‘You used to have to tie a certain knot round your middle and
then be hauled to safety off a rock by your team. And whenever it came to me to throw
the rope out to a drowning person it always stuck half way and I used to lose it for the
whole side.’ The captain was an alarming lady who used to marshal the girls and tell
them what to do; Crawfie apparently used to act as second in command and a buffer
between the tough captain and the more nervous girls. ‘She was charming, always fun