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that Edward, Duke of Windsor, is the rightful owner of the British throne, and that King George VI is a
colorless, weak personality largely on probation in the public mind of Great Britain, as well as for the United
States…
As for Queen Elizabeth, by Park Avenue standards, she appears to be far too plump of figure, too dowdy in
dress, to meet American specifications of a reigning Queen. The living contrast of Queen Mary (as regal as a
woman can be) and the Duchess of Windsor (chic and charmingly American) certainly does not help
Elizabeth…
The personal success or lack of it of the King and Queen in the United States, the author
warned, ‘will be the difference between success and failure of British-American relations
during the next critical international period you expect to face during the next few
years’.
In the event, the royal visit was a public relations triumph. The American press, with
very few isolationist exceptions, was enthusiastic about the couple, while on a personal
level the King established a friendly relationship with the President and even succeeded
in impressing Eleanor Roosevelt with his knowledge of social welfare. ‘The British
sovereigns have conquered Washington,’ Arthur Krock wrote in The New York Times,
‘where they have not put a foot wrong and where they have left a better impression
than even their most optimistic advisers could have expected.’ The President praised
them to his cousin as ‘very delightful and understanding people who know a great deal
not only about foreign affairs in general but also about social legislation’.
On 22 June 1939 the Princesses, accompanied by Allah and Crawfie, boarded a
destroyer at Southampton to meet their parents’ ship, the Empress of Britain, in mid-
Channel. There was a joyful reunion as Margaret held her mother’s hand and boasted
how much thinner she had got – ‘not like a football like I used to be’. ‘All the time’,
Crawfie wrote, ‘the King could hardly take his eyes off Lilibet.’ There was a jolly
luncheon in the liner’s dining-room during which the King threw balloons out of the
portholes and Crawfie felt weak at the knees after a champagne cocktail. The seventyeight
miles of track from Southampton to Waterloo were lined with people cheering and
waving flags; once they arrived, 50,000 people crowded the Mall in front of
Buckingham Palace waving handkerchiefs and even umbrellas, singing ‘God Save the
King’, ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, and shouting ‘We
Want the King’ and ‘We Want the Queen’, until the royal family came out on the
balcony. It was, according to the Daily Mirror, ‘the greatest of all homecomings, the
greatest royal day since the Coronation’. In the two years which had passed since she
had last stood on that balcony with her parents, it was apparent to Princess Elizabeth
that ‘Mummy’ and ‘Papa’ had established themselves as firmly in the people’s affection
as ever her grandparents had. All, it seemed, she would have to do would be to follow
their example.
She had recently turned thirteen years old. Within a month of that day on the Palace
balcony she was to have a meeting with destiny in the form of a young naval cadet,
Prince Philip of Greece. She owed this meeting to the Prince’s uncle, Louis Francis Albert