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were often childish games like sardines played all over the Castle. The Queen was the
life and soul of these occasions; once when Eleanor Roosevelt was staying there after
the war, she was amused by after-dinner charades with the Queen prancing round
wearing a false beard while Churchill sat grumpily frowning in an armchair. At
Christmas there was always a pantomime in which the Princesses took part, scripted by
a local schoolmaster with a supporting cast of local schoolchildren. Sometimes even the
Guardsmen appeared on stage with the King directing operations. Pantomime posters
were put up in the empty frames from which ancestral portraits had been removed for
safe-keeping with ludicrous effects: Mother Goose appearing in a vast heavy gilt frame
labelled Henrietta Maria, or Dick Whittington and his cat as Charles I. A friend and
contemporary of Elizabeth’s who lived near the Castle described life there as having ‘a
happy family atmosphere’; contrasting it with her own family relationships which were
difficult, she said, ‘it was really what a family should be… they were very, very
devoted’.
This cherished childhood lived in such close tandem with a sister four years younger
than herself meant that Elizabeth was, as a friend said, ‘relatively young [for her age]’,
while Margaret was precocious for hers.
The thing about her was that she was shy… didn’t find things easy naturally and there was always this stark
comparison between her and Princess Margaret. The King used to look at Princess Margaret in sort of
amazement that he had produced this object who found everything so easy and was a pretty little thing.
Princess Elizabeth was much more Hanoverian, much more conscientious, much more solid; her face lit up
when she smiled but looked rather dead when she didn’t – which remains the case today.
‘The King spoiled Princess Margaret dreadfully,’ the daughter of one of his courtiers
said. ‘She was his pet… she was always allowed to stay up to dinner at the age of 13
and to grow up too quickly. The courtiers didn’t like her much – they found her amusing
but… She used to keep her parents and everyone waiting for dinner because she wanted
to listen to the end of a programme on the radio. I remember my father despairing of
her.’ Crawfie, sensibly, worried about the effect this was having on Elizabeth and asked
friends, ‘Could you this year only ask Princess Elizabeth to your party? We really are
trying to separate them a bit because Princess Margaret does draw all the attention and
Princess Elizabeth lets her do that.’ Elizabeth herself used to say, ‘Oh, it’s so much easier
when Margaret’s there – everybody laughs at what Margaret says…’ Her mother also
had the same effect of silencing Elizabeth. ‘I noticed that, when the Queen was present,
her daughter made no conversational effort and relapsed into silence,’ Cecil Beaton
wrote after one royal photographic session.
One thing, however, no teacher could provide the Princess with and that was the
experience of ordinary life and people. She was still noticeably shy. Crawfie recorded
that the Princess seemed not to like camping out and sleeping in tents with the Guides,
which Princess Margaret still enjoyed, divining the reason: ‘She was getting older, and
had been brought up so much alone, I could understand why she did not want to undress
before a lot of other children and spend the night with them.’ Despite her registration at