He had two Scottish nurses in constant attendance.īefore Charles was born, Elizabeth had declared, 'I'm going to be the child's mother, not the nurses.' Well, she was - but, inevitably, because she was a princess as well as a mother, because 'royal duty' called and all her life Elizabeth made answering the call of royal duty her first priority, and because it was the way of her class and her time, much of the nitty-gritty of childcare was left to the nurses. While devoted to little Prince Charles, they did not have to tend to him unaided. They were young, they were relatively carefree.'Īnd they were cosseted. Gina Kennard said to me, 'Princess Elizabeth was not yet Queen, Philip was still in the navy. According to friends who have known them across all their adult lives, the first few years of their marriage were, in many ways, the happiest. Philip and Lilibet were very happy with their new baby. Princess Margaret, however, was delighted with the choice of name, explaining that henceforward she would be known as 'Charley's Aunt - probably my finest title'. Boy Browning was one of those who felt the name was 'bad news', given the precedents of Charles I and II, to say nothing of the unhappy fate that befell Charles Stuart, 'Bonnie Prince Charlie'. Patricia Mountbatten told me she thought Philip and Elizabeth chose 'Charles' as a name simply because they liked it. These two were good companions: during the whole of their remarkable marriage - the longest-lasting of any sovereign and consort in history - the chattering never stopped I still find it hard to believe I have a baby of my own!' It will be interesting to see what they become. They are rather large, but with fine long fingers quite unlike mine and certainly unlike his father's. He has an interesting pair of hands for a baby. She wrote to her former music teacher: 'The baby is very sweet and we are enormously proud of him. Afterwards, she spent ten days in bed recuperating (as new mothers were encouraged to do) and breast-fed her son from the start.

Princess Elizabeth's confinement - in the Palace's Buhl Room, specially converted into a well-equipped surgery – had been a painfully long one.

He ran round the room waving his hands above his head and shouting, 'Hooray! It's marvellous news! Tell everybody to come in, John. He told me, 'When I heard the news on the radio, I went in to tell Mr Churchill and he jumped up in the air and gave three cheers. The Queen and Prince Philip: Their epic love story in photos When Prince Charles was born, in November 1948, footman John Gibson was working temporarily in Winston Churchill's household.

Philip and elizabeth by gyles brandreth