Elizabeth & Margaret

The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters

Andrew Morton

• Publisher: Michael O'Mara
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781789293364
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789293371
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

The first in-depth dual-biography of Elizabeth & Margaret, written by the bestselling royal biographer, Andrew Morton. They were the closest of sisters and the best of friends. But when, in a quixotic twist of fate, their uncle Edward VIII decided to abdicate the throne, the dynamic between Elizabeth and Margaret was dramatically altered. Forever more, Margaret would have to curtsey to the sister she called 'Lillibet'. And bow to her wishes.Elizabeth would always look upon her younger sister's antics with a kind of stoical amusement but Margaret's struggle to find a place and position inside the royal system – and her fraught relationship with its expectations – was often a source of tension. Famously, the Queen had to inform Margaret that the Church and government would not countenance her marrying a divorcee, Group Captain Peter Townsend, forcing Margaret to choose between keeping her title and royal allowances or her divorcee lover.From the idyll of their cloistered early life, through their hidden wartime lives, into the divergent paths they took following their father's death and Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, this book explores their relationship over the years. Andrew Morton, renowned bestselling author of Diana: Her True Story, offers unique insight into these two drastically different sisters – one resigned to duty and responsibility, the other resistant to it – and the lasting impact they have had on the Crown, the royal family and the way it has adapted to the changing mores of the twentieth century.

CHAPTER 1

Rising of the Sun
and Moon

PERHAPS THE ONLY thing David and Bertie shared completely was a keen interest in fashion. One was a flashy dresser who gravitated towards Fair Isle sweaters, two-tone shoes and turned-up trousers. The other dressed more conservatively and focused on the tailoring of a dress or a suit, spending hours with ateliers and cutters, sketching out designs, trying out new ideas for court dress, state occasions and even pantomime costumes.¹

Aside from that commonality, they were worlds apart in demeanour and temperament, one bred for the sunlight, the other for the shadows. One was more youthful and jaunty with smooth, rarely shaved skin, a slight build but an energetic gait and spirit. The other was frail, nervy, prone to irrational bursts of temper and suffered from a slew of debilitating ailments ranging from stomach problems to a serious stammer, non-stop blinking and twitches that caused his mouth to droop. One partied till dawn, seduced single – and married – women, and loathed his father. The other bowed down to his father’s bidding, settling into a sensible marriage and ‘a more rooted royal style’. Their father always lamented that one child ‘was heading down the wrong tracks’ while the other perpetuated the proper image of the monarchy, ‘a model of dreamlike domesticity’.² Even Wallis Warfield Simpson, the American paramour of the Prince of Wales, noticed the polar temperaments of the two brothers: her lover ‘all enthusiasm and volubility … the Duke of York quiet, shy’.³

The choices made by these two brothers, David, the eldest son and heir to the Windsor dynasty, and Bertie, his younger sibling only eighteen months apart, would intimately shape the future of the House of Windsor and, in the process, profoundly alter the destiny of Bertie’s daughters, Elizabeth – Lilibet as she was known in the family – and Margaret. Their grandfather and the boys’ father, King George V, experienced an eerie foreboding about the future of his family even as he celebrated his Silver Jubilee in 1935. With his eldest son and heir, the Prince of Wales, now forty and no nearer marrying and securing the dynasty, the King stated sorrowfully: ‘After I am dead, the boy [the future Edward VIII] will ruin himself within 12 months. I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne.’⁴

The King’s prayer would be answered. It was Edward VIII’s abdication to marry the twice-divorced American, Wallis Warfield Simpson, that would transform the lives of his brother and his brother’s daughters, changing the family dynamic for ever. Their uncle’s decision placed them firmly in the lifelong embrace of the monarchy, further shaping who they were and what they became.

As with David and Bertie, in the popular imagination, every generation of the House of Windsor is stalked by a shadow. The good versus the naughty royal. The rebellious extrovert versus the sensible introvert. William the straight shooter, Harry the wild child. Diana the demure, Fergie the roustabout. The sun and the moon. These stereotypes often mask as much as they reveal. And yet, each set of royal siblings – like all siblings – feeds off this asymmetry, occupying the psychic space left by the other.

As Princess Margaret told her friend, writer Gore Vidal: ‘When there are two sisters and one is the queen who must be the source of honour and all that is good, the other must be the focus of the most creative malice, the evil sister.’⁵ Certainly her behaviour on occasion made her sister shine, Margaret easily slipping into the ‘black sheep’ stereotype. That reputation barely disturbed the ash on her ever-present cigarette holder. As she once remarked: ‘Disobedience is my joy.’⁶

Margaret was sufficiently self-aware to be able to draw the subtle distinction between the media’s portrayal of her as someone jealous of the Queen’s position versus the more layered conflict of a young woman overshadowed by her older sister: ‘I have never suffered from “second daughter-itis”. But I did mind forever being cast as the “younger sister”.’⁷ As a friend perceptively noted: ‘She sees herself as the king’s daughter rather than the queen’s sister.’⁸ That is to say, part of the main royal family, not a subsidiary branch, which was the case after Elizabeth became queen. Margaret never indicated that she wanted to switch places with her sister, instead telling anyone who would listen that her role in life was to support her sister with the immense burden of her position. As she once remarked: ‘Isn’t it lucky that Lilibet is the eldest?’⁹ While Margaret chafed at the restraints of royal life, Elizabeth dutifully embraced them.

The two sisters were contradictory and conflicted, butting heads over matters both small and monumental, but they also loved one another. This push-and-pull between affection and distance, deep love and primal jealousy, went to the heart of the private world that Elizabeth and Margaret shared.

Both sisters entered the world on the twenty-first day of the month. That, though, was the only similarity about their respective births.

Elizabeth was born on 21 April 1926 in Mayfair, London, to then Prince Albert, Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. That year was proving a challenging one for Britain, as it teetered on the edge of industrial chaos and a historic general strike. By the time of her birth, strong public interest had already built up because her imminent arrival offered a diversion from the national crisis. A crowd milled outside 17 Bruton Street, when Elizabeth finally arrived via Caesarean section at 2.40 in the morning. In accordance with ancient tradition, Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks was present to witness the birth in order to prevent child swapping.¹⁰ Soon enough, the bonny, blue-eyed baby became a potent symbol of family, continuity and patriotism.

Just over a month later, on 29 May, she was christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary in a ceremony at the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, the service being officiated over by Dr Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of York. Such was the interest in the baby princess that excited onlookers broke through the police cordon outside the palace in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the famous infant. Her distinguished name implied her future destiny as queen – even though, under the 1701 Act of Settlement, she appeared unlikely to ascend the throne once Uncle David produced an heir. Still, everyone spoke as if she represented the country’s great promise, with one newspaper observing, ‘The possibility that in the little stranger to Bruton Street there may be a future Queen of Great Britain (perhaps even a second Queen Elizabeth) is sufficiently intriguing.’¹¹

The new baby catapulted her parents from a relatively quiet royal life to the front pages of newspapers and magazines. Weeks after her birth, the pavement outside the Yorks’ London residence was still thronged with so many fans that occasionally she had to be smuggled out of the back door in her pram for her daily airing. In time her mother became concerned about this surge of attention. She later wrote to her mother-in-law, Queen Mary: ‘It almost frightens me that the people should love her so much. I suppose that it is a good thing, and I hope that she will be worthy of it, poor little darling.’¹²

This extraordinary amount of attention was not limited to the man and woman in the street. From the start, her irascible grandfather King George V doted on her. Stories soon circulated about how the angelic little girl had won the affections of the unbending Sovereign. Though he was notorious for intimidating his own children and senior staff, Elizabeth was the exception. The Archbishop of Canterbury recounted that on one occasion, the monarch, who was playing a horse, allowed his granddaughter to pull him around by his grey beard as he shuffled on his knees along the floor. ‘He was fond of his two grandsons, Princess Mary’s sons,’ recalled the Countess of Airlie, ‘but Lilibet always came first in his affections. He used to play with her – a thing I never saw him do with his own children – and loved to have her with him.’¹³ He monitored her every small advance, sending a wireless message to his son and daughter-in-law, who were on board the Renown sailing to Australia, to inform them that his granddaughter had cut her first tooth. The King was enraptured by her. One Christmas at Sandringham, three-year-old Elizabeth was listening to the carol ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night’ when she noticed the lyric ‘to you and all mankind’. She innocently announced: ‘I know that old man kind. That’s you grandpapa. You’re old and you are very, very kind.’¹⁴

Baby Elizabeth always listened attentively when Grandpa England stressed the virtues of decency, duty and hard work, values which were further reinforced by an inflexible Household regime and a dedicated team of staff in the nursery, including her nurse, Clara Knight, known as Alah; Margaret ‘Bobo’ MacDonald, a copper-haired Scotswoman; and later Bobo’s sister, Ruby. At the firm request of her grandmother, Queen Mary, Elizabeth was trained to be a model royal from the beginning. ‘Teach that child not to fidget!’ became her grandmother’s recurring demand. Alah painstakingly coached the three-year-old Elizabeth on the necessity of standing absolutely still, like a marble statue. Pockets were sewn in on all her dresses just to make sure. She learnt to answer a salute, wave her white-gloved hand from a balcony or open car, pose graciously for photographers, and control her bladder for hours. Later, she was taught the proper form of address for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the prime minister. If she performed to Alah’s exacting standards, she was rewarded with a biscuit.¹⁵ Misbehaviour would earn a slap across the back of her legs. Even by the standards of the day, her childhood was stifled and emotionally threadbare, the adults in her life encouraging a docile conformity.

As a toddler, Elizabeth learnt that she needed to act with grace, bow and curtsy to adults, and never lose her composure or act too familiarly towards anyone. Everything in her rigidly controlled life was run like clockwork, from breakfast at 7.30 a.m. to bedtime at 7.15 p.m. sharp.¹⁶ In short, she began life as a sheltered, privileged child, drilled in the need for self-discipline and respect for the demands of her position.

While there were obvious limitations in her regimented and rather repressed childhood, there were perks too, though some more obvious to adult sensibilities. Elizabeth would travel in limousines between the various royal castles, palaces and houses while carefully attended by a small army of butlers, footmen, maids and chauffeurs. At Christmas and on her birthday she was inundated with gifts, many sent by adoring members of the public, who themselves were of modest means. At age four, she acquired her first Shetland pony, Peggy, from her grandfather and began riding lessons soon after. Whenever she appeared in public, throngs of people would stop, smile, cheer and even wave flags. It was thus a childhood that alternated quickly between great attention and great isolation, and Elizabeth was raised as a small adult rather than as a child. Then, when she was just four years old, her position of ascendancy in the nursery came under challenge.

While Elizabeth was born in the centre of fashionable Mayfair in a comfortable town house at 17 Bruton Street, her sister arrived on 21 August 1930 during a violent thunderstorm in the family’s ‘haunted’ ancestral home, Glamis Castle, a storied Scottish pile that came complete with dark, winding corridors, steep stone steps, draughty bedrooms – and its own ‘monster’, said to be a disfigured creature hidden away in a secret room. Elizabeth had been a ‘wanted’ first child, but the duke and duchess had hoped for a boy as their second.¹⁷ They hadn’t even considered female names. Though the parents liked the sound of Ann Margaret, at the behest of Queen Mary they settled on naming the child Margaret Rose, as Margaret was the name of a Scottish queen.

On the morning after Margaret’s birth, Alah told Elizabeth a big surprise awaited her in her mother’s room. After touching her new-born sister’s hand, Elizabeth grew so excited that she grabbed the doctor, David Myles, and led him to the room, proclaiming: ‘Come and see my baby, my very own baby!’¹⁸ She was so excited that she was found later in front of her toy cupboard. Beside her were a blue velvet frog, a woolly rabbit, a pair of prized dancing dolls, and several picture books, the excited infant announcing that she was getting things ready for the baby to play with.

Such devotion was not merely a reaction to the immediate excitement of Margaret’s birth. At her christening on 30 October, she wore the same lace dress that her sister had done four years earlier. Gazing at her sister with adoration, Elizabeth whispered: ‘I shall call her Bud. You see she isn’t really a rose yet.’¹⁹ Those words carried more significance than intended: Margaret Rose would always remain the bud, representing unfulfilled potential, someone restrained by convention and longing to burst forth. Even though Margaret, Elizabeth and their mother would come to be called ‘The Three White Roses of York’,²⁰ the truth was that only Elizabeth had been born a royal ‘rose’ in that she was ultimately destined to be the Queen.

The arrival of this second daughter focused the world’s attention even more closely on Elizabeth as the likely heir to the throne. A waxwork figure of her on her pony was installed at Madame Tussaud’s. Chocolates, dinnerware, tea towels and hospitals were named after her. Her face was emblazoned on a six-cent stamp in Newfoundland. A popular tune entitled...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Sister, Friend, Judge
• Chapter 1: Rising of the Sun and Moon
• Chapter 2: Sisters at War
• Chapter 3: Love in a Warm Climate
• Chapter 4: The Long Goodbye
• Chapter 5: ‘Bad or Mad’
• Chapter 6: ‘My Dear Prime Minister’
• Chapter 7: The Prince and the Showgirl
• Chapter 8: ‘Sex, Sex, Sex’
• Chapter 9: Cool Britannia
• Chapter 10:  ‘I Hate You’
• Chapter 11:  ‘My Darling Angel’
• Chapter 12:  Bud and Her Rose
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Select Bibliography
• Photo Credits
• Index
• Photo Section