A Royal Romance, to rally the spirits.

As told by Lady Pamela

It was as a bridesmaid at my sister Patricia’s wedding to John Brabourne a year earlier that the world had cottoned on to the romance blossoming between Lilibet and Philip. While waiting at the entrance of the church for my sister and father to arrive in the wedding car, she had handed her fur coat to Philip for him to hold during the ceremony and the intimacy of that gesture was captured by the cameras. And that was all it took. Everyone had been let in on the secret…

Of course, my family had all known for some time that Lilibet and Philip were in love. Philip was a favourite nephew of my fathers who treated him like a son because his mother, my aunt, Alice, spent much of Philip’s childhood in a sanatorium. Born in Windsor Castle in the presence of her great grandmother, Queen Victoria, she had been diagnosed not long afterwards as being congenitally deaf. She nevertheless learned to lip read in multiple languages and grew up to be very beautiful, known affectionately as ‘the great beauty of Darmstadt.’