Poor Lilibet and Margaret.

As told by Lady Pamela Hicks

I was seven years old when my father told me that King Edward VIII had decided he no longer wanted to be the King, and that his brother, George, father of our cousins Lilibet and Margaret, was going to be the King instead.

The King, he explained, wanted to marry the American lady called Mrs Simpson, he had recently brought to lunch, who had come, along with her husband, Mr Simpson, armed with a whole cooked chicken from Fortnum & Mason as a gift. The chicken had caused an almighty stir, sending our chef Mr Brinz into an irate state refusing to serve any food he hadn’t prepared himself.

Lilibet and Margaret would, my father told us, now go to live at Buckingham Palace, and one day Lilibet would be the Queen of England. I was unimpressed. ‘Poor Lilibet and Margaret.’ I wrote in my diary that night. ‘They’ve got to go and live in Buckingham Palace’. Even at that age I could sense how their family life – already under so much constraint – would change.