It was a "horrid good-bye at Heathrow", wrote King George VI's wife Queen Elizabeth of the final parting of their daughter Princess Elizabeth from the father she adored, Britain's King, on January 31, 1952.
It was three days later and the Queen consort was writing to her eldest daughter, who by then was holidaying in Kenya en route to Australia and New Zealand for what would have been Princess Elizabeth and her husband Philip's first official visit to this corner of the realm.
The King's health, following the removal of one of his lungs a few months earlier, had become delicate forcing the monarch and his wife to abandon their planned 1952 Commonwealth tour, which was to include visits to Australia and New Zealand. Rather than disappoint such important nations, it was decided that Princess Elizabeth — first in line to inherit the throne — and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh would make the journey instead, with a new itinerary drawn up for February.
At the airport the King looked a shadow of his former self and, perhaps with hindsight, commentators have suggested a sense of doom hung over that last goodbye. The Queen consort was certainly emotional.
"I could not help one huge tear forcing its way out of my eye, & as we waited to wave goodbye, as you taxied off, it trembled on my eyelashes … I did hate saying goodbye to both you darlings, & we felt terribly sad & bereft when you had gone," she continued in her letter (later published in Counting One's Blessings, edited by William Shawcross).
But following his daughter's departure, the King seemed to rally and on February 5th he was out on the Sandringham estate, enjoying the sunshine and shooting rabbits. In the evening he dined with his wife and youngest daughter Princess Margaret, who recalled a convivial meal together before her father retired to bed around 10:30pm.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Philip had arrived at the magical Treetops Hotel in Kenya to embark on a safari where they would encounter elephants and lions which the Princess was excitedly filming on her cine camera.
The house, built in the branches of a fig tree in Aberdare National Park, overlooked a waterhole where animals came to drink. The couple's night high up in the canopy was "an absolute highlight", recalled Lady Pamela Hicks, who had been one of the Princess's bridesmaids at her wedding and was then her lady-in-waiting and accompanying the royals on the tour.
A nation in shock, but Elizabeth was last to know
Back at Sandringham at 7:30am on February 6, valet James Macdonald entered the King's bedroom carrying his morning tea. But the monarch had died in the early hours of the morning. It was later determined he'd suffered a coronary thrombosis. He was just 56.
At 10:45am, the King's death was announced to the British public, but as the nation descended into shocked mourning, Princess Elizabeth was yet to hear the terrible news. In Kenya, she and the Duke had just finished lunch. Philip was having a siesta and Elizabeth writing a letter to her father, which he would of course never read.
When news finally reached Philip's private secretary, Melbourne-born Mike Parker, he was floored. He went to wake the Duke. "I never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life," said Parker in an interview many years later. "He looked as if you'd dropped half the world on him."
Philip quickly went to his wife and took her out in the garden, where alone together they walked up and down talking quietly. Britain's new Queen, just 25 years old, was calm and collected and immediately started to reschedule plans and apologise profusely to those who were expecting to see them here in Australia and elsewhere on their tour.
'Elizabeth, of course'
When private secretary Martin Charteris asked Her Majesty what name she would take as Queen, she famously replied: "Elizabeth, of course. It's my name."
Queen Elizabeth II landed back at Heathrow airport on February 7th and came down the aircraft steps dressed in black, with Philip following a few steps behind — as he would for the rest of his life. She was greeted by her prime minister, Winston Churchill, and later reunited with her family back at Clarence House.
Queens Mary and Elizabeth would now curtsey to the new monarch, as would her sister Princess Margaret, while her children Prince Charles and Princess Anne were about to see a great deal less of "Mummy", who had overnight gained the title "Her Majesty". Everything had changed.]
On February 18th, three days after her husband's funeral, Queen Elizabeth delivered a heart-rending message to the nation:
"I commend to you our dear Daughter: give her your loyalty and devotion: though blessed in her husband and children she will need your protection and your love in the great and lonely station to which she has been called."
Traditionally Queen Elizabeth II spends February 6th quietly at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, in sombre contemplation. It is a day of celebration — marking her accession to the throne, which this year heralds her Platinum Jubilee as she becomes the first British monarch to reign for 70 years.
But it is also the day she lost her father and Britain and the Commonwealth its king.
Juliet Rieden is royal correspondent and editor-at-large of The Australian Women's Weekly.
