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Golden Jubilee her Majesty's Coronation (Page 2 of 6)
The Golden Jubilee of the coronation of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II the 2nd June 2003
Having difficulty as a baby in pronouncing her name, her attempts ended in "Lilibet" which became her nick-name.
When Winston Churchill visited the then Duke of York, he later commented that the two year old Princess Elizabeth "is a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant".
At the same age, there is the story of the Officer commanding the Guard at Buckingham Palace striding across to the pram bearing the two year old Princess "Permission to march off, please Ma'am" he asked and in answer there was an inclination of a small bonneted head and a wave of a tiny hand.
The reflective attitude mentioned by Winston Churchill continued throughout her childhood. When a Minister of the Cloth said that he would send the young Princess Elizabeth a gift of a book. "Not about God" she replied "I know about Him already".
Ever since the commencement of the War, Princess Elizabeth was determined to play Her part and not sit idly by in spite of the recent responsibilities which had been added to her onerous schedule and which would clearly have crushed any of Her peers and on reaching Her 18th birthday, She joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, training in driving and vehicle maintenance.
The Princess could easily have avoided joining up by simply claiming that by the time she was of age the end of the War was now in sight. However the calibre of the person who was to become our Queen can be found in the comment She made many years later that it was the only time in her life when She had been able seriously to test her own capabilities against others of Her own age.
In a similar manner, The Queen Mother, when a teenager, had dedicated herself to caring for the injured billeted at her family home, Glamis Castle.
There is no doubt that the Royal Family of the 1940's were the most seen and the most popular on a continuous basis than ever before. The combination of a sick King, supported by a stalwart Queen and two daughters provided a sort of fairy tale picture. In fact when Princess Elizabeth was visiting the United States of America with the Duke of Edinburgh in 1951 President Truman commented "When I was a little boy, I read about a fairy princess, and there she is"!
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