Elizabeth the Queen by Sally Bedell Smith

to the royal family, confided to Queen Elizabeth’s private secretary, Major Thomas Harvey, that he’d “never been so pleased to see a male organ in all his life.” Queen Elizabeth was “beaming with happiness,” and George VI was “simply delighted by the success of everything.” Queen Mary, sitting in “the straightest-backed chair we could find,” was busy grilling Sir William Gilliatt “from A to Z.” Philip, still dressed in sneakers and sports clothes, joined his wife as her anesthesia wore off, presented her with a bouquet of roses and carnations, and gave her a kiss.
    Shortly before midnight, the baby was brought to the ballroom for viewing by the courtiers. Thomas Harvey described him as “just a plasticene head emerging from a cocoon, with Nurse Rowe proudly standing guard: a simple little cot, with white blankets.… Poor little chap, two-and-a-half hours after being born, he was being looked at by outsiders—but with great affection and good-will.” Well-wishers who had been given the news of the heir’s birth by a policeman were still cheering along the Buckingham Palace railing. Finally Richard Colville and Lieutenant Michael Parker, Prince Philip’s equerry, persuaded them to go home.
    Elizabeth and Philip named their son Charles Philip Arthur George. “I had no idea that one could be kept so busy in bed—there seems to be something happening all the time!” Elizabeth wrote to her cousin Lady Mary Cambridge two weeks after giving birth. “I still find it hard to believe that I really have a baby of my own!” The new mother was particularly taken with her son’s “fine, long fingers—quite unlike mine and certainly unlike his father’s,” as she described them in a letter to her former music teacher, Mabel Lander. For nearly two months, the princess breast-fed her son until she fell ill with measles—one of several childhood diseases she had missed by not attending a school—and Charles had to be sent away temporarily so he wouldn’t catch the illness at such a young age.
    I N ADDITION TO parenthood, Elizabeth and Philip were collaborating on the refurbishment of Clarence House. He took the lead on matters of design, orchestrating the placement of pictures on the walls, as he would do throughout their marriage, and indulging in his passion for technology by having a speaker system installed in their bedroom. She made practical suggestions, according to biographer Sarah Bradford, who recounted that “when someone complained about the smell of paint in the room, she said, ‘Put a bucket of hay in there and that’ll take it away.’ ” Elizabeth was sensitive about her husband’s need to assert himself in his domain. “Philip is terribly independent,” she had written to her mother during her honeymoon, adding that she wanted him to be “boss in his own home.”
    They moved early in the summer of 1949, delighted at last to be in their own home together. They had adjacent bedrooms, connected by a door, his with masculine paneling, hers a feminine pink and blue, with canopy hangings “suspended from a crown” over the double bed. “In England the upper class always have had separate bedrooms,” explained their cousin Lady Pamela Mountbatten (later Hicks). “You don’t want to be bothered with snoring, or someone flinging a leg around. Then when you are feeling cozy you share your room sometimes. It is lovely to be able to choose.”
    The couple had a full complement of household staff to serve them—Elizabeth’s private secretary Jock Colville; her ladies-in-waiting, including Lady Margaret Egerton (who would later marry Colville); equerry Michael Parker, a cheeky Australian who was a friend of Philip’s from the navy; General Sir Frederick “Boy” Browning, comptroller (treasurer) for the household; Philip’s valet John Dean; the dresser Bobo MacDonald; and several butlers, footmen, housemaids, chauffeurs, detectives, a chef, and culinary helpers. Continuing the