At Christmas 1910, Elizabeth and David were left at St. Paul’s Walden Bury in the care of the newly married Mary and their 21-year-old brother Fergus, who took their youngest siblings to church, to parties, and on flower-picking expeditions in the local woods. Cecilia and Claude went to look after 23-year-old Alec, who was complaining of blinding headaches. “Darling Sweetie Lovie Mother,” Elizabeth, aged ten, wrote on December 13, “I hope Alec is much better. Please please don’t worry too much about him. We do miss you so!… I hope you won’t mind lovie, dovie but I took your rain umbrella to church with me on Sunday because it was raining so hard.”
As 1910 gave way to 1911, Alec continued to suffer from migraines. By the middle of October, his parents were back at Alec’s side, when Elizabeth wrote a similar letter to Cecilia, signing off by asking her, “Do give Rosie, Father and Alec my love, and a lot of kisses.” Edwardian children were usually kept away from distressing news, and while Elizabeth knew Alec was ill, she had no idea just how bad things had become for him. The rest of her letter chattily informs her mother of how close they came to missing the train in Edinburgh and how foggy it was in Scotland that week.
Meanwhile, word was sent to Elizabeth’s brother Jock, by then working at a bank in Boston, that he needed to get home if he wanted to say goodbye to Alec. Jock was only a year older than Alec and, since childhood, they had been so close that their grandmother Caroline called them one another’s “Companion Brother.” Jock booked passage on an ocean liner leaving America at the first available opportunity. It was still a few days off the British coastline when Alec died in his sleep on October 29. Jock revealed several years later that he had suffered a breakdown following his brother’s death.
Alec Bowes-Lyon’s death was probably caused in the long term by a frontal brain lesion and in the short term by a seizure while he slept. Like his brothers, Alec had boarded school at Eton; like his father, he loved cricket. In his final year at Eton, Alec played for his school in the celebrated Eton–Winchester annual cricket match, where, it is said, he was hit on the head by a fast-bowled ball. In his three subsequent years studying at Oxford, it became progressively clear that such an accident—likely on the cricket pitch—had left Alec with permanent and deteriorating internal injuries.1 He may have been suffering for longer than his parents and siblings realised; several of the family later noted how cheerful Alec tried to be when he was around them, even when he was in a great deal of pain.
Cecilia was devastated at burying a second child, and Alec’s death marked the start of a decade that was to prove extremely painful for Elizabeth’s family, as it was for millions of others thanks to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The events Elizabeth witnessed in the four years of the Great War were to indelibly shape her character.
In 1911, Elizabeth’s tutors asked her to write a short essay titled “A Recent Invention, Aeroplanes.” In her reflection on this eight-year-old technology, Elizabeth wrote, “An aeroplane, to look at, is like a big, great bird. They are clever inventions. An aeroplane is usually shaped like a cigar, and has a propeller at one end, and on each side the great white wings, which makes it look like a bird. An aeroplane can fly very high and it makes a great noise. They are not quite safe, yet, and many, many accidents have happened.”
Compared to the safety of the ever-larger series of passenger ships being churned out in the shipyards of the United Kingdom, France and Imperial Germany, travel in aeroplanes seemed dangerous to the point of lunatic. However, in the spring of 1912, when Elizabeth was eleven years old, she and the rest of the world were reminded that these “queens of the ocean”—floating palaces with room onboard for thousands—also remained vulnerable to the power of nature. On Monday, April 15, Freddy Dalrymple-Hamilton, a family friend who was hopelessly in love with Elizabeth’s sister Rose and who had joined the Bowes-Lyons at St. Paul’s Walden Bury for a few days in the country, was on his way back into London when he saw news bulletins—then written in chalk on huge black billboards—announcing that the British luxury liner Titanic had sunk on its first voyage to New York, with the loss of hundreds of lives.
Cecilia’s friend Noëlle Leslie, Countess of Rothes, had been on board the Titanic when it struck the iceberg. In the hours between her evacuation and rescue, the Countess of Rothes had helped steer and then row her lifeboat which, coupled with exposure in the ice field, caused her some ill health in the weeks immediately after. Back on land, the public’s interest in the disaster seemed to grow rather than diminish, which did not help the Countess’s attempts to put the ordeal behind her. She had been travelling on the Titanic with her maid Roberta and her husband’s cousin, Gladys, both of whom also survived. Gladys was even less patient than the Countess with the increasing frequency of questions about the disaster. A journalist asked her, “Is it true you crossed the ocean on the famous Titanic?”
To which Gladys replied, deadpan, “Part way.”
Elizabeth, dark-haired and blue-eyed, popped her head into the kitchens with a question. Having spotted a maid clearing away a barely touched chocolate cake from one of Cecilia’s teas, Elizabeth had rushed downstairs to finish her quest before it disappeared into a locked larder. Elizabeth made clear her intentions with, “May I come in and eat more? Much more of that chocolate cake that I liked to eat while it was upstairs?”
While Mrs. Thompson the housekeeper proved a soft touch on Elizabeth’s snacking agenda, the cook was less so, recalling, “The little imp! I was forever chasing her out of the kitchen.” Elizabeth soon realised that it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, so she flung open the cupboards to help herself to a treat, while maintaining a steady stream of conversation with Mrs. Thompson, who was offered little chance to interrupt, much less to say “stop.” Sometimes the kitchen servants would turn around from their work to see Elizabeth swaying into view outside the window atop Bobs the pony. Her quick rap on the pane was followed by a request for a sugar lump for Bobs and, now that the jar was open, why not one for his rider too.
Elizabeth’s brothers teased her about how much she enjoyed mealtimes, and the snacks peppered liberally between them. In early 1913, one of them—either Fergus or Michael—found her diary. Many pages were empty as Elizabeth’s interest in it was, at best, intermittent. Jokingly pretending to be Elizabeth, they forged the following entries:
January 1st
Overeat myself.
Thursday Jan 2nd
Headache in the morning. Very good tea. Christmas cake, Devonshire Cream, honey, jam, buns & tea. Eat too much.
Friday Jan 3rd
Not quite the same thing today. Breakfast very good. Sausages, kedgeree, Brown Bread, Scones & honey. Excellent lunch—beefsteak—3 helps—jam and roley poley [pudding]. I eat a good deal.
Sat Jan 4th
I am putting on weight. My waist measurement today is 43 inches. Appetite good.
Sunday 5th
Appetite still good, after healthy breakfast went to church. Came back very hungry for lunch. Roast beef, chicken, Yorkshire pudding, Plum pudding, cheese, cake & oranges. Oh, my poor tummy. Just going to have tea. Am very hungry.
Monday Jan 6th
Quite an ordinary breakfast. No jam today! Rode Wonder [her horse] in the morning & came in simply ravenous for lunch. Omelette—two helps of roast chicken, finished up the bread sauce—five chocolate éclairs rium rium.I Chocolate éclairs for tea—as no one else liked them, finished them up. Wish I was allowed more for supper—always so hungry by the time I go to bed.
Tuesday Jan 7th
Barrel of apples arrived today—had one for breakfast.
10 am—eat an apple.
11 am—had an apple for [my] 11 o’clock lunch.
12—had an apple.
Roast pigeons and chocolate pudding & apples for lunch!
3 pm—eat an apple.
3.15 pm—David and I fought and have got bruise on my leg because he said I was greedy.
Eat two apples for supper.
Elizabeth, whose sense of humour was similar to her brothers’, refused to feel ashamed over her love for food. She stated quite firmly that one of her favourite smells was “the delicious smell of toasting bread” and declared later, “In times of distress, you must have chocolates!”
By the spring of 1914, Elizabeth was the only one left in the Bowes-Lyon Nursery. She had wept when her brother David went to boarding school for the first time in September 1912. Until David’s departure for Eton, brother and sister had shared their lessons—taught to read and write by their mother and then at home by a series of governesses.II Elizabeth’s best subjects were History and Scripture (the study of the Bible); her worst, by a considerable margin, was Mathematics. Like all the British aristocracy at the time, regardless of where they were born, they were taught to speak with an accent later called Received Pronunciation or “RP.” Sister and brother had occasionally escaped to an empty room near the stables, reachable by a rickety ladder, where they hid chocolate bars, oranges and apples purloined from the kitchens.
Cecilia was unmoved and unimpressed by her children’s occasional claims of boredom, responding, “If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is yours.” Manners were a major preoccupation; their nannies were permitted to smack the children across the back of their legs after any sign of rudeness.III In 1913, Cecilia hired a young German governess, 21-year-old Käthe Kübler, whom Elizabeth addressed as “Fräulein” and who took over her lessons after a two-week trial period. Kübler wrote, “With true German thoroughness, I drew up a timetable of her lessons and a plan of study, both of which were approved by Lady Strathmore.” This curriculum consisted of classes in Drawing, French, Geography, German, gymnastics, History, Mathematics, needlework, piano and Science. Lessons ran until four o’clock in the afternoon, after which Elizabeth and her governess usually went for a walk in the grounds or took out the pony and cart, sometimes with a picnic. The early summer of 1914 was so beautiful, weather-wise, that the picnics were a regular occurrence. While lessons were conducted in English, on their walks, cart rides and picnics, Kübler spoke German to Elizabeth, who quickly became comfortable conversing in the language.
On the last Monday in June, a maid came into Elizabeth’s bedroom carrying a tray with towels, a jug of hot water with an accompanying basin, tea and biscuits. She then opened the curtains. Washed and dressed, Elizabeth went to her mother’s room, also as usual, to read a chapter of the Bible together, before having her piano lesson with Fräulein Kübler. After which, she and her governess went down to breakfast, where Lord Strathmore was reading the conservative-leaning Morning Post. It carried the story that the Austrian Emperor’s nephew and heir, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been assassinated on an official visit to the city of Sarajevo, where half the population wished to remain part of his uncle’s empire and the other half wished to unite with the neighbouring kingdom of Serbia. A supporter of the latter cause, Gavrilo Princip, had opened fire on the imperial motorcade as it drove through the city. The Archduke’s wife was killed almost instantly; the Archduke bled to death not long after his entourage got him back to the local governor’s mansion. By the next day, the loudest question in Europe was whether Gavrilo Princip had acted independently or if his mission had been encouraged by the Serbian government. Serbia was protected by her Russian allies, who had treaties with France and Britain; the latter was also treaty-bound to protect Belgian independence. Belgium was at risk from invasion by Germany, who might use it to get their armies quickly to Paris after they declared war on France to help their Austro-Hungarian allies, who were convinced—correctly—that the Serbian government had not so much encouraged as organised the assassination of the Archduke. When combined with long-festering tensions between the countries concerned, it was the world’s most lethal game of dominoes.
As Elizabeth and Fräulein Kübler entered the Dining Room, Lord Strathmore passed over the newspaper and said, “Here, read this. It means war.”
Kübler did not agree with Lord Strathmore’s gloomy assessment, and less than two weeks later, she went home to Germany to take her annual holiday and celebrate her parents’ wedding anniversary. Cecilia marked Elizabeth’s fourteenth birthday by taking her to the theatre in London to see a performance by a Russian ballerina, followed by comedians and jugglers. They had just received news that Elizabeth had passed the Oxford Local Examinations, a set of public exams in which Fräulein Kübler had enrolled her.IV When Elizabeth and her mother left the Coliseum theatre to go home to St. James’s Square, crowds were pouring into London’s streets to celebrate the outbreak of hostilities against Austria-Hungary and Germany. Everywhere she looked, Elizabeth could see people “shouting, roaring, yelling their heads off,” amid their confident assertion that the war would be won by Christmas. She was to remember the scale and depth of that delusion for the rest of her life, along with the fact that Britain entered the First World War on her fourteenth birthday.
As returning to Elizabeth was impossible, Fräulein Kübler remained in Germany, where she trained as a nurse and joined the Red Cross. Elizabeth’s strict schedule of lessons collapsed, and, within weeks, she was crumpling mountains of tissue, “until it was so soft that it no longer crackled,” so that it could be used as insulation in lining soldiers’ sleeping bags for the Front. On October 23, her cousin Charles Bowes-Lyon became the first member of the family to be killed in action.V
By Christmas, it was clear that the war would be neither as short nor as simple as the crowds had hoped in August. Elizabeth managed to exchange a few letters with Fräulein Kübler, until she soured on their correspondence after Kübler defended the Kaiser. Elizabeth announced to her new governess, Beryl Poignand, that she did not want to continue her German language classes and, instead, wished to learn Russian, in solidarity with Britain’s Tsarist ally in the war. Miss Poignand did not speak a word of Russian, but the German was nonetheless dropped. The Bowes-Lyons’ Christmas Eve toast that year was, “To hell with the bloody Kaiser!”
Glamis and St. Paul’s Walden Bury were converted into military convalescent homes on Cecilia’s orders, and Elizabeth was soon running errands into the village to buy tobacco for their wounded guests. There were a lot of patients from Australia, Ireland and New Zealand with whom Elizabeth liked talking—this was the first recorded example of her extraordinary ability to remember dozens of names and match them to the correct faces.2 Although Elizabeth was too young to train as a nurse, her sister Lady Rose did and was assigned to work in a London hospital, where she was soon assisting at surgery. Their brother Michael decided not to return to Oxford to start his second year of study, instead volunteering for the army, as had his three elder brothers. In the excitement between enlisting and deployment, Jock and Fergus were married within days of one another, with Elizabeth as a bridesmaid at both weddings. Fergus married Lady Christian Dawson-Damer, the Earl and Countess of Portarlington’s second daughter; twelve days later in Scotland, Fergus married the Honourable Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis. Hers, improbable as it may seem, was not the longest surname to which one of Elizabeth’s siblings was partnered; Fenella lost the distinction by one letter to Lady Mary’s groom, Sidney Buller-Fullerton-Elphinstone.
By the end of 1914, three of Elizabeth’s brothers were in the trenches. Jock wrote home saying that any form of deep sleep was impossible and had been for weeks. Michael recorded seeing “hundreds & hundreds of dead Germans everywhere.” A fourth brother, Fergus, who had been in the army from 1910 until he left for a job in banking a few months before the Archduke’s murder, voluntarily returned to the military once war began. As of Christmas 1914, his unit was still in England, however they were expected to be sent to the battlefields in France soon. Elizabeth did not stay up on Old Year’s Night (New Year’s Eve) 1914. She, and the rest of the family, went to bed early.
During the war, Elizabeth made friends with several other young aristocrats whose families also had houses in London. Nicknaming themselves “the Mad Hatters,” Elizabeth and one of her closest friends from this stage of her life, Lady Lavinia Spencer, formed a trio with Lady Katherine Hamilton, Katie to her friends. Katie’s elder sister, Cynthia, later married Lavinia’s brother Albert,VI meaning that both of Elizabeth’s best friends as a teenager were Princess Diana’s great-aunts.
The Mad Hatters enjoyed going to the theatre together, where Elizabeth developed a crush on the actor Henry Ainley. When her brothers at the Front found out about this, they all made sure to co-ordinate sending her telegrams asking if Ainley’s stomach was as large as it looked in photographs and constantly implying that he was decrepit. “He is 35!” soon became Elizabeth’s staple riposte, launched with increasing frequency, especially after her brothers recruited Lady Rose to join in the teasing. Lavinia Spencer had a cousin who knew Ainley and promised to get his autograph for Elizabeth, who informed her governess, “I am so pleased. I feel that it is quite worth sticking up for him all this time. Oh my sacred Aunt in pink tights, perhaps we shall even meet him, help, I shall die in a minute.” The Spencer cousin made good on the promise and sent a signed headshot from Ainley, which Elizabeth proudly displayed on her mantelpiece at Glamis.
She and Lavinia were also besotted with a chauffeur who worked for the Red Cross near St. James’s Square. They never had the opportunity to speak with him, but when he smiled at Elizabeth on a July afternoon in 1915, she described it as “the most seraphic, glorious, delightful, beautiful, wonderful smile from the Beautiful One.”
The Spencer family were friends with the royals, and in the spring of 1916, Lavinia invited Elizabeth to tea at her family’s London townhouse to meet the King’s only daughter, Princess Mary, and her brother, Prince Albert. Strictly speaking, this was not their first encounter; Elizabeth had met Prince Albert before, at a children’s party hosted by the Duchess of Buccleuch (pronounced “Bu-clue”). Noticing the Prince’s shyness, Elizabeth gave him the glacé cherry off her slice of cake, in the hope that it would cheer him up. This charming act had been without romantic inspiration given she was four years old at the time. Lavinia’s tea in 1916 would be Elizabeth’s first meeting she could remember with the man who later became her husband. It wasn’t exactly Romeo and Juliet. Elizabeth told her governess that she had met Prince Albert at Spencer House and concluded, “he’s rather nice.”
Elizabeth may have exaggerated her governess’s tipsiness on the one occasion Beryl Poignand let her proverbial hair down during the war years; but, either way, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth was highly amused. They went into the Scottish town of Dundee for an evening at the theatre where, according to Elizabeth, Miss Poignand threw herself with gusto into the singalong portion of events, becoming “so, so loud that the manager came and asked her if she would kindly stop.” Noticing that “the poor man had a red nose,” Miss Poignand “sang most aggressively at him… Put a bit of powder on it, which is a vulgar song. To crown all that, she drank three cocktails on reaching home, and had to be carried up to bed by Barson.”
Elizabeth and Cecilia went to Victoria Station in London with Michael, where he boarded a train to return to the Front after a few days’ leave. On the platform, they spotted another officer saying goodbye to his mother, who was sobbing; Michael leaned out of the train carriage window to try to comfort her, saying, “Don’t worry! I’ll look after him.” Eighty years later, Elizabeth still remembered that moment at Victoria, particularly the woman’s grief at her son’s departure: “I can see her now,” she said, “and do you know, he was killed the next day. It was so awful when one thinks about it.”
Michael Bowes-Lyon developed a bad case of what was then called shellshock and would now be recognised as post-traumatic stress disorder, as did his brothers Jock and Patrick. Given that fatalities were rising at a rate few had thought possible before 1914, Cecilia initially counted herself lucky that only Jock’s finger had been amputated. Patrick was soon in worse shape, mentally and physically. Heir to the earldom and so handsome that a relative once said he looked like he belonged more on Olympus than at Glamis, he came home on crutches, where he soon began drinking heavily and suffered regular panic attacks and night terrors.
Fergus had a few days’ leave around the time of his first wedding anniversary and his daughter’s birth. On October 1, 1915, a message arrived at Glamis to inform Cecilia that Fergus had been killed at the Battle of Loos, the day after he returned from leave. The news was couched in a well-intentioned lie that her son’s death had been quick. The truth, which the family only discovered later, was that Fergus had been picked as the officer to help lead a second attack on a German defensive position known as the Hohenzollern Redoubt. Fergus had suspected that another attack on the Redoubt was a mistake, and some of those who served with him recalled him almost apologising to his men when the command came through. As he led the advance, shortly after four o’clock in the morning, an explosive landed at Fergus’s feet, blowing off one of his legs; before he fell, he was struck by bullets several times in his chest and shoulder. He was caught by two sergeants and then carried back to the British trenches, where he died nearly seven hours after being wounded.
For the rest of her life, Elizabeth downplayed how much she did for her mother in the next few years, because to admit to it would have revealed how badly Cecilia was affected by Fergus’s death. Intensely protective of her mother, who was a very private person, Elizabeth never really discussed Cecilia’s battle with depression. She began to deputise for her mother at local events and took steps to shield her in private. Every morning, Elizabeth got up early to make sure she met the postman at the gates. She would then sort through the mail to see if there was another telegram from the War Office; if there was, she would open it, so that at least she could try to break the news to her mother as gently as possible.
Eighteen months after Fergus was killed, his brother Michael vanished while leading an attack on a French village occupied by the German army. Cecilia was in London, while Elizabeth received the news at Glamis and wrote to a friend, “I don’t know what to say, you know how we love Mike… he’s all right, he must be.” Somehow, she had thought that nothing would ever happen to Michael and that he was so loved, “but one forgets that doesn’t count in a War.” She took the overnight train south to comfort her mother, but within a few days of arriving, Elizabeth’s face and neck swelled, her temperature spiked, and she collapsed and took to her bed. Her family went back into mourning for a third dead son.
Nearly a month after Michael’s disappearance, the Bowes-Lyons, still in London, received a morning telephone call from Cox’s, a bank. Elizabeth fired off a letter to her governess Beryl:
I’m quite and absolutely stark, staring, raving mad. Do you know why? Canst thou even guess? I don’t believe you can!
AM I MAD WITH MISERY OR WITH JOY?
WITH
!
!! JOY !!
!
Mike is quite safe! Oh dear, I nearly, nearly burst this morning, we had a telephone message from Cox’s to say they’d received a cheque from Mike this morning, so we rushed round, and it was in his own handwriting… Isn’t it too, too heavenly? I can’t believe it, yes I can but you know what I mean, & how awful the last 3 weeks have been.
Yours madly,
Elizabeth
Michael had been captured and taken as a prisoner of war to a camp in Germany, where he remained until 1918.
Whilst medical authorities observed increasing numbers of wounded soldiers suffering from shellshock, an understanding of the psychiatric effects of industrialised warfare was in its infancy and certainly had not yet reached Glamis, even in its wartime role as a soldiers’ convalescent home. On September 16, 1916, Elizabeth and her younger brother were walking home from an afternoon’s shooting in the grounds, something that would soon be unthinkable with survivors of the trenches nearby. As they returned, the siblings saw smoke on the horizon. Glamis was on fire. It seemed to have started accidentally in one of the older chimneys. Luckily, the nurses had taken some of the patients into the nearby town of Forfar for a trip to the cinema, which meant the castle was relatively empty. Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth ran inside and asked somebody to telephone the local fire brigades.
The four convalescents who hadn’t gone to the pictures helped her, David and the maids, who “rushed up and handed buckets like old Billy-o [but] the more water, the more smoke.” By then, the flames could be spotted in the village and dozens of people rushed over to help as they waited for the firemen to arrive. The day after the fire, Elizabeth wrote to her governess:
The little flames were sort of creeping through the roofs, you know, where the tiles are. It was too awful. Before 10 minutes the whole village was down! The [Forfar fire brigade] was absolutely no use, having only a hand pump. The Dundee one heard at 6 o’clock, & was here in 26 minutes! Wonderful. They had powerful engines, and by midnight most of it was out. But the danger was great, & we were so thankful when the water started. From 6.30 till about 10 o’c I stood just outside the drawing room door, sweeping down the water. The cistern upstairs burst and the flooding was dreadful.
Four soldiers who were harvesting on the farm helped very well, also people from the village. All the furniture on the top two floors had to be carried down, & I had an awful job trying to find a place. The drawing room was full, then King Malcolm’s Room, then your room [and] the Strathmore Room! Only the very top rooms (where the empty turret is) were absolutely gutted, and the most awful amount of damage by water. It was pouring into the Drawing Room all night, and the Chapel is a wreck. All the pictures with huge smudges, it’s beastly. The Blue Room & Crypt were flooded, & the water didn’t stop till 5 this morning. Everybody was splendid, & my word I do ache!
You see, there was none of us indoors, and I had to direct every man bringing down the furniture, also it began to get dark, & I had to get candles. Mrs. Stewart commanded everybody, & Mrs. Swann was very flurried, just like a little partridge!! I can’t tell you all the little incidents, but it was too dreadful, we thought the whole place would be burnt. Captain Weir, the Chief of the Dundee [Fire Brigade] said that if the fire had been today (a strong wind is blowing) nothing on earth would have saved the castle. I can’t tell you how unhappy we are, the flames were so awful… Oh Lor,’ I’ve swept the big stairs the whole morning, I am so tired.
… PS Two firemen are staying. It broke out again this morning, and wants watching for a day or two.
If the relative novelty of a house telephone had helped her contact the two fire brigades quickly, it also introduced Elizabeth to well-intentioned and equally distracting calls from friends offering encouragement while she needed to focus on sweeping the burst cistern’s water away from the Drawing Room or, by the next morning, the staircase. The first call came through from the Countess of Airlie, who “telephoned to say would we come over if it got too bad”; she was followed by the famous Scottish mountaineer Sir Hugh Munro, then by more neighbours, and lastly by the Countess of Dalhousie, quite convinced Glamis “was burnt to the ground.”
Elizabeth’s actions on the day of the fire—especially her attempts to divert the water after the cistern burst, her organisation of the attempts to move the art and antiques, and her quick thinking to use the telephone to contact both local fire brigades—certainly saved Glamis from being gutted. She was immeasurably helped, as she pointed out in her letter, by the people of Glamis and by the weather. The damage was nonetheless considerable; it took several years to completely repair the castle. Fortunately, it was soon habitable again for the Bowes-Lyons, the recuperating soldiers and the medics.
Elizabeth turned seventeen, and the Great War three, on August 4, 1917. By then, it was clear that whichever side emerged victorious, the post-war world would be very different to what had gone before. The Russian monarchy had collapsed under the pressures of the war a few months earlier; the Tsar and his family had been moved to an internal exile in Siberia from which none of them would emerge alive. Crowns were trembling all over Europe. With anti-German feeling in Britain at such a level that even dachshunds were being kicked to death in the streets, the British Royal Family changed their dynastic name to Windsor, abandoning their admittedly seldom-used former name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.3
Elizabeth was miserable that summer. Her niece Patricia died in June of acidosis, aged eleven months, while the casualty lists from the Front seemed unending. Elizabeth wrote later, “I remember quite well thinking when I was seventeen that I could never be happy again. I mean everybody was unhappy. Because one knew so many people. Every day somebody was killed, you see. It was a real holocaust. It was horrible. I remember that feeling quite well.” She found it very difficult saying goodbye to the soldiers who recovered at Glamis—“I hate doing it”—because of course the cruel irony was that once the men were well enough to leave, they were sent back to the Front, where many of them were either injured again or killed—“It’s so dreadful saying goodbye.”
Not long after her seventeenth birthday, Elizabeth fell ill for the fourth time in a year. It again resembled influenza until her heartbeat became erratic. She was soon struggling so badly with her balance that the doctor ordered her to take bed rest, and she did not recover her health until the autumn, just in time to hear that their neighbour Patrick Ogilvy had been killed, aged twenty-one, at the Battle of Poelcappelle in Belgium, and St. Paul’s Walden Bury had been damaged by bombs from the Zeppelin air raids.
There was a happier fire at Glamis on November 11, 1918. Earlier that day—famously, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—the Great War ended with victory for Britain and her allies. That victory was pyrrhic, with millions of people dead and revolutions sweeping through countries on the winning side, like Ireland, Italy and Russia, just as powerfully as they did through vanquished Austria, Germany and Hungary. Decades later, when she was in her nineties, Elizabeth reflected on the young men who used to visit Glamis and St. Paul’s Walden Bury with her brothers: “I think of my twenty best friends in 1914. Only five came back.”
The true long-term consequences of the war were a matter for another day. According to Elizabeth, when news reached Glamis that the Kaiser had been deposed, Germany had surrendered and it was all over, those who could “went straight to the village to celebrate and I think they drank too much. Seats got broken up to make a bonfire and all that sort of thing.” The people of the village joined in, with dancing and singing at the bonfire well into the night, all celebrating what Elizabeth called “this wonderful moment.”