Maybe it’s because she’s a Londoner … Happy anniversary, Ma’am

The flotilla on the Thames on Sunday was one of the most splendid royal pageants that this capital city has ever seen. There is a particular aptness in this, since, as well as being the Queen of Great Britain and of many countries in the Commonwealth, Elizabeth II is a Londoner.

She was not born in a royal palace but at 17 Bruton Street, in the house of her grandfather, Lord Strathmore. It’s a very posh car showroom now, but I think of it every time I go down Bruton Street on the C2 bus. In those days, the Mayfair streets around Berkeley Square were all inhabited by aristocrats, and in the summer months of “the Season”, the noise of dinner dances drifted across the moonlit plane trees every night. Nightingales and flappers indeed sang in Berkeley Square. Unlike Queen Victoria, who was born as a stranger in Kensington Palace, of a German mother, and brought up in total seclusion. Elizabeth II was born in the midst of things, in every sense at home here.

It also seems particularly symbolic that, though she was born into the very heart of aristocratic Mayfair in April 1926, she was born (by Caesarean section) on the eve of one of the gravest social crises this country ever saw: the General Strike of 1926.

When the Queen was born her grandfather, George V, was still in full vigour, as was his heir, her Uncle David — one day to become King Edward VIII. There was no reason to suppose that this good-looking young man, who had had a “good war” and was extremely popular, would not one day marry and have children. In which case, little Lilibet, as she was known, would simply have been a relatively minor member of the royal family, the elder daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York.

It was this, partly, which enabled her and her younger sister Margaret Rose to have a London childhood unplagued by too much publicity, or by the pressures of public duty. Her parents lived at 145 Piccadilly. Lilibet and Margaret Rose were on the top floor, where our future monarch stabled her 30 or so horses on wheels. Each horse had its saddle removed every night, and was fed and watered. Crawfie, the governess, also had to pretend to be a horse, and Lilibet would harness her and whisper: “Crawfie, pretend to be impatient. Paw the ground a bit.”

From one side of the house, they could look out on the riding schools going along Rotten Row. “If I am ever Queen,” said Lilibet, “I shall make a law that there must be no riding on Sundays. Horses should have a rest too. And I shan’t let anyone dock their pony’s tail.”

Crawfie was a good teacher — though she was to fall into disgrace when she wrote an account of the Queen’s upbringing called The Little Princesses. It was the act of writing it that was deemed so treacherous, rather than any particular revelations. And it is fair to say that no book since has ever quite captured the essence of the Queen’s character better than Crawfie. It was all there from such an early age: the horse mania, the extreme neatness, the quiet sense of duty, the goodness without being goody-goody.

In Crawfie’s company the little girls could explore London. They walked out in Kensington Gardens and watched other children sailing their toy yachts on the Round Pond. Coming back by Hyde Park Corner Underground station one day, Lilibet said: “Oh dear, what fun it must be to ride one of those trains.” The Duchess of York was consulted, and the answer was — why not? They took a journey to Tottenham Court Road and had tea in the cafeteria of the YWCA. They also had rides on top of double-decker buses.

Sadly, those Piccadilly years came to an end: when Lilibet was 10 years old, Uncle David abdicated, his brother the Duke of York became George VI, and the two princesses moved with their parents into Buckingham Palace. Faced with the enormous corridors, the 10-year-old Lilibet dryly remarked: “People here need bicycles.” After the tiring day of her father’s coronation, a long day of ceremony for two children aged six and 11, their mother remarked: “We aren’t supposed to be human.”

From that moment onwards, Lilibet was compelled to accept the constraints of office. The freedoms of 145 Piccadilly would never return. With the outbreak of war, she and her sister had to be immured in Windsor Castle, while her parents remained in London — able to “look the East End in the face” when Buckingham Palace itself was hit by enemy bombs. The close-knit family of four was now “not supposed to be human”, and the pressure upon her frail, chain-smoking father took its inevitable toll.