At the time of her birth, the little princess was third in line to the throne, immediately after her father and his glamorous elder brother, the Prince of Wales. Behind her were her uncles Prince Henry, who was later the Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, later the Duke of Kent, and her aunt Mary, who became the Princess Royal.

British Vogue hailed the birth of the new princess, although the Prince of Wales was their biggest pin-up, with his extreme good looks winning him film-star status. He hunted with the Quorn, played polo and steeplechased; he dined at Ciro’s in Paris; he danced at the Embassy Club in London and set fashions in dress in much the same way as the Duchess of Cambridge does today. His plus fours, Prince of Wales checks, Fair Isle sweaters and Breton berets and straw boaters all helped the fashion business and, added to that, his expressions of sympathy for the unemployed made him even more popular.

The Yorks, by contrast, represented domestic bliss. According to Vogue, the duchess’s dictum – ‘I want her to be a frilly baby’ – had been taken up by nannies throughout Mayfair at the time of the princess’s birth. An approved account by a former member of the household bears testimony to this, when the author describes the baby princess’s wardrobe changes. ‘White frocks for the morning. For the afternoons – a waisted frock with a simple bodice, short sleeves and the all-important little skirt composed of tiny flouncy frills. Londoners were charmed to catch glimpses of her driving in the park in a pink frock with an old-world sun-bonnet and gravely holding above her head the smallest of pink parasols.’

Like most small children, she was fond of animals and when she was tiny played with her grandmother Lady Strathmore’s two chows, whom she loved to stroke and would clap and chuckle, beating her heels on the floor when she saw them. Her other greatest delight was to pat her father’s large hunters and see him ride away in his hunting kit from Naseby Hall in Northamptonshire. The duke and duchess took this house for the hunting season and the princess spent much of the winter there with her nanny, Clare Knight, in attendance. She also loved her grandfather King George V’s grey parrot Charlotte and used to select lumps of sugar to give to the bird while her grandfather was ill.

Later, when the duke and duchess moved from the Strathmore residence in Bruton Street to their own home at 145 Piccadilly, the soot-covered nursery windows held a great fascination for the little princess. Not only could she see the working horses pulling their heavy carts outside, but when she heard the clop of multiple hooves, she knew she would catch sight of the soldiers and horses threading their way under the arch that led to Constitution Hill.