The King and his Queen Consort quickly put a stop to that. The princess was not in any doubt about what her position was, though – and hadn’t been for some years. Elizabeth, Crawfie insisted, was a ‘special’ child: neat, courteous, conscientious, unusually well behaved and ‘very shy’. She was aware from the earliest age, however, of just where she stood in the pecking order. Her parents wanted their daughter to feel herself a ‘member of the community’ but, as Crawfie remarked, ‘just how difficult this is to achieve, if you live in a palace, is hard to explain. A glass curtain seems to come down between you and the outer world, between the hard realities of life and those who dwell in a court.’

When she played in Hamilton Gardens, crowds of people would often gather to peer at her through the railings, as if they were contemplating some exotic creature at the zoo. When she went for walks through Hyde Park, she was often recognised. ‘Ignore them,’ her nurse, Clara Knight, known as ‘Allah’, ordered, following her own advice and striding purposefully past the gaping onlookers, looking neither to the left nor right. With Allah as her trainer, Elizabeth’s ability to completely disregard the stares of the inquisitive soon became second nature. But she knew why they were looking.

When she was seven years old, Elizabeth was addressed by the Lord Chamberlain with a cheery, ‘Good morning, little lady.’

‘I’m not a little lady,’ came the imperious reply. ‘I’m Princess Elizabeth!’

This display of regal asperity proved too much for Queen Mary, who promptly marched her granddaughter into the Lord Chamberlain’s office and said, ‘This is Princess Elizabeth, who one day hopes to be a lady.’

But princess she certainly was and, with her uncle gone and the likelihood of her parents producing a son and heir apparent receding with each passing year, a queen she was ever more likely to become. And the impact of that impending burden only hardened her emotional restraint. The death of George V had provoked no outward display of emotion, only the question of whether it was right that she should continue playing with her toy horses (Crawfie said it was). After she was taken to see her grandfather lying in state in Westminster Hall, she remarked: ‘Uncle David was there and he never moved at all. Not even an eyelid. It was wonderful. And everyone was so quiet. As if the King were asleep.’

‘She was reserved and quiet about her feelings,’ Crawfie noted. And it was something the Queen herself would acknowledge in later years, when she remarked: ‘I’ve been trained since childhood never to show emotion in public.’