When she was under the tutelage of Sir Henry Marten in his study at Eton, his regular pupils would sometimes look in, but they, with typical Etonian insouciance, feigned not to know who she was and, after politely raising their top hats, would speedily withdraw again. Elizabeth, for her part, pretended not to notice the interruptions.

She was thirteen when war broke out, but that did not mean there were more openings for her. At the age of almost eighteen, she had not yet, her father’s equerry, Group Captain Peter Townsend, noted, ‘attained the full allure of an adult. She was shy, occasionally to the point of gaucheness.’

No real attempt was made to put her more at ease with young men. Miss Betty Vacani, the London dancing mistress who would also teach the next royal generation their steps, was called out to Windsor during the war to organise dance classes for the princesses. By royal instructions they were for little girls only. ‘The princesses did not understand the antics of little boys, and this did not seem the moment to teach them,’ Crawfie said.

Despite all that, there was one boy Elizabeth did notice, however. He was tall and blond, with ‘Viking’ good looks. His name was Prince Philip of Greece, and she was dazzled by him from the first moment she saw him, when she was just thirteen and he was eighteen. They were married eight years later, and he was the only man she had ever known.

It wasn’t entirely inevitable that they would meet. Prince Philip’s parents Andrea and Alice arrived in London from Corfu in 1922 with their five children and retinue of six servants. King George V’s diary entry for 19 December reads: ‘Andrea came to see me, he has just arrived from Athens where he was tried and very nearly shot.’ On arrival they were given temporary shelter by the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven at Kensington Palace, where in later years as a schoolboy Philip maintained a base where he could keep his belongings and school trunk in the holidays.

Andrea still owned his house in Corfu while Alice had an allowance from the Mountbatten family, but by royal standards they were not well-off. However, it cannot be said that Philip’s childhood was spent in impoverished circumstances; Andrea was fortunate in that he had two brothers who had married heiresses and who proved to be generous with financial assistance.