The actual date was fixed when Philip heard from the jewellers Antrobus that the ring was ready. On Wednesday 9 July 1947, the day before a Buckingham Palace garden party, so the couple could make their first joint public appearance, there was an announcement from Buckingham Palace: ‘It is with the greatest pleasure that the King and Queen announce the betrothal of their dearly beloved daughter the Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten RN son of the late Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Andrew [Princess Alice of Battenberg] to which union the King has gladly given his consent.’

Queen Mary sent a message of congratulation to Philip’s mother Alice, who replied, ‘The young couple seem very devoted to each other. They have had time to think such a serious decision over and I pray they will find happiness and great friendship in their future married life. Lilibet has a wonderful character and I think Philip is very lucky to have won her love.’

With their wedding scheduled for later in the year, Elizabeth and Philip were about to bring their relationship into the full glare of public attention as they began to plan for the rest of their lives together. It was a journey that would last for more than seventy years.

Chapter 5

CHANGES

In the spring before the announcement of the royal engagement seventy years ago, Britain experienced its most catastrophic river flooding in recorded history. The country had already suffered a long, hard freeze in the snowiest winter of the twentieth century and by early March 1947 snowdrifts towered up to 16ft high in some places. The country was in chaos – rail and road transport came to a standstill, chronic shortages of coal led to nationwide power cuts and food rationing was worse than in the war. At Corsham Naval Training Base, Prince Philip had to lecture his students by candlelight and wearing his naval greatcoat. When the temperatures shot up, melting the snow onto the frozen ground, a ferocious wind whipped up the floodwater, especially through the dykes in East Anglia around Sandringham, and 100 square miles of fens were turned into an inland sea.

The conditions created a brief spike in unemployment but, despite the return of thousands of ex-servicemen seeking work, this did not become a problem on anything like the scale of the interwar years, and by the autumn unemployment would be around 3 per cent of the work force. Although the war had ended almost two years previously, all basic foods were rationed, as were clothes, coal, furniture and petrol. London was scarred with bomb sites from the blitz. Between the announcement of the engagement in July 1947 and the wedding in November, things worsened for many people; the meat ration was reduced and potatoes became scarce as a result of the poor harvest. Austerity was the order of the day.