From his father’s seven brothers and sisters, all but one had died, but Philip’s Uncle George attended the wedding with his wife, Marie Bonaparte, and their daughter Eugenie alongside various cousins and cousins by marriage including Queen Helen of Romania, Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia and Queen Frederica of Greece.

The wedding was billed as a symbol of hope for the future for a country ravaged by war. There still were bomb craters in many of the streets; buildings often collapsed on their own, or were propped up with scaffolding; and every week brought the discovery of another unexploded bomb. Whole streets had to be demolished and everywhere there were damaged houses where one or two of the floors were open to the elements. Bits of wallpaper blew in the wind and the detritus from a half-damaged room piled up against what was left of the walls. Although the coldest winter within living memory was about to descend, the day of the wedding, 20 November, recorded temperatures of 59° Fahrenheit (15° Centigrade) due to an unusual tropical airflow.

Even though the war had been over for some thirty months, the country was still subject to rationing. Bread, coal, sweets, clothes, furniture and soap were just a few of the things in short supply. As a special concession, it was agreed the Household Cavalry would be allowed to escort the princess to her wedding in full-dress uniform instead of their battledress. Because it was a period of such austerity, initially the wedding was going to be held quietly and privately in St George’s Chapel at Windsor to avoid any ostentatious display, but then the Labour government relented and permitted the marriage to become a public occasion. They realised such a festivity could only light up the hearts of the war-weary people, who showed astonishing generosity when the news was announced. Women sent sugar and flour from their meagre rations to help towards the wedding cake; others sent precious nylon stockings and hoarded lengths of fabric. Some even sent their clothing coupons, but these had to be returned since it was illegal for them to be passed on.

The Radio Times, the most popular publication of the day, commemorated the wedding with a lavish cover. The magazine also described the wedding inside Westminster Abbey, the route of the royal procession and an order of service. As it was the first royal wedding to be extensively filmed and broadcast on television, it took great ingenuity from the Outside Broadcasting Unit to cover it all. The technical problems of televising the day were so great that it was decided to only advertise half of what the BBC intended to film in case things went wrong. This was how the magazine advertised the programme:

The Royal Wedding

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20

The Marriage of H.R.H. PRINCESS ELIZABETH with Lieutenant PHILIP MOUNTBATTEN, R.N. in Westminster Abbey

11.03 Procession of Her Majesty the Queen leaves Buckingham Palace.