Back at the palace, the newly crowned Queen and her consort’s first concern was with their children. Four-year-old Prince Charles had watched part of the ceremony with his grandmother, while Princess Anne had been left behind. Lady Jane Rayne remembered how at one stage Charles picked up the crown, which was just lying on a nearby table, and put it on his head. ‘I don’t think, as he picked it up, that he could see how heavy it was and he sort of staggered to put it on his head and he couldn’t even walk with it, it was so heavy. But he did look rather sweet and everybody laughed and it broke the tension.’

Then there were long sessions with Cecil Beaton, who had to get the official pictures done as soon as possible for the thousands of publications waiting for them. Prince Philip became at his most officious and tried to take control, which was very much unappreciated. ‘He told me to smile at one point,’ Anne Glenconner recalled. ‘I could see that Cecil Beaton was getting very, very irritated because he is a professional photographer and the Duke of Edinburgh was telling him what to do.’

It may have been a high point of Beaton’s career, but despite the tensions he still had time to make some pithy observations: ‘The Queen looked extremely minute under her robes and crown, her nose and hands chilled and her eyes tired. The Duke of Edinburgh stood by making wry jokes, his lips pursed in a smile that put the fear of God into me. I believe he doesn’t like or approve of me . . . Perhaps he was disappointed that his friend Baron was not doing the job today: whatever the reason he was adopting a rather ragging attitude to the proceedings.’

The rain continued to pour down, but still the crowds roared and the Queen and Prince Philip reappeared on the balcony half a dozen times. After their final appearance at midnight, the crowd, which was by then a solid mass all the way to Trafalgar Square, started singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. ‘The Queen led us out and we gazed at this extraordinary throng of people stretching for miles down the Mall,’ Lady Glenconner recalled. ‘You couldn’t put a pin between the people and it was just a sort of roar of love for her.’

Eight days later it was Prince Philip’s birthday, and Mike Parker threw a cocktail party at his home in Launceston Place in his honour. Prince Philip’s sisters were still in London and were also invited. Margarita and Theodora (Dolla) were heavily built while Sophie, the youngest, was tall and slender. She had been married twice and her second husband was Prince George of Hanover. They all loved being with their younger brother in informal surroundings and chatted all evening, sharing private jokes in German.