Prince Philip’s mother Alice had recently moved to the island of Tinos in Greece in a house without a telephone, so he was obliged to send her a telegram with the news. She was thrilled and wrote to him at once: ‘I think of you so much with a sweet baby of your own, of your joy and the interest you will take in all his little doings. How fascinating nature is, but how one has to pay for it in the anxious trying hours of the confinement.’

The princess had taken a far more pragmatic approach to her pregnancy (‘After all, that’s what we are made for,’ she said), but she was beguiled by what she had produced. ‘I still find it difficult to believe I have a baby of my own,’ she remarked. In the long human tradition, she set about searching for family resemblances in his features. His hands attracted her attention. They were, she said, rather large ‘but fine with long fingers’. Philip, always matter-of-fact to the point of seeming indifference, declared that he looked like a plum pudding.

The boy was christened Charles Philip Arthur George in the Music Room of Buckingham Palace. His godparents were George VI; his great-grandmother, Queen Mary; his aunt, Princess Margaret; his paternal great-grandmother, Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven; his great-uncle, David Bowes-Lyon; Earl Mountbatten’s daughter, Lady Brabourne; and his great-uncles, Prince George of Greece and King Haakon of Norway. Alice did not attend, but received all the news of her new grandson’s progress from her younger sister Louise. She said the baby was like Philip, but Marina thought he was more like Lilibet. ‘I am so happy for Philip,’ she wrote, ‘for he adores children and also small babies. He carries it [the baby] about himself quite professionally to the nurse’s amusement.’

Elizabeth breast-fed her young son and Charles spent the first month of his life in a round wicker basket in the dressing room adjoining his mother’s bedroom. She then contracted measles and the doctors advised she and the baby stay apart. He was taken away from his mother and handed into the care of Nanny Helen Lightbody and the nursery maid, Mabel Anderson. Charles spent much of his first months in the country estate, Windlesham Manor, his parents had rented. Two world wars had delivered a hammer blow to the cosy, upper-class world of servants and nurseries. The royal family, however, had weathered this development largely unchanged and Charles soon fell into the routine that had been so much part of Elizabeth’s own childhood. He was taken to see his mother every morning at nine, just as she had been taken to see her parents. And in the evenings, engagements permitting, she would join him in the nursery. But that was just about the extent of it. They lived largely separate lives. ‘To my knowledge, she never bathed the children,’ Mrs Parker said. ‘Nanny did all that.’