Regarding the matter as closed, he began walking again and, as May fell into step beside him and they reached the end of the terrace and the snow-covered steps leading down to the lawn, Willy said, completely out of the blue, ‘Uncle Bertie doesn’t like me.’ At the bottom of the steps he continued with great feeling, ‘When he becomes a fellow emperor, he’s never going to take advice from me in the way dear old Nicky does. He’s far too fond of France, and no good will come of Britain forming an alliance with France – or, for that matter, with Russia. If Uncle Bertie forges an alliance with France and an even closer alliance with Russia, Germany will be encircled and vulnerable. It doesn’t bear thinking about. It isn’t something that would happen with Georgie as England’s King and Emperor, but how many years is it going to be, before he is? And by the time he is, the damage will be done!’

He came to a halt, carried away by his own passionate language, seeing himself as a Prussian St George in bronze helmet and breastplate, shield in one hand, sword raised gloriously aloft in the other.

May, aware that Willy was what George called ‘theatrically posturing’, turned and looked back at the house. How long had they been away and out of touch with what was happening? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Instinct told her that, however short the period of time, it had been far too long.

With a terrible sense of premonition she said urgently, ‘It’s time we went back.’

Willy blinked, reminded himself that when he was at Osborne it was his half-English side that was dominant, not his Prussian-German side, and immediately set off at a pace so brisk she could hardly keep up with him.

The crowded bedroom was tense with fearful expectation. The Queen’s doctor, Dr Reid, was at one side of the bed, supporting her against her pillows, with Bertie on his knees beside him. When Willy moved forward, kneeling at the opposite side of the bed and sliding his good arm around his semi-conscious grandmother, supporting her as Reid was doing, no one, not even Bertie, protested.

The Dean of Windsor, who had been summoned a day earlier, began reciting the Queen’s favourite hymn, ‘Lead, Kindly Light’.

When he had finished Beatrice said, ‘Mama always thought of Papa and Alice and Affie and Leopold, and of her longed-for reunion with them, whenever she sang the line, “And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile”.’

‘And not only of your sister and two brothers,’ Uncle Christian said gruffly. ‘She would have been thinking of Christle and Eddy as well.’