Memoirs Of A Royal Childhood

Her majesty the queen’s teen years were peppered with sleepovers skating trips and secret boy chats according to the vivid recollections of one of her cherished best friends

- Michelle Garnett

Very few people have the privilege of claiming they’ve enjoyed sleepovers and gossiping about eligible men with the Queen. But Alathea Fitzalan Howard was fortunate enough to do just that and more after forging a lifelong friendship with her during the Second World War.

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret spent the majority of the war at Windsor Castle, while Alathea lived with her grandfather at nearby Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

A new book called The Windsor Diaries: A Childhood With The Princesses gives a fascinating insight into Elizabeth as a teenager via extracts from Alathea’s personal diaries, which she kept up until shortly before her death in 2001.

The princesses were 13 and nine when the war began, while Alathea was only two years older than “Lilibet” as Princess Elizabeth was then known. She was one of the first people the future queen confided in about her interest in Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, who she referred to as her “boy” aged just 14.

But he wasn’t the only male on the scene during Lilibet’s teens and the book features recollections of the three girls teasing each other about their “beaus”.