A dignified and dutiful demeanour that seems to have come naturally

PRINCESS Elizabeth had a movie camera with her for that holiday in 1952, when she and Philip stayed at the Treetops lodge in Kenya.

- Jennifer Selway

There was just so much to capture, not only the procession of wildlife but also the vast skies of Africa changing colour with every hour, the unsparing heat of the brilliant day giving way to the gold and violet shadows of the evening. So much to see.

Yet isn’t there always something that defeats you about a spectacular view? You want to capture its essence and hold on to it, but somehow your brain can never quite process it. Taking pictures helps, but they never do justice to that sliver of time either.

And on that momentous day – February 6, 1952 – when she heard the news of her father’s death, Elizabeth would have had to make sense of it all. Everything she did or said was now history in the making, simply because of who she was.

Who knows what goes through another person’s mind at a moment of crisis?

For Elizabeth, the personal tragedy of her father’s death was matched by the knowledge of her accession.

The King is dead, long live the Queen. For a grieving daughter that phrase is brutal, but for a monarchy it represents continuity.

For a nation too this proclamation can mean the difference between peace and a country descending into civil war.

When Henry III died in 1272 his son, who would become Edward I, was fighting in the Crusades. To avoid civil war the Royal Council proclaimed: “The throne shall never be empty – the country shall never be without a monarch.”

Thus Edward was declared King even before he had made his leisurely and slightly reluctant return to England, rather than at his coronation which had been the custom until then.