The other day I wrote about the Elle piece on Elizabeth's childhood

The other day I wrote about the piece in Elle on Elizabeth's childhood. The articles by the royal family's former governess appeared in various publications in Europe and the United States and astonished the public. The Windsors were astonished too, having given no permission for the text to be published. The Queen, then still Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, had read the draft sent by either Crawford or her editor, commented on it at length and in several letters spoke out against such a publication, which laid bare the intimate details of her life with the King and of the lives of the girls to whom Crawfie had been so devoted and by whom she had been so loved, and called it a betrayal. Nevertheless, Crawford brought out not only several articles but also a book, “The Little Princesses”, likewise unapproved. Later she would say that she had been a puppet in the hands of the publishers.

In the magazine material, which runs to several long articles in a row with illustrations, childhood photographs, letters and drawings, I was struck by the details of how the bedrooms of the Duke and Duchess, by the time of publication already King and Queen, were furnished. Not merely what furniture stood there, but, for instance, the remark that all the drawers were lit from within. No, bulbs inside a wardrobe could only have impressed a working-class Scotswoman in the 1930s. We had them even in our East German suite of furniture. What astonished me was the very fact that in the 1950s a description of the King's and Queen's bedroom and bed was published by their former servant, who moreover did not fail to poke into other people's drawers and rummage about in them.

Her account of the royal household's domestic habits and of relations within the family is also disconcerting. She notes that the Yorks were very tender with one another, while the other members of the family kept their coolness. What coolness meant, Marion Crawford learned after the material was published. In the first year she received no traditional royal Christmas greeting, and thereafter she never saw anyone from the royal family again, received neither letter nor card from them, not even a funeral wreath. Towards the end she lived in a small house right by the road to Balmoral, hoping that one day her former charges would come to visit her. It never happened.