Did Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Really Leave the Palace on V-E Day?
In The Crown's final season, there's a flashback to V-E (Victory in Europe) Day on May 8, 1945. Then-Princess Elizabeth (played by Viola Prettejohn) and Princess Margaret (Beau Gadsdon) leave Buckingham Palace to go celebrate the end of World War II—an event that actually happened in real life.
After appearing on the balcony with their parents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the two princesses left the Palace to go out in London. As the Imperial War Museum explains, on V-E Day, the King and Queen's "daughters were secretly mingling with the jubilant crowds below them. The future monarch, Princess Elizabeth, and her sister Margaret had been allowed to leave the palace and take part – anonymously – in the party-like atmosphere."
"I think we went on balcony nearly every hour, six times," Queen Elizabeth would later recount to the BBC in 1985. "And then when the excitement of the floodlights being switched on got through to us, my sister and I realized that we couldn’t see what the crowds were enjoying so we asked my parents if we could go out and see for ourselves."
To blend in with the crowds, the future Queen wore her Auxiliary Transport Service uniform. (She served as a driver and mechanic with the ATS during World War II.) She recalled fondly, "We cheered the King and Queen on the balcony and then walked miles through the street. I remember lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall, all of us just swept along on a tide of happiness and relief."
Queen Elizabeth added that she and her sister Margaret were "terrified of being recognized, so I pulled my uniform cap well down over my eyes." Yet, she continued, "a Grenadier officer among our party of about 16 people said he refused to be seen in the company of another officer improperly dressed. So I had to put my cap on normally."
Among their group of 16 was Jean Woodroffe, who would become a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Rhodes, a first cousin of Margaret and Elizabeth. Rhodes remembers of that evening, "It was like a wonderful escape for the girls. I don’t think they’d ever been out among millions of people. It was just freedom – to be an ordinary person."
Jean Barker, Baroness Trumpington, who was working at Bletchley Park, remembers seeing the princesses. She said, "I had a friend who was a bodyguard of the Queen, so I noticed her and Princess Margaret as they walked the streets of London. But they were people like anyone else – we didn’t take any notice of them."
That evening, did Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret really go dancing at the Ritz? Yes, they did.
Rhodes recalls their group ended up the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly that evening (as The Crown shows), and, "for some reason, we decided to go in the front door of the Ritz and do the conga. The Ritz has always been so stuffy and formal – we rather electrified the stuffy individuals inside." She added, "I don’t think people realized who was among the party – I think they thought it was just a group of drunk young people. I remember old ladies looking faintly shocked. As one congaed through, eyebrows were raised."
That night, Queen Elizabeth remembers, "after crossing Green Park we stood outside and shouted, 'We want the King” and were successful in seeing my parents on the balcony, having cheated slightly because we sent a message into the house to say we were waiting outside. I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life."
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