The Royal 1926: a brief line that announced history

 

The royal 1926 began quietly with King George V and Queen Mary at Sandringham, surrounded by their family. The newspapers reported, as the year got under way, that the Duke of York ad gone hunting with his brother, the Prince of Wales, while the Duchess of York had returned to her new London home at Curzon Street. And then....

On the morning of January 2 1926, readers of the A Woman in London column by Sylvia Mayfair, syndicated in a number of newspapers, were told that ''The Duchess of York has cancelled all her public engagements for the next few months for the happiest of reasons.'' And that is now the imminent arrival of the future longest reigning Monarch in British history was made known.

It had long been royal practice to not actually say out loud that a woman was expecting a baby. Instead, they retired gracefully from public life and, if the palace was feeling very modern, it would say that all future public appearances had been put on hold. There are no photos of the Duchess of York, later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, looking noticeably pregnant. As all royal women did, she disappeared from view and then re-emerged, looking radiant, and with a baby in her arms. Or nanny's arms, to be precise. And Sylvia Mayfair, if that was even her real name, was keen to spill the beans that this was about to happen.

Meanwhile, a hundred years ago as now, royal books were causing quite the stir. Princess Marie of Battenberg had recently published her ''Reminiscences'' and the king of the day, George V, got a brief mention. The Weston Super Mare Gazette reported a tale from the book in which George, still heir to the throne, had entertained Marie and her sister-in-law, Princess Beatrice, to tea at Kensington Palace. The man who would, later in 1926, become grandfather of the future Elizabeth II told his guests in 1910 that ''England has only really been great in the reigns of three women - Victoria, Anne and Elizabeth.'' He was referring, of course, to the first then but perhaps he had a knowledge of things to come....