The Queen's engagement to Prince Philip on this day in 1947 (2024)

It was a welcome ray of light in a bomb-scarred London still suffering from the impact of the Second World War.

On this day in 1947, Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten announced their engagement.

The happy couple appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony to wave to thousands of cheering well-wishers before inviting the waiting press inside, where they posed for pictures and gave a few brief comments.

Meanwhile, Royal aides spun the fairytale story of the beautiful 21-year-old heir to the throne and the ruggedly handsome war hero who - as a member of the Greek royal family - had renounced his own princely titles to serve with distinction as a British officer in the Royal Navy.

The waiting newsmen were reminded that both were great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

The implication was clear: the future of the Crown was safe for the foreseeable future after the trauma of the Abdication Crisis a little over a decade earlier.

But while 'Lilibet' and Philip - now the most 'in-demand' couple in London - embarked on a round of celebratory balls and parties, not everyone at the Palace was quite so delighted.

Sir Alan Lascelles, her father George VI's private secretary, spoke for many courtiers and some in the Royal Family when he wrote of Philip: 'They felt he was rough, uneducated and would probably not be faithful.'

Elizabeth's father King George VI was so concerned that the couple's burgeoning romance may be a short-lived teenage infatuation that when Philip asked for her hand in marriage in 1946, he insisted they wait a year until after Elizabeth's 21st birthday before making any public announcement.

He needn't have worried - the courtship had already been going on for seven years.

The Princess had been only vaguely aware of Philip's existence when she was first properly introduced to her distant cousin, then an 18-year-old officer cadet, during a family visit to her father's alma mater, the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon, in the summer of 1939.

According to the princesses' governess Marion Crawford, the young Elizabeth had been immediately smitten by Philip's 'Viking' good looks – his fair hair and blue eyes – and his daredevil nature.

'Crawfie' told in her book 'The Little Princesses' - the publication of which saw her become a royal outcast - how a mumps outbreak at the college meant that Elizabeth and Margaret were sent to play with children in the Captain's house.

'Among them was a fair-haired off-handed boy of 18 who showed off to them by jumping the tennis nets and eating several platefuls of shrimps for tea,' she wrote of Philip.

Elizabeth is said to have never taken her eyes off him. Crawford added that when Philip and his uncle, Lord 'Dickie' Mountbatten, were invited aboard the Royal yacht moored in the estuary, the dashing young cadet's presence caused Elizabeth to turn 'pink-faced'.

Mountbatten later wrote in his diary that the meeting had been a 'great success'.

But Mountbatten's influence in facilitating his nephew's introduction to the young Elizabeth and later in securing invitations for him to Balmoral, Sandringham, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle served only to fuel the alarm of those who doubted Philip's suitability.

Philip, critics pointed out, was penniless. He had been born on the kitchen table of the family villa in Corfu shortly before his father, a career army officer who had overseen a defeat during the the Greco-Turkish war was arrested, accused of treason and threatened with his life.

Philip's mother Princess Alice turned to her English relatives for help.

King George V (Princess Elizabeth's grandfather) urged the Greek government to release Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark while sending a gunboat, HMS Calypso, to help the family flee.

The infant Prince Philip was carried to safety in an orange box.

The family lived in exile in Paris, but soon went their separate ways.

Philip's father spent the final years of his life living hand-to-mouth in Monte Carlo with his mistress, the French actress Andrée Lafayette, who lived under the self-invented title Countess Andrée de la Bigne.

Meanwhile his mother, Princess Alice of Greece, spent time in a mental institution in Switzerland after being diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Even worse, at a time when anti-German sentiment was still running high, was the fact that his four older sisters all married German noblemen - three of whom went on to become prominent members of the Nazi party.

The saving grace was that one of Philip's brothers-in-law, PrinceGottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburglater, was involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

None of this mattered a jot to Princess Elizabeth. Those who were there at the time spoke effusively of Elizabeth's fondness for Philip during their early days.

Among them was Margaret Rhodes, Elizabeth's cousin, who wrote in her autobiography, 'Elizabeth was truly in love from the very beginning'.

She and Philip began writing to each other - irregularly at first because of Philip's Royal Navy postings - and their correspondence touchingly showed the growing feelings they had for each other.

In a 1943 letter after he spent Christmas at Windsor Castle, Philip wrote of the 'simple enjoyment of family pleasures and amusem*nts and the feeling that I am welcome to share them.

'I am afraid I am not capable of putting all this into the right words and I am certainly incapable of showing you the gratitude that I feel.'

The same year, he apologised for the 'monumental cheek' of turning up to Buckingham Palace uninvited.

'Yet however contrite I feel, there is always a small voice that keeps saying "Nothing ventured, nothing gained",' he wrote.

'Well did I venture, and I gained a wonderful time.'

There can be little doubt that Philip's gallant war record helped him brush aside any Establishment objections.

As one of the Navy's youngest First Lieutenants, he fought in the Battle of Crete and the Battle of Cape Matapan off the coast of Greece, which was described as the Italian navy's greatest defeat of the Second World War.

Philip was decorated for bravery in 1943 after loading a raft with smoke flares and launching it into the sea to act a decoy for Nazi bomber pilots when his ship was under attack from the air.

He was also mentioned in dispatches for his 'alertness' in helping to spot enemy ships and in 1945, he helped to rescue servicemen who had to ditch into the ocean after their Avenger bomber was hit by enemy fire.

The same year Philip sailed with the victorious Allied fleet into Tokyo Bay, where he witnessed the historic surrender of Japan that marked the end of hostilities after five years of war.

But in between his military adventures, whenever Philip was on shore leave, he would visit Elizabeth - having taken advice from 'Uncle Dickie' Mountbatten on how to navigate his way through the tricky protocol of the Royal family.

When Elizabeth was expecting him, she would, according to Crawford, watch through the window to 'see the tall, lean figure coming past the fountain in the centre of the road outside the Palace, or to see his small sports car turn in at the Palace gates. Usually a deal too fast...'

In a letter the Princess wrote to journalist Betty Spencer Shew - who was preparing a Royal Wedding supplement - she described Philip's love of driving fast in his diminutive MG sports car.

She wrote on headed paper from Balmoral: 'Philip enjoys driving and does it fast! He has his own tiny MG which he is very proud of. He has taken me about in it, once up to London, which was great fun, only it was like sitting on the road, and the wheels are almost as high as one's head.'

Three years later Philip told the Princess in another letter: 'To have been spared in the war and seen victory, to have been given the chance to rest and to re-adjust myself, to have fallen in love completely and unreservedly, makes all one's personal and even the world's troubles seem small and petty.'

By modern standards, the couple's engagement was short. After a courtship that spanned eight years and a global conflict, they were married on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey, just four months after the Princess first showed off her engagement ring.

The ring had special symbolic value that speaks volumes about their respective backgrounds.

It was specially made from a platinum band set with diamonds taken from a tiara Philip's mother had worn on her wedding day.

The diamonds - including a three-carat centre stone - had been part of the paraphernalia of a princess, but were among the last items of value Princess Alice owned.

They meant that Philip gave his new fiancée everything he had - something he continued to do for the rest of his life.

So what of those Palace doubts about Philip? In a sense they were right about his 'rough' and irreverent sense of humour, which attracted controversy and headlines for years to come.

But it can also be argued that the apparent mismatch in backgrounds proved to be the secret ingredient that bound their relationship so tightly together .

In Philip, the young Princess sensed an irreverent free spirit who was like a breath of fresh air compared to the sycophants and fawning flunkies she had grown up around.

Philip, meanwhile, had grown up pretty much abandoned and alone in boarding schools in France, Germany and finally in the austere environment of Gordonstoun in Scotland.

He must have watched the close, loving and affectionate bonds Elizabeth had with both her parents and her sister and seen them as a ready-made family he could belong to.

It is no wonder Philip took his role as husband and paterfamilias extremely seriously for the rest of his long life. He must have enjoyed, too, proving the Palace doubters so very wrong.

Because Philip and Elizabeth's marriage turned to be one of the great love matches, enduring for more than 70 years through good times and bad.

It was of course stoic Philip who passed away first, on April 9, 2021, just two months short of his 100th birthday.

The sight of the Queen having to sit alone at Philip's funeral because of coronavirus restrictions demonstrated her commitment to her beloved.

It was a bond that went far beyond a 'teenage infatuation'.