I hope I may be allowed some nostalgia, prompted by the 60th anniversary of the death of King George VI on 6th February, and the forthcoming celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen, which will be marked, amongst many other events,  by the presentation of Addresses to her at Westminster by both Houses of Parliament. I was at primary school in south London when the King died, and as I walked home (in those days one walked half a mile to school and back twice a day, because lunch was made by mother) I saw the billboard outside the newsagent’s announcing “The King is Dead”.  It made a deep impression on us at school and we were well aware that there was to be a  momentous change in our world. 

For the death of the King, who was very well liked, also signified the end of the second world war period, with which he and the late Queen Mother were forever to be associated.  There were still bombed out houses in our part of the world, and ration books, but the Elizabethan age was about to dawn, and we knew it.  The early fifties were marked not only by a change of monarch (and how hard it was to get used to singing God Save the Queen in place of the King!) but by a new sense of modernity and the opening up of opportunities.  The queues for food seemed to diminish, houses were patched up, clothes became more colourful, and cars and TV began to appear (though not for us, and it really didn’t matter). The legacy of the Festival of Britain, just a year earlier, was a fantastic cultural life in London. It was all free: the British Museum, the art galleries, and the wonderful local library, where it was so exciting finally to be allowed to borrow books from the adult section, having worked one’s way through the children’s section. I travelled in the underground and on the buses frequently on my own at age 10 or so, and never experienced any difficulty.  The new welfare state was at its best: our eyes, hearing and teeth were checked at school, and we were well taken care of physically as well as intellectually.  My primary school knew that the 11+ was the route out and up, and so it proved.  

A holiday at Folkestone or on the Isle of Wight was all that one could possibly want, although I was fortunate in that my parents took me to the continent of Europe, by ferry, at an early age.  This helped me educationally, especially as it made me less self conscious when it came to speaking French than some other children who had never left England.    We gathered round the big wooden radio to listen to the Home Service and the Light Programme  – children’s hour, good plays, great comedy, Educating Archie, Music and Movement at school, 20 Questions, Jennings, Top of the Form – it all opened my eyes to the world beyond home.  I had a set of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia and I read The Children’s Newspaper, Girl comic, and Little Lulu comic, sent by a friend in the USA; my mother and I read Great Expectations as we sat by the coal fire. I had pen pals whom I never met, and went to Saturday morning children’s cinema and played hopscotch in the street.

We were all monarchists too: there was no reason not to be. I collected pictures of the young Princesses for my scrapbook and noted the new head on the stamps in my stamp album. The only unpleasantness I recall were the smogs caused by pollution, and having to walk to school unable to see more than a yard ahead.  Life was hard for the adults, especially the women, but to be a child in London when the Queen came to the throne was a privilege indeed. And how I have enjoyed writing this!