I'm possibly, even probably, a good bit older than you, kath129. My parents were monarchists (more by habit than conviction, perhaps) and I was brought up on stories culled from magazines by my mother on Prince Charles and Princess Anne's upbringing and the family life of the BRF.
I agree that times and values have changed in the last fifty/sixty years, but I clearly remember the royal family being presented constantly to the public in glowing terms as the family unit to be emulated and admired above all others.
I'm not so sure, with this in mind, that people would have been shocked had the Queen stayed by a sick child's bedside, say, instead of performing a Royal engagement. In the mores of the times that would have been presented as 'the Queen as Mummy'. It's the Queen's sense of duty that drove her on IMO.
However, quite early in Charles's childhood Princess Elizabeth reportedly came back to Britain from Malta and instead of going to see Charles, who was with his grandmother, she went to the races and then to Sandringham. I think she missed his second birthday in the process. I read this in a biography not a Press article but I'd have to look it up to see which bio. It may well have been one on Charles.
I agree that times and values have changed in the last fifty/sixty years, but I clearly remember the royal family being presented constantly to the public in glowing terms as the family unit to be emulated and admired above all others.
I'm not so sure, with this in mind, that people would have been shocked had the Queen stayed by a sick child's bedside, say, instead of performing a Royal engagement. In the mores of the times that would have been presented as 'the Queen as Mummy'. It's the Queen's sense of duty that drove her on IMO.
However, quite early in Charles's childhood Princess Elizabeth reportedly came back to Britain from Malta and instead of going to see Charles, who was with his grandmother, she went to the races and then to Sandringham. I think she missed his second birthday in the process. I read this in a biography not a Press article but I'd have to look it up to see which bio. It may well have been one on Charles.
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