Playing her PART

PRINCESS Elizabeth was just 13 and her sister, Princess Margaret, only nine when World War 2 broke out in 1939.

Many British children were evacuated from London for safekeeping and the princesses could have gone to Canada to wait out the war but they refused to be parted from their parents.

“The children won’t go without me,” said their mother, Queen Elizabeth. “I won’t leave the king and the king will never leave England.”

So the girls were first sent to Balmoral Castle in Scotland and then to Windsor Castle in Berkshire, which was closer to Buckingham Palace in London where their parents were based.

The royal family were part of a general propaganda machine to boost morale in England, and as young