BORN TO BE KING
The future monarch’s formative years showed him to be a shy, sensitive and imaginative young soul
Four-week-old Charles on his christening day, dressed in the Honiton lace robe handed down from Queen Victoria, in the arms of his mother, Princess Elizabeth.
As with all royal births, the arrival of Prince Charles Philip Arthur George on 14 November 1948 was officially announced on the gates of Buckingham Palace, while the lights in Trafalgar Square’s fountains were turned blue and radio stations worldwide interrupted their programmes for the news.
While his 22-year-old mother Princess Elizabeth rested in the bedroom suite of Buckingham Palace, her 7lb 6oz newborn son and heir was placed in a cot in the gilded Ballroom so that the royal courtiers, who served his grandfather George VI and his grandmother Queen Elizabeth, could meet him.
“Poor little chap, two and a half hours after being born, he was being looked at by outsiders,” wrote the private secretary to his grandmother. “But with great affection and good will.”