The Crown recreates late Queen’s walkabout with Princess Margaret among crowds celebrating VE Day
We meet again! The Crown recreates late Queen’s famous secret walkabout with her sister Princess Margaret among crowds celebrating VE Day
Excitedly hurrying arm in arm down The Mall, this is the moment a young Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret slipped out to join the triumphant VE Day crowds – well, sort of.
Although no footage of the princesses’ incognito outing in 1945 exists, The Crown is once again filling in the blanks by depicting the scene in its next series.
Actresses Viola Prettejohn, 19, and Beau Gadsdon, 14, who have been cast as a young Elizabeth and Margaret, were captured recreating the morning after the party in May 1945 for the Netflix show.
Miss Prettejohn, who starred in HBO‘s The Nevers, is dressed in the Queen’s junior commander uniform, while Miss Gadsdon wears pink and pearls.
Although there is no footage available, a young Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret slipped out to join the triumphant VE Day crowds. Pictured: Revellers on May 8, 1945
(L-R) Princess Elizabeth before she became Queen, the Queen Mother, King George VI and Princess Margaret wave on the Buckingham Palace balcony on VE Day in 1945
Actresses Viola Prettejohn (left), 19, and Beau Gadsdon (right), 14, who have been cast as a young Elizabeth and Margaret, were captured recreating the morning after the party in May 1945 for the Netflix show.
Miss Prettejohn (left), who starred in HBO’s The Nevers, is dressed in the Queen’s junior commander uniform, while Miss Gadsdon (right) wears pink and pearls
Although no footage of the princesses’ incognito outing in 1945 exists, The Crown is once again filling in the blanks by depicting the scene in its next series
The princesses were given permission by their father George VI to leave Buckingham Palace to join the party.
The late Queen – who served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service from 1944 to 1945 and was 19 when the war ended – once told how she was ‘terrified of being recognised’ in the crowds and pulled her uniform cap down over her eyes before an officer told her off.
‘A Grenadier officer among our party of about 16 people said he refused to be seen in the company of another officer improperly dressed, so I had to put my cap on normally,’ she said in 1985, the 40th anniversary of VE day.
It is thought series six of The Crown will begin with Diana’s death in 1997.