<\/p>\n
One hundred years ago today, April 20, was the last day before
\nhistory. In the early hours of April 21 1926, a little girl was
\nborn in London. She would grow up to become the longest reigning
\nMonarch in British history, a Queen who changed royalty and a
\ncountry and whose long life and rule reflected the changes of a
\nwhole world. This is how the royal story was told in the last hours
\nbefore Elizabeth.<\/p>\n
The Royal Family of 1926 had no great plans for April 21. The paper reported that King George, if he did go to Epsom, However, times were changing. The papers on April 20 1926 also As the paper noted, Ann Clark had been \u2018a great personality Ann Clark had been with the royals since the late 19th century, In a moment of serendipity, the big royal engagement being The Princess Royal toured the wards and met 50 patients, all of It was a very royal pick for a baby born just before a very There was little word of the woman who was about to change royal Although Buckingham Palace had made no formal announcement, her It was a general hint that the duchess would be away from the <\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source royalcentral.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One hundred years ago today, April 20, was the last day before history. In the early hours of April 21 1926, a little girl was born in London. She would grow up to become the longest reigning Monarch in British history, a Queen who changed royalty and a country and whose long life and rule […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2380975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2380974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/This-is-how-the-Royal-Family-waited-for-history-to.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2380974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2380976,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380974\/revisions\/2380976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2380975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2380974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2380974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2380974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nInstead, on April 20, the Daily Mirror<\/em> reported that King
\nGeorge V intended to spend the following day at the races. He was
\nset for Epsom \u201din order to witness the race for the City and
\nSuburban, in which his colt<\/em> Runnymede is set to take part.
\nMuch, however, will depend upon the state of the
\nweather.\u2019;<\/em><\/p>\n
\nmight count on the company of his only daughter, the Princess
\nRoyal. And that was as exciting as royal plans for April 21 1926
\ngot.<\/p>\nEnd of an era<\/h2>\n
\nreported the death of someone who had been at the heart of the
\nRoyal Family for decades. The Western Morning News was one of
\nseveral publications to give details of the passing of Ann Clark
\nwho had worked as a housekeeper to King George V, Queen Mary and
\ntheir household for years.<\/p>\n
\nin the Royal Household, and among the Royal Princes in their
\nchildhood days, she was regarded as quite an authority.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nworking for George and Mary when they were Duke and Duchess of York
\nin the reign of Queen Victoria then when they became Prince and
\nPrincess of Wales under King Edward VII. She had stayed with them
\nfollowing the accession of George V and had retired in March 1926
\nat the age of 77. Her retirement lasted just a month before her
\ndeath. It was the end of an era.<\/p>\nKissing babies<\/h2>\n
\nreported the day before the birth of the princess who would change
\neverything involved lots of new babies. Princess Mary, the Princess
\nRoyal had spent an afternoon at Woolwich Hospital where she heard
\nabout a fund to help patients and met as many newborn babies as
\ncould be presented to her in an hour.<\/p>\n
\nthem mothers to be or new mamas. She was also shown plenty of
\nyoungsters. The Daily New (London)<\/em> reported that
\n\u201dwhile the Princess was taking tea a baby boy, born only two
\nhours before her arrival, was brought for her to see. His mother is
\nMrs. Foley and his name will be George.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nroyal baby indeed. Curiously, the aunt who was the public face of
\nthe Royal Family in the hours before the birth of Elizabeth II was
\nthe relation to whom the late Monarch was said to bear a strong
\nresemblence.<\/p>\nAnd so to Mayfair\u2026<\/h2>\n
\nhistory. Elizabeth, The Duchess of York was at the home of her
\nparents in Mayfair, a smart townhouse at 17 Bruton Street.<\/p>\n
\npregnancy was the main royal news of the spring. No one expected
\nany appearances from her at this time. Instead, the Leicester
\nEvening Mail<\/em> looked ahead and said that the duchess and her
\nhusband \u201dproviding their engagements permit, are to pay a visit
\nthis year to Motherwell\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n
\npublic eye for the near future but would return. Her baby was said
\nto be due in the early days of May. And then April 21 1926
\nhappened.<\/p>\n