On This Day: Elizabeth and Philip Announce Their Engagement

Seventy years ago, the engagement between The Princess Elizabeth – heiress presumptive to the British throne – and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, formerly a Prince of Greece and Denmark, was announced.

The couple had met a handful of times during their youth, before a fateful meeting in 1939 at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth solidified the young Princess’s affection for the handsome sailor – “she never looked at anyone else” according to Elizabeth’s first cousin, Margaret Rhodes. Elizabeth and Philip became engaged in 1946, but her father King George VI requested any formal announcement not be made until after her 21st birthday the following year.

On July 9, 1947, Buckingham Palace issued a statement which with the “greatest pleas- are” announced their engagement – the King having “gladly given his consent”. Elizabeth, 21, and Philip, 26, fronted the press the following day for photographs, and attended a garden party.

Philip had presented his bride-to-be with a diamond and platinum engagement ring commissioned from jeweller Philip Antrobus, and made from diamonds that had been taken from a tiara belonging to his mother, Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark (Alice of Battenberg).

They were married on November 20, 1947.

Filed under The United Kingdom
Tagged Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Engagement, The Duke of Edinburgh.

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