21st birthday telegram (part 1)

Telegram from Prime Minister Attlee on the occasion of HRH Princess Elizabeth’s 21st birthday (page 1 of 2). Document reference: PREM 8/657.

You can download the full digitised document via Discovery, our online catalogue: Princess Elizabeth’s twenty-first birthday

Transcription:

8 April, 1947 

Madam, 

I beg to present to Your Royal Highness the congratulations of my colleagues and myself on the occasion of Your twenty-first birthday. 

Your Royal Highness has lived through some of the hardest yet noblest years of these islands’ long history: to one who like myself can look back over these and earlier troubled years, the steadfast leadership and selfless devotion of the Royal Family shine forth as one of the greatest blessings and surest bulwarks of this land. 

The simple dignity and wise understanding which Your Royal Highness has shown have endeared you to all classes at home. It is a source of gratification that Your Royal Highness should have been able to visit one of the great Dominions and to experience the warmth of welcome which is evoked throughout the Commonwealth and Empire by a visit from the Royal Family. 

I…… 

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