Pictures of His Majesty playing with his toys on the lawn of Clarence House, where the Queen and Prince Philip lived when he was a child, have re-surfaced after 25 years and have been sold by Willingham Auctions in Cambridgeshire. Charles, who is aged about two in the unique photos, can be seen wearing dungarees and beaming as he plays with a furry push-along elephant in one of the snaps.
Another picture shows the happy toddler sitting on the ground and tugging at his shoe, then playing with a rolled up umbrella. In another shot, Charles, who was born in 1948, is seen sitting on the grass next to one of the late Queen’s Corgis, whilst he appears to be studying a leaf in another of the snaps.
The photos, which date from around 1950, belonged to Margaret Saul, who was the Queen’s physiotherapist at the time. Another set of photos, also believed to be taken by Miss Saul, show Charles’ younger brother, Andrew, in the arms of the midwife who delivered him, Sister Helen Rowe. They were taken in the ground floor Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace, which the Queen occupied for the birth on February 19, 1960.
Miss Saul was a close friend of Sister Rowe, who can be seen cuddling Andrew and bottle feeding him on her lap. Six years after the death of Miss Saul at the age of 95 in 1992, the photographs were found in a skip near Jesus College in Cambridge by Joe Smyth, who spotted some of the pictures, which were in albums and showboxes, spilling out into the road.
He gave them to his daughter, who didn’t do anything with them for months, but then noticed some newspaper cuttings, which were with the pictures, were about the birth of Prince Andrew and quickly worked out who was in the photos. She made efforts to see if any members of Miss Saul’s family wanted the pictures but when no one came forward she kept them in a drawer and put them up for auction.
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