BIRTHDAY OF DUKE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27064, 12 June 1953, Page 9

BIRTHDAY OF DUKE

CROWD GATHERS AT PALACE LONDON, June 10. A crowd of women stampeded toward the side gate of Buckingham Palace tonight when the Duke of Edinburgh was spotted trying to slip out quietly by car on the evening of his thirty-second birthday. The crowd, which had gathered outside the Palace in the hope of a birthday glimpse of the Duke, took up the cry, “It’s the Duke,” and raced after the Duke’s small black saloon as it left. The crowd swept the police aside, but the Duke just beat them to it and drove off swiftly into the general traffic of London. He was driving alone. A record, number of messages since the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were married over five years ago swamped the private post office at Buckingham Palace today. However, all had to wait the Duke’s attention until he had visited the Royal nursery, where his children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, were on tenterhooks to hand him presents wrapped last night with the help of their nurses. / Details of what the Royal children gave are a private family matter. So was the birthday luncheon which the Queen and the Duke afterwards took with the Duke’s relatives who are visiting England for the Coronation—including his mother, Princess Andrew of Greece, and his three sisters. Royal Navy ships were dressed and salutes were fired in honour of the Queen’s immensely popular consort