Princess Royal Ordered Rest From Engagements

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28619, 23 June 1958, Page 2

Princess Royal Ordered Rest From Engagements

IB]/

SUSAN VAUGHAN]

The news that the Princess Royal has been advised to have two months’ rest from official engagements because of fatigue and overstrain is a reminder that she is one of the most hardworking and most widely-travelled members of the Royal Family. In the last few years the Princess has officially visited Canada, the West Indies, Nigeria, and France. Often she has undertaken as many as 20 public engagements in a month.

Whenever she is due to make

an overseas tour she spends several days reading books about the country and often learns a few words of the language.

On her visit to Canada she spoke French fluently. While visiting the Montreal General Hospital she astonished officials by speaking a few words in Eskimo to an Eskimo patient. The Princess Royal's engagements are now nearly always done with very little publicity. As a young princess living in London she was never out of the public eye. Now/ living in the country, at Harewood House in Yorkshire, she receives far less attention. Great Charm Yet the Princess, who was 61 in April, has actually increased her public engagements in recent years. Once a quiet, simply dressed, and seemingly shy woman, she developed elegance and great charm. She has begun to use make-up. She is dressing with style and taste. In private life her great interest is horses. She is said to know more about horse-breeding than the Queen herself. In public life, her chief interest is the work of the British Red Cross, of which she is commandant-in-chief. The princess, who worked as a nurse during World War I, has visited

scores of Red Cross branches in Britain and overseas. She also associates herself actively with the numerous regiments of which she is colonel-in-chief. In 1956 she was promoted by the Queen to the honorary rank of general. The Princess, only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, married the sixth Earl of Harewood in 1922, at Westminster Abbey. The Princess has two sons— George, now the seventh Earl of Harewood, and the Hon. Gerald Lascelles.