FAMILY
Elizabeth had by then married and
was no longer in need of a governess)
in American magazines. Queen
Elizabeth was furious, declaring
that Crawfie had “gone off her head”
and refusing ever to see her again.
Perhaps realising that there was no
way back, the following year Crawfie
published The Little Princesses, about
serious, tidy Lilibet and cheery little
Margaret Rose. She later retired to
Aberdeen, buying a house 200 yards
from the road to Balmoral. Although
the family regularly drove past her
front door on their way to Balmoral
Castle, they never visited.
The Queen’s father, George VI,
and Edward VIII are said to have
been abused by one of their early
nannies, as suggested in the film
The King’s Speech, when George,
played by Colin Firth, tells his speech
therapist his first nanny would pinch
him to get him to cry just before
handing him off to his parents. This
would prompt his parents to return
the screaming child to the nanny,
who would then torment the young
prince. “It took my parents three
years to notice,” says Firth in the film.
The credentials and duties
required of a royal nanny have, ofNew generation: the Duke
and Duchess of Sussex are
determined to balance royal
duties with a close family lifeWhen a child is
under public
scrutiny, a
‘third parent’
can be a source
of great stability
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19Perils of a
staycation
All thethings we
expect from
a holidaycloser to
home,versus the
realityS
taycations, you
may be aware,
are huge this
year. Is it Brexit?
Is it last year’s
heatwave,
which made everyone
question the point of
going abroad in summer?
Is it the expectation of
being stranded at Gatwick
for hours, if not days,
or diverted because
someone got at the duty
free and tried to open
the emergency exit at
32,000 ft? Or could it
just be foreign holiday
fatigue – the car hire, the
mosquitoes, the endless
application of sun cream- driving this spike in
holidays closer to home?
The answer is, all of the
above... and then there are
the “time of life” reasons.
I’m talking about
getting to that stage when
you start to regret the
passing of bucket-and-
spade holidays, damp
bunk beds and everyone
crammed in the car
singing “She’ll be coming
round the mountain”.
All it takes is a glimpse
of one of those children’s
hooded towelling
ponchos, a Thermos flask
or chipped ping-pong bat,
and we’re ready to pack
up the car and head for
the coast. We can’t wait to
get started. Because, from
this vantage point, the
staycation is the answer
to everything: it’s easy,
it’s got a whiff of make do
and mend about it, or at
least make do; it feels like
the steady, wholesome,
environmentally friendly
choice, a decision based on
simple pleasures. You feel
like a grounded, happy
person just for getting the
point of not leaving the UK
during the summer.
And when you imagine
your staycation now –
from a distance, just far
enough away to have
forgotten exactly what
they are really like – it’s
Swallows and Amazons
meets Emma Bridgewater,
plus 21st-century adult
perks.
What you are picturing
is basically the Sixties
staycation (aesthetically)
but with fleeces and flat
whites and a fridge full of
decent rosé and a power
You imagine
Swallows
and
Amazons
meets
Emma
Bridgewater
plus 21st-
century
adult perksshower. It’s picnicking
among the fishing boats,
but with WetWipes and
fresh mango slices. It’s
surfing a bit and visiting
the Danish interiors shop
and probably buying
something stripy. It’s
everyone chipping in to
scrub the mussels, with
access to a gas barbecue
and Wi-Fi.
Here’s what you are
imagining as you head
off on your staycation,
with the likelihood of
that actually occurring:
l You plan to play Scrabble
or cards every night; you
manage it only once.
l You agree not to turn on
the television – general
rule on holiday – but then
you do turn on the TV,
because you are living in
a house on a street with
a satellite dish and the
weather is foul and there’s
absolutely nothing to do
until the sun comes out.
l You take three fish
cookery books, use none
of them, and although you
are living within yards
of the sea you have great
difficulty tracking down
the sort of fish that you can
pick up at Asda.
l You plan to swim every
day before breakfast- because you’re right
beside the sea! It’s the
most invigorating start
to the day! You swim a
bit (there’s quite a nasty
wind), twice in total.
l You intend to read all
the time when you’re not
sucking up fresh salty air
or prepping your sea bass
or nipping out in a boat
(“This is the life”), but end
up watching Netflix.
l You intend to explore
and walk and explore...
but it’s not that easy. The
path is erratic and you
keep being forced up on
to banks and into people’s
gardens and along the
edges of B-roads.
l The seagulls wake you
up at daybreak and that’s
it. You came for the sound
of seagulls, partly, but it’s
like being in the mosh pit
at an Iron Maiden concert.
l You swore you were
going to light the fire every
night and make the whole
place hygge-tastic, but you
never got the wood dried
out in time.
Better luck next year.
MODERN LIFE
SHANE WATSON
course, changed considerably over the
centuries. Charles I replaced his eldest
son’s first governess, the Countess
of Roxburghe, when the Protestant
public objected to a Roman Catholic
raising the future Charles II. And in
the case of Louise Lehzen, Queen
Victoria’s nursery governess (who
devoted herself to the princess for 20
years), she was chosen by the Duchess
of Kent to look after the little princess
specifically because she appeared to
be the sort who would do what she
was told. The Duchess was, at this
time, determined to secure the job of
regent, which would allow her to rule
the country through her daughter.Lehzen is said to have protected her
young charge and when Victoria
finally came to the throne in 1837, the
53-year-old was rewarded with the job
of personal secretary, complete with
account books and a set of keys. Prince
Albert, finding his wife was under the
thumb of an uppity servant, referred
to her as “the hag”, while she couldn’t
see the point of him at all.
The Sussexes are part of a
new generation of royal parents
determined to balance their royal
duties with a close relationship with
their children. Their solution to the
21st-century problem of work-life
balance seems to be a hands-on
approach to parenting with plenty
of help from part-time nannies and
family members (it is thought the
Duchess’s mother, Doria, will lend a
hand whenever she is in the country).
But their choice of a more
permanent minder for Archie will be
crucial. A nanny plays a significant
role in any child’s life, but when that
child will find themselves and their
family under constant public scrutiny,
a “third parent” can be a source of
great stability. Baby Sussex’s father
and grandfather both found comfort in
their caregivers during difficult times.
Could Archie’s new nanny be his very
own Tiggy?Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret
with their nannies Clara Knight, known as ‘Allah’, left,and Margaret ‘Bobo’ Macdonald in 1932Diana, Princess of Wales, with Princes William and Harryand nanny Jessica Webb in 1991‘It wasn’t my first choice
to become a mother this
way, but I’ve no regrets’
W
hen she was in
her twenties, and
single, Liv Thorne
would joke to
friends that if Mr
Right didn’t come
along, she’d “just go for the turkey
baster option” and have a child on her
own. When she was still single in her
thirties, it stopped being a joke and
she started researching sperm banks
and fertility clinics.
“I made a pact with myself that I’d
do it if I was still single at 35,” says Liv,
now 40, the director of a digital brand
design agency, who lives in Oxford.
“I had this primal need to be a mother.
I’m from a big family and I always
assumed I’d have children.”
More women are choosing to
become mothers on their own – the
number of fertility treatments on
single women in the UK increased
by 4 per cent between 2016 and 2017,
according to the Human Fertilisation
and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
And while a stereotype persists that
women are postponing motherhood
to focus on careers, the decision
more often comes down to the lack
of a willing, committed other half.
Research by Yale University, published
last year, found that not having a
suitable partner was the most common
reason women gave for choosing to
freeze their eggs.
Medical advances make it easier
than ever for women to have a baby
independently, but they do face other
hurdles. With the health service under
unprecedented financial pressures,
there is a growing postcode lottery for
fertility treatment in the UK, and this
week it was reported that NHS South
East London is banning single women
from accessing IVF because they
“place a greater burden on society”.
Although Liv Thorne had some
preliminary tests done on the NHS,
fertility treatment was not offered
to her and she assumed it was not
available to single people in her area.
So she remortgaged her house to fund
treatment at a private clinic, using
donor sperm. She spent £14,in total on four attempts, before
conceiving her son, Herb, last year.
Liv opted for natural intrauterine
insemination (IUI) rather than IVF, as
her tests suggested she would be able
to conceive naturally with a sperm
donor, and she chose to import sperm
from a Danish bank. That meant she
could find out all sorts of information
about prospective donors – unlike
in the UK, where the law states that
only basic characteristics should be
disclosed to the recipient.
“The bank gives you height, weight,
a photo of them as a baby, an audio
file of them describing a childhood
memory... It was like Amazon and
Tinder rolled into one,” says Liv. “I
chose someone who sounded the
opposite of me – terribly practical
and tall. But the biggest factor was
that they had a good health history, as
there’s a lot of cancer in my family.”
The costs of private fertility
treatment, and increasingly slim
chances of accessing it on the NHS,
are driving some women to take more
extreme routes, including “private”
sperm donation – DIY arrangements
that take place outside regulated
clinics. This can be between friends,
or even strangers who connect online.
There are several dedicated
matching websites that help single
women (as well as same-sex couples
or infertile straight couples) to find
sperm and egg donors, such as Pride
Angel and Pollen Tree. Donation is
altruistic, with no payment exchanged
other than travel expenses.
“We’ve been going for six years and
we have grown steadily,” says Patrick
Harrison, co-founder of Pollen Tree,
which has an estimated 45,000 users,
many single women in their mid to
late thirties.
Zoe King, 37, a stage manager based
in Edinburgh, has been trying to
conceive on her own since just before
her 34th birthday. “I realised that if I
didn’t have a husband or partner by
40, I wouldn’t be that bothered, but if
I hadn’t even tried to become a mother
I’d be desperately disappointed,” she
says. Unable to afford private fertilityAs single women are refused IVF on the NHS, Jennie Agg meets the
mothers finding new ways to go it alone – often taking unknown risks‘I found a
sperm
donor
through
a local
group’
20 ***^ Thursday 22 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph
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