VE Day film brings back memories for man who danced with future Queen
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Version 0 of 1. For most Londoners celebrating in Trafalgar Square on VE Day, whether ex-servicemen or survivors of the Blitz, the revelries amounted to a “right-royal night out”. Churchill, after all, had personally sanctioned “a brief period of rejoicing”. But for one teenager the phrase would have had a more literal meaning. Down the years Ronald Thomas, now 85, has told his family how, on 8 May 1945, he danced with the future queen of England. He was not often believed, no matter how he tried to convince his children and, later, his grandchildren. But now he is standing tall. The true story of how the two teenage princesses – Elizabeth and Margaret – secretly visited the crowds and spent time dancing and singing with their people is finally gaining wider publicity this week with the release of a romantic new film, A Royal Night Out. “My grandfather has always said he that he told Princess Elizabeth he knew who she was,” Thomas’s grandson Dominic Kavakeb told the Observer this weekend, as Britain commemorates the end of the war in Europe. “She denied it at first, but he told her he could never have got her face wrong. Finally, she admitted it and she asked him not to tell anyone. He didn’t speak about it at the time, but once she became Queen he told a few people he had once danced with her. He has never trumpeted it though. He is still quite bashful about it.” Thomas, who was 15 at the time the war ended and living in Harrow, had jumped on a train with a friend to join the party in Trafalgar Square. This week he told his grandson he still clearly remembers talking to some soldiers who were discreetly guarding the princess and how excited she seemed to be able to dance with her subjects, just like an ordinary person. He is also sure she would remember him. “When he first told people, no one believed him and so he got fed up with the ridicule and stopped telling the story to anyone but his family,” said Kavakeb, 28. A Royal Night Out, which opens in cinemas on Friday and is directed by Julian Jarrold, tells the story of that day and how the two young Windsor girls pressurised their parents – King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, played by Rupert Everett and Emily Watson – to allow them a brief taste of freedom on the streets, or “a wizard all-nighter”, as the 15-year-old Princess Margaret describes it in the screenplay. “We’ll be walled up in this ghastly mausoleum for the rest of our blooming lives,” she appeals to the king and queen. The cinematic version of history sees the younger sister going awol and the future queen forced to search for her in the fleshpots of the West End. In fact, although we know the princesses were allowed out that night, there were accompanied at all times by a 16-strong squad of chaperones. There is also no public suggestion they misbehaved, disappeared or fell in love. Ronald Thomas, who now lives in Welwyn Garden City, has already seen the film at a special preview screening, because the son of a family friend, Jack Reynor, has a starring role in it. “Seventy years to the moment that he danced with the Queen, my grandad is finally being vindicated and about to watch a film about that night that forms his favourite secret memory. That’s pretty special,” posted his grandson on his Facebook page. |