Why did the RF wave the then PE off on travels to Kenya?

[MaggieFS]

Just a thought - the well known pictures of the last time the late Q saw her father, was when the RF waved her and Philip off at the airport on their way to Kenya.

Why did they go to wave them off? Was this normal?

Different times, I think. They were notoriously closely knit, she was a young woman off on on on a tour of significant importance (her first of that type I think?) with her husband. And doing so generated good press attention.

Maybe he knew he was going to die?

Agreed. Also, air travel was still something g of a novelty at this time (something that people got dressed up for example). So it would have seemed quite normal for the RF to wave the then princess off

Diana used to wave Charles off. It was just what they did.

Thank you. I didn't realise it was her first trip like that. What awful timing.

I know King George was there, waving her off. Were there any other members of the family or were they other officials? I could go and google, I guess. It must have been late Jan or early Feb because she was Queen by 6th. The King looked cold and drawn, I always think.

IIRC both the Queen Mum and Princess Margaret wed there too.

I doubt they would have gone if they had known the severity of her father's situation.

Charles and Anne were there as well.

I think the length of the tours were also part of it. She was going to Australia and New Zealand after Africa. They tended to be away for months rather than a week or two.

It was a very different era. Travel was rougher and more difficult, and keeping in touch by telegram (?) and letter was worlds different from modern email, video calls, texting, etc.

From what I read (admittedly in the Royal section in the DM), according to them, they didn’t even tell him that he had lung cancer so it’s very possible that our late Queen (then Princess) didn’t know when she went to Kenya

I'm sure I've heard something similar before. It seems to have been a fairly normal thing for that generation and before.

I think it was. I’m not sure whether they were afraid of death and dying whereas in the Victorian era, they did death masks and mourning brooches (if I remember rightly). In the case of George VI, it was called a lung resection or something and he was operated on in one of the rooms of BP.

I know in the case of George V, his death was hastened so it ended up on the front page of the times in the morning instead of the evening paper

People used to go to the docks and throw streamers at the big ships as they sailed away.

When I was a child we used to go to the airport and wave my dad off on business trips to America.

Travel is more of an everyday thing now