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A lifetime of speeches for the monarch has meant dutifully delivering the scripted words of others, a practice she perfected in the pushchair, it would seem. For the first words the Queeen uttered, aged 13 months, were "mama" and "bebe", according to her baby progress book. Which is surprising, given that her parents had set sail to Australia five months previously and had yet to return to her.
The book, which notes her first tooth (26 January 1927), when she began to crawl (11th April 1927) and her first pram outing (at 10 days old), is one of hundreds of items, including outfits, toys, christening paraphernalia, lavish gifts and previously unseen family film, now on public display at an exhibition at Buckingham Palace charting 250 years of royal childhood.
Historians may detect behind the baby words the hand of Allah, as Princess Elizabeth's nanny, Clara Knight, was nicknamed. Knight spent months patiently coaching her infant charge to enunciate "mummy" while her parents were away. As Ben Pimlott, the Queen's biographer, dryly observed, there being no one to whom the word accurately applied it led to Elizabeth greeting "everybody she came across, including family portraits, with the salutation 'mummy, mummy'."
Curator Anna Reynolds with the rocking horse presented to Prince George by Barack Obama – complete with the American presidential seal on the saddle. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA
Down the line, Prince George got a handmade rocking horse, courtesy of Barack Obama, complete with American presidential seal on the saddle, personalised plaque, and polo mallet, its head carved from the branch of an oak tree from the White House lawn. That gift joins a crowded stable of rocking horses, including the toys Caesar and Beauty, which belonged to Elizabeth and Margaret, also on show.
George also received a tricycle, modelled on a "Boris bike", presented by the London mayor "to acculturate him to the joys of cycling". When older, though, he might prefer the Aston Martin given to a six-year-old Prince Andrew, a replica of the DB5 used in the James Bond film Goldfinger, which sports rotating number plates, machine guns behind the side lights, pop-up bullet shield and smokescreen.
Curator Anna Reynolds with the model Aston Martin DB5 given to Prince Andrew. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA
Among the exhibits there are items common to many homes. A wooden door taken from the nursery at Royal Lodge, Windsor, was used as a height chart for Elizabeth and Margaret. However few other height charts would have hammered on to them the horse shoes from five childhood ponies. The Queen's chart holds the shoes of Peggy, Greylight, Gem, Snowball, and a pit pony called George.
Visitors can also see photographs, including a shot of Prince William aged three, and film footage of Elizabeth and Margaret playing peek-a-boo, learning to dance, having pillow fights, and gardening with mother. And, as for other children, there was dressing up. Disadvantaged by already being a princess a young Anne took to being a fairy – wearing a sparkling outfit, with wings, wand and matching doll.
A bunny tea set played with by Princess Elizabeth in the 1930s. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
On show too is an ornate blue glass casket containing the first teeth of Victoria's children, each wrapped in tiny dated envelopes and cushioned on blue velvet. Only the milk teeth of Victoria's first five - of nine - children are stored. Perhaps she got bored after that, as she once wearily observed at a grandchild's birth: "I fear the seventh grand-daughter and 14th grandchild becomes a very uninteresting thing – for it seems to me to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park."
Anna Reynolds, of the Royal Collection Trust and the exhibition curator, said: "This exhibition gives a very personal insight into life as a young member of the royal family, over nine generations, through the toys children have played with and loved, and through the clothes they have worn."
One of the earliest artefacts is a wooden dolls house, of the 1780s, made for the daughters of George III. According to custom the "baby house" was made by a carpenter on the royal yacht. It's a tradition that has not survived, but then neither has the royal yacht.
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