The final self-effacing gesture of one whose lifetime's single aim, as Princess and as Queen, had been to serve the British Throne.

The New Year, 1953, was that of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Mary who drove out in Hyde Park in February to look at the stands being erected along the processional route, let it be known at Buckingham Palace that, should she no longer be there to attend the Coronation, this solemnity must on no account of mourning be postponed. This, we may think, was the final self-effacing gesture of one whose lifetime's single aim, as Princess and as Queen, had been to serve the British Throne.

J . Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959), 620-1