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In a conversation with ´óÏó´«Ã½ London’s Stevan Bennett, Ruth reflects on her father, Peter Eckett’s World War Two memoirs; his naive ‘Just William’ type war experience, the freedom he enjoyed during those years and how he collected war souvenirs from plane wrecks and bomb sites.

Peter was sixteen on VE Day, and in the memoirs he describes in great detail going up to London in the daytime for the celebrations. He also casually mentions how his father, Richard, escorted Princess’s Elizabeth and Margaret around the crowds.

Richard was forty-five at the time, and was serving as a policeman in the Metropolitan Police Force.

Richard never revealed any more about his experiences and has left the family wondering all this time what he saw and heard that day as he protected the Royal Princesses.

Image: Ruth’s father, Peter Eckett (on the left), aged sixteen in 1945