Princess Elizabeth with the infant Prince Charles, 14 December 1948

Photograph of HM Queen Elizabeth II (b.1926) when Princess Elizabeth, looking down at the infant Prince Charles (b.1948) who lies in his cradle.

Prince Charles was born at Buckingham Palace on 14 November 1948. When he was one month old, an official photograph was taken of the baby with his 22-year-old mother, Princess Elizabeth. The photographer was Cecil Beaton, who recorded in his diary that the Prince ‘interrupted a long, contented sleep to do my bidding and open his blue eyes to stare long and wonderingly into the camera lens, the beginning of a lifetime in the glare of public duty’.