Forgotten snapshots of the Royal Family discovered in charity shop
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The striking images document the Royal Family’s final summer at Balmoral before the death of the King. They show him with the Queen Mother, the soon-to-be Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret playing with a young Prince Charles and Princess Anne at their Highland retreat.
Anne was little over a year old and the collection includes charming photos of the Queen and her late sister standing the baby princess up on the stone parapet of a water fountain.
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Hide AdAnother shows a three-year-old Prince Charles sat astride a statue of a deer as his grandmother reaches out a supporting hand to stop him falling off.
Two more photos show the group of royals posing for the camera, while Charles dangles a hand in the fountain, and the Queen Mother stands between her two daughters.
It is thought the informal pictures were taken by a member of the royal household using a Box Brownie camera while the Royal Family visited Balmoral in August 1951.
A month later the King underwent surgery to remove his left lung after the discovery of a tumour. He died four and a half months later on 6 February, 1952.
It was not known what had happened to the pictures before a woman took them into a charity shop in Somerton in Somerset, after clearing out a relative’s estate eight years ago.
Claudia Yunnie, a customer in the shop at the time, overheard the conversation and offered to buy the ten photos.
She went on to keep them in a chest of drawers and has only now decided to sell them at auction.
Mrs Yunnie, 69, from Langport, Somerset, said: “I happened to be in the shop when this woman brought them in and was in earshot of the conversation she had with the staff. I bought them because I liked them so much. But since I have had them they have been locked in my chest of drawers in my bedroom”
The pictures are up for auction in Sherborne, Dorset on 27 July and have a pre-sale estimate of £250.