Marion Crawford was born the daughter of a mechanical engineer's clerk, at Gatehead, East Ayrshire, on 5 June 1909.
12 Facts About Marion Crawford
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Marion Crawford was raised in Dunfermline, Fife, and taught at Edinburgh's Moray House Institute.
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Marion Crawford became one of the governesses of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.
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Marion Crawford remained in service to the King and Queen, and did not retire until Princess Elizabeth's marriage in 1947, Marion Crawford herself having married two months earlier.
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Marion Crawford had already delayed her own marriage for 16 years so as not to, as she saw it, abandon the King and Queen.
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Marion Crawford replied to Lady Astor saying: "The governess has gone off her head", and had her private secretary send a further letter to Lady Astor.
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Marion Crawford put her name to Woman's Owns "Crawfie's Column", a social diary written by journalists several weeks in advance.
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Courtiers believed that Marion Crawford was deeply under the influence of her husband George Buthlay, whom she married after her retirement, and that he pressured her to capitalise on her royal connections, as he himself did.
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Marion Crawford retired to Aberdeen, buying a house 200 yards from the road to Balmoral; she completely withdrew from public life and refused all media requests.
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Marion Crawford died at Hawkhill House on 11 February 1988.
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Marion Crawford's story was featured in a 2000 Channel 4 documentary The Nanny Who Wouldn't Keep Mum.
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In 2021, Marion Crawford was the focus of a novel by Tessa Arlen, In Royal Service to the Queen: A Novel of the Queen's Governess.