A letter written by Queen Elizabeth about her first meeting with Prince Philip has sold at auction for £14,400.

Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth

The two-page note, which was sent to author Betty Shew in 1947 and written on headed royal notepaper, was purchased by a private collector at a sale at Chippenham Auction Rooms in Wiltshire, south west England.

In the note, the queen, whose title was then Princess Elizabeth, recalls her first meeting with her now-husband at the age of 13, and admitted she rarely saw him for the following five years because he was on duty with the Navy.

In the letter, she wrote: "The first time I remember meeting Philip was at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in July 1939, just before the war. (We may have met before at the coronation or the Duchess of Kent's wedding, but I don't remember).

"I was 13 years of age and he was 18 and a cadet just due to leave. He joined the Navy at the outbreak of war, and I only saw him very occasionally when he was on leave - I suppose about twice in three years.

"Then when his uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, were away he spent various weekends away with us at Windsor. Then he went to the Pacific and Far East for two years."

Ahead of the sale, auctioneer Richard Edmonds predicted the letter could be sold for around £800 to £1,200, but admitted it was "very difficult" to guess the sum.

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