THEY knew how to put on a royal welcome in those days. On a brilliantly sunny April afternoon in 1957, hundreds of spectators lined Glasgow’s George V Bridge at Bridge Wharf to watch Princess Margaret and her entourage step onto a motor vessel that would take her downriver. A city police motor launch acted as its escort; and ships from many nations were dressed with flags and bunting, and sirens and hooters sounded a welcome. In the shipyards themselves, workers perched on cranes, on ships’ funnels, and on the roofs of tall granaries and warehouses to give the Queen’s sister a cheer.

Margaret had immediately made her way to the bridge of the British Railways’ vessel, Maid of Ashton, and chatted with guests including Lord Provost, Andrew Hood before taking afternoon tea on the promenade deck. She enjoyed the sailing so much, said the Glasgow Herald, that she requested that the downriver trip be extended by 10 minutes. “I have been thrilled by this trip,” she told Mr Hood when the Maid finally docked. “It was wonderful.”

Earlier that day she had been to East Kilbride, and had examined scale models of the neighbourhood units in the new town, asking, at one point, “Where do people do their shopping?” “They go to Glasgow,” conceded Sir Patrick Dollan, chairman of the town’s Development Corporation.