Watch a short film with Joan Cook

In 1939, 14-year-old Joan Cook started work as a kitchen maid at Kensington Palace. She worked in one of the many apartments at the palace for the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven - the Duke of Edinburgh's grandmother.

Joan was homesick at first but gradually came to like her life at the palace. She made some friends and 'her ladyship' took her for walks in Kensington Gardens.

After Joan returned to Sunderland to live with her father, she received this letter from her friend Kathleen Costelloe, who also worked for the Dowager Marchioness. In it, Kathleen describes the incendiary bombs as they hit the palace, and the bomb shelters in Kensington Gardens - valuable details about life at the palace during the Second World War.

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