Princess Elizabeth's secret VE Day dance with dashing stranger...

PERHAPS his blond good looks and resemblance to Prince Philip were what caught her eye.

- EXCLUSIVE BY LUCY THORNTON

For this is the teenager who danced with the future Queen Elizabeth in a secret “Cinderella in reverse" moment among the jubilant crowds on VE Day.

Ronald Thomas was 15, a working-class lad from the Rhondda Valley in Wales, staying with his aunt and uncle in Harrow, North West London, and helping the war effort by clearing bomb debris with a wheelbarrow.

On May 8 he took the bus with a pal to Trafalgar Square and followed the crowds down to Whitehall.

There he bumped into a young woman in Auxiliary Transport Service uniform with her cap pulled down low and they had a little dance. It was Princess Elizabeth.

She and her sister Princess Margaret, 14, had been given permission by their father King George VI to leave Buckingham Palace and join the celebrations incognito, accompanied by a group of 16 people including Grenadier Guards.

Ronald would later tell his family: "There she was and we locked eyes and I said to her: 'Ooh, I know you don't I?' And she said: 'No, no, no, no, you don't'."