Where is Princess Margaret buried

A. It's a delicate question that doesn't seem to have a precise answer at the time of writing. Broadly speaking, the princess left instructions to be cremated and her ashes put next to the coffin of her beloved father, King George VI, at Windsor. The princess's mortal remains were cremated with little ceremony at Slough crematorium. She is only the second royal to be cremated. The first was Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria, in 1939.

Q. And where is George VI buried

A. In St George's Chapel, Windsor, where the funeral service for Princess Margaret was held - 50 years to the day after her father's. But his coffin was moved.

Q. Explain.

A. St George's Chapel is the last resting place of 10 sovereigns, starting with Edward IV in 1483. It was there that George VI was buried on 15 February, 1952. His was an untimely death and no preparation had been made for a permanent tomb. After a simple service, the coffin was lowered to the crypt below the chapel. The Lord Chamberlain then held aloft the white staff of his office, broke it in two and consigned it to the grave. The new Queen took grains of earth from a small silver bowl and scattered them over the oak coffin.

Q. And there it stayed

A. No. Some time later, the coffin was transferred to a passage under the Deanery, guarded by a door with two locks. One key was held by the Lord Chamberlain and the other by the Dean of Windsor. Nearby in the royal vault under the altar were the coffins of George II, George III and William IV. The tombs of Henry VIII and Charles II are under the actual chapel.

George VI's coffin lay in this passage for 17 years, draped with the sovereign's standard. But it preyed on the Queen's mind and in about 1963, she reminded the Lord Chamberlain and the Dean of Windsor that a permanent resting place must be prepared for her father.

Q. Where

A. That was the problem. The chapel, though a magnificent example of Gothic architecture, doesn't have room much for more interments and investigations showed there was nowhere to build a vault for George VI. The Queen decided to construct a small addition to the chapel - the first to be built since its consecration in the 15th Century. Initial plans involved piercing the north wall of the nave and adding a small rectangular chantry, or smaller chapel, but the Fine Arts Commission rejected the idea.

Another plan, however, was allowed. It put the chantry between the angles of the north choir and the Rutland Chapel. It was 18ft high, 10ft wide and 14ft deep. The memorial stone was of Belgian black marble, inscribed George VI, and the whole scheme cost 25,000.

Q. So the king was reburied

A. Yes - on 31 March, 1969, in a simple service conducted by the Dean of Windsor, attended by the Knights and nearly all the royal family.

Q. But not all

A. No - Earl Mountbatten was attending the funeral of President Eisenhower, and the Duke of Windsor - the King's brother, living in exile since his abdication as Edward VIII - was not invited. The chantry is now guarded by iron gates inscribed by the words by poet Minnie Haskins that the king spoke in his famous wireless broadcast of 1939. The poem begins: 'I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: 'Give me light that I may tread safely into the unknown'.'

Q. So this is a vault just for George VI

A. No. The Queen had it designed for three monarchs and their consorts: King George VI and Queen Elizabeth; the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh; Charles and his consort whoever she would be. Tragically, Diana's life was short, she never became Queen - and she is buried at her family's home.

Q. And this other troubled princess's mortal remains will lie in her father's vault

A. This is where it gets complicated. Buckingham Palace insisted that Princess Margaret's ashes casket would lie in the vault under the chapel altar, where the remains of George III, George IV and William IV lie. But Lord Luce, the Lord Chamberlain, told The Times: 'The Princess's wish was to lie with her father in his own vault, and I understand that is where her final resting place will be.'

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Steve Cunningham