Product Description

The official and definitive biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: consort of King George VI, mother of Queen Elizabeth II, grandmother of Prince Charles—and the most beloved British monarch of the twentieth century.

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon—the ninth of the Earl of Strathmore’s ten children—was born on August 4, 1900, and, certainly, no one could have imagined that her long life (she died in 2002) would come to reflect a changing nation over the ourse of an entire century. Now, William Shawcross—given unrestricted access to the Queen Mother’s personal papers, letters, and diaries—gives us a portrait of unprecedented vividness and detail. Here is the girl who helped convalescing soldiers during the First World War . . . the young Duchess of York helping her reluctant husband assume the throne when his brother abdicated . . . the Queen refusing to take refuge from the bombing of London, risking her own life to instill courage and hope in others who were living through the Blitz . . . the dowager Queen—the last Edwardian, the charming survivor of a long-lost era—representing her nation at home and abroad . . . the matriarch of the Royal Family and “the nation’s best-loved grandmother.”

A revelatory royal biography that is, as well, a singular history of Britain in the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #704 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-27
• Released on: 2009-10-27
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1120 pages

From Publishers Weekly
With unrestricted access to the queen mother's personal papers, letters and diaries, this respectful, mostly uncritical biography by veteran journalist Shawcross (Sideshow) focuses on the courtship of Elizabeth (1900–2002), the daughter of a Scottish earl, by the future King George VI; the shocking abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson; and WWII, when Elizabeth's narrow escape from a bomb that hit Buckingham Palace helped her commiserate with her subjects during the blitz. Throughout, the queen mother is depicted as vivacious, charming, devout and dutiful, a dedicated protector of the arts if not an intellectual, and socially conservative. Shawcross repeatedly pulls his punches when it comes to revealing the workings of Elizabeth's heart, particularly her anguish over her nemesis, Wallis Simpson, and over her role in aborting her daughter Princess Margaret's romance with the married courtier Peter Townsend. The dearth of information on the queen mother's relationship with the late Princess Diana is particularly egregious. Although readers sense some of the parade of people who crossed her path, the royal engagements that filled her calendar and the pivotal historical events that shaped her life, Shawcross delivers a disappointingly bland celebration of the queen mother. 32 pages of photos. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Elaine Showalter When a biographer is writing about someone born in 1900 who lived until 2002, he must be tempted to see that life as emblematic of the century itself. William Shawcross has accepted this chronological gift and presented the official life of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, later wife of King George VI, as a reflection of the monarchy, the nation and the century. The plot of the story is well-known: lovely commoner (who lives in Glamis Castle) weds shy prince; then his older brother abdicates, and they become king and queen; there's a bit of glitz, then the Blitz; the king's death; and 50 years of widowhood and life as the Queen Mum, all based, Shawcross says, on "obligation, discretion, and restraint." There are no revelations here -- no secret love affairs, vices or thwarted aspirations to art. But there are a few surprises. Coming from a happy family of five brothers, the queen was an involved and affectionate mother. She was brokenhearted when she and the then-prince were sent on a state tour of Australia right after Princess Elizabeth was born. In 1933, she wrote a wise message to her husband in case of her death: "Be very careful not to ridicule your children or laugh at them. . . . Always try & talk very quietly to children. Never shout or frighten them. . . . Remember how your father, by shouting at you, & making you feel uncomfortable lost all your real affection." As a grandmother, she was much less strict than Prince Philip would have preferred; he "worried the grandparents would spoil his children." Although she was patchily educated by governesses, Elizabeth was curious and genuinely open-minded. In Tahiti, she noted about the native dancers, "Instead of being strong healthy cannibals with strange religions and no clothes, they are now weakly half hearted Roman Catholics with European clothes. It seems all wrong." She loved Yiddish jokes as well as her favorite author, P.G. Wodehouse. While the language of her letters and diaries is very Wodehousean -- people are either "too heavenly" or "beastly " -- she could be frank about the pressures of royal ritual. She coped, according to poet laureate Ted Hughes, with whom she shared a late friendship, by being "positive about everything," and the transparent (backward-reading) codes in which she recorded her negative moments are touchingly innocent: "I ma tsom dexelprep," when she was deciding whether to marry, or, just before her wedding, "leef rehtar desserped." The villains of this biography are the duke and duchess of Windsor. Before his abdication, the duke was very popular. But Elizabeth came to distrust and dislike him when he tried to bully his brother (her husband, now the king) about money, titles and residences. As she said of the duke in an interview, "He had this extraordinary charm, and then it all disappeared." The Windsors' 1930s visits to Berlin, where the duchess was fawned over and called Her Royal Highness, as well as the duke's meeting with Hitler, further alienated the family in England. After King George VI's death, the duke called his mother, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth "ice-veined bitches" who would not let him enjoy his birthright. Elizabeth spent half her long life as a widow. She was annoyed that some members of Parliament seemed to want her to "retire decently to Kew and run a needlework guild," and she thought her official residence, Clarence House, was "loathsome." But she stayed actively in public life until the very end, and Shawcross has given us every flag-waving, school opening, gin and tonic, horse race and thank-you note of those last 50 years. Unfortunately, Princess Margaret burned all her mother's correspondence with Princess Diana, the only really interesting exchange, and no one ever asked the Queen Mother to discuss changes in marriage or child-rearing over the last century. This enormous record of a dutiful and privileged life may please readers who bought the mug, but it will leave others feeling rehtar desserped. bookworld@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author
Born in 1946, William Shawcross is an internationally renowned writer and broadcaster who appears regularly on television and radio. His articles have appeared in leading newspapers and journals throughout the world. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Official But Revealing: A Century Through One Woman's Life
Its important to understand that William Shawcross has written an authorized or official biography of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. That means, as Shawcross states in his Introduction, that he was invited by Queen Elizabeth II to write her mother's life. Shawcross was given access to the Royal Archives and other private collections as well as tape recorded reminiscences made by the Queen Mother herself in her final years. He also interviewed hundreds of former servants and friends. In the Introduction, Shawcross emphasizes that he was given "absolute freedom to write as I wished." There is no doubt in my mind that The Queen and Royal Family did indeed allow him to write freely, knowing that he would craft a truthful but respectful chronicle. This is by way of saying that one should not read this work expecting sensational gossip or shocking "revelations". Others have written about such things, and no doubt many more will be written in coming years. This book portrays the Queen Mother much as she herself would wish to be portrayed.

Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was born in August, 1900, the daughter of a wealthy family of Scots and English nobility. The ninth of ten children, she had a happy childhood unburdened by too much education, did nursing in World War I, and eventually made her debut with the prospect of making a brilliant match. She attracted one of the most brilliant names available, Prince Albert Duke of York, second son of King George V. After refusing him several times she agreed to marry him in 1923. She became an early royal superstar, beloved by the British for her charm and good humor. Her awkward, stammering husband gained new confidence with her help, and when his older brother abdicated in 1936, he was able, with the support of his wife, to ascend the throne and perform admirably as King George VI through World War II. After the King's death in 1952 the Queen Mother lived another fifty years, becoming an ever more greatly beloved matriarch with her bright smile, sparkling jewels, and elegant and befeathered wardrobe.

Shawcross does an admirable job detailing the Queen Mother's life, producing a detailed, almost day to day chronicle. In so doing he also provides a fairly good political history of Britain during the twentieth century albeit through the eyes of a woman whose upper class antecedents and milieu hardly made her sympathetic to many of the social reforms enacted during her lifetime. Her personal relationships with her husband, daughters, and grandchildren are also well but respectfully covered.

This is a well written biography with impeccable scholarship. If it does not satisfy the appetites of those who wish only to read scandal, it nevertheless will please those who remember the Queen Mother as a strong personality who helped guide her country and her family through some of their greatest and darkest hours.

Very tedious storytelling...better than a sleeping pill
First off I need to tell you that I LOVE the woman - The Queen Mother! I wish I could say the same about this book. It is by far one of the most tedious books I have ever picked up. I, like Agatha the previous reviewer, found myself skipping entire sections of the book only to find I had not gone but a few years further into the story of her life and not missed a beat. Other parts of the book were surprisingly slim as to the importance of the matter being discussed. The author actually spent numerous pages on the 'controversy' of whether she was born in London or St Paul's Walden Bury(!).
The Author obviously intended this book to be the definitive Biography of a great woman but I'm sure her life was more interesting than he has portrayed. Too much attention and details, details, and even more details were given to the history of the world during her life than to her life itself. It would have been fun to get some juicy tidbits here and there but none were forthcoming. I so hoped to read what she really thought of the Duchess of Windsor and Princess Diana. Only one full page was devoted to the car crash that killed the Princess of Wales with an almost laughable emphasis that a "Drunken driver caused the crash". We all know Princess Margaret was a thorn in her mother's side at times and unfortunately nothing enlightening was given us as to their rocky relationship.
Also, surprising was the three paragraphs devoted to The Queen Mother's colon cancer (!). She obviously did not want any mention of the colostomy she HAD to have received in order to heal from the surgery. The author says she did not have one even temporarily. No mention was made of the letter she wrote to the World Ostomy Association in 1968 either. Many other things left out or thrown out by Prince Charles and QE2 as they were given advance copies to edit as they chose. Shades of Princess Beatrice throwing her mother Queen Victoria's letters and portions of her diaries into the fire.
I was anxiously looking forward to the date of release for this book after hearing that The Queen Mother had sat down, with tape recorder in hand, over the years to get the story right when it would be written.

This book was exhaustively researched and it is quite obvious. It will be considered a gem for historians years from now due to the listing of dates and daily activities (ad nauseum) but for the average reader it is quite boring.
Such a disappointment to read but it will be a valuable reference tool if I ever get caught in a game of Trivial Pursuit...

Elizabeth..100 years, just riveting read//The Queen Mother, William Shawcross
Seldom is a book so well written and holding interest from page 1. This one is. The 100 years she lived is a life filled with happiness. Her family raised her with warmth and love and it permeates the life she lived. Great history of the times witten in such a readable manner.