Monday, September 21, 2009

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother by William Shawcross: review

William Shawcross's authorised biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother shows the steely character beneath the pearls and parasols, says John Adamson
writing in The Telegraph, 20 Sep 2009

When Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother died in 2002, at the age of 102, it was widely thought that her passing would arouse scant public interest. The previous decade had been a rough time for the monarchy; and for a government still in the last throes of 'Cool Britannia’, the demise of this ancient matriarch, with her tiaras and corgis and penchant for P G Wodehouse, was as peripheral as it was off-message.
How wrong they were! In the event, the Queen Mother’s death was the occasion for a major public reaffirmation of the nation’s affection for the monarchy. Some quarter of a million people queued to file past her catafalque in Westminster Hall (10 times the number for the lying-in-state of Ronald Reagan, America’s most popular president in 100 years).

Yet, ironically, she was the senior member of the Royal Family about whom the public knew least. She lived her life surrounded by an aureole of mostly benign journalistic speculation – as the woman who enjoyed a 'flutter on the horses’, a gin and Dubonnet, and a slightly racy entourage; but she never gave an interview, and the answer to the question 'who the Queen Mother really is as a person’ was diligently kept as vacant space.
In authorising an 'official biography’, the Royal Household has decided that it is time that space was filled – but on its own terms. William Shawcross, its author, is well known to the Household as a safe pair of hands. Hence, he has been given unfettered access to the Royal Archives, including the Queen Mother’s diaries and personal correspondence, as well as to her family and friends.

His liberal use of quotation is the main virtue of this book, though his liberality – combined with the sheer volume of the Queen Mother’s archive – has also resulted in a book of elephantine dimensions: the best part of 1,000 pages of text and more than 100 of references.

The outlines of Shawcross’s story are, of course, broadly familiar: childhood as the daughter of a Scottish earl; a reluctant betrothal and happy marriage to the future George VI; the Abdication Crisis and her husband’s unexpected accession to the throne. Her refusal to leave Buckingham Palace during the Blitz and her frequent visits to the bomb-damaged East End consolidated her popularity. But the strains of war, combined with heavy smoking, hastened her husband’s death, in 1952, and began the long half-century of busy widowhood – in Cecil Beaton’s words, 'as the nanny and mother of the nation’.
The full review at The Telegraph online.

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