By the morning of Tuesday 9 April 2002 some 200,000 people of all ages had filed past the lying in state of the coffin containing the mortal remains of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. By the time she died, aged 101, Queen Elizabeth was a figure as familiar in the national consciousness as Winston Churchill. This is the first full- length biography — and who better to write it than Hugo Vickers, whose fascinated gaze has been riveted on the royal family since he was a schoolboy at Eton?
Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was when she married Albert, Duke of York, later King George VI, in 1923 was not initially enamoured of her royal prince, whom Harold Nicolson unkindly described as ‘just a snipe from the great Windsor marshes’. She was in love with a notorious heart-breaker, James Stuart, and, had she been given the opportunity, would probably have preferred to marry the glamorous heir to the throne, Edward, Prince of Wales, always known as David. But with Stuart deliberately removed from the scene and David’s interest otherwise engaged, she chose to take, at the third time of asking, his younger brother ‘Bertie’.
Small, with a heart-shaped face, striking blue eyes, dark hair, and an unquenchable joie de vivre, Elizabeth’s charm had bowled over a series of admirers before her marriage. In public life she had the same effect, conveying to crowds her joy at seeing them, to individuals her absolute interest in them. Instinctively she understood what people expected of a queen, interacting with crowds in almost the same way as Diana, Princess of Wales. She was a star with a natural gift for public relations and the projection of an image. Beyond that she had the confidence of a tough Scottish aristocrat and an inbred sense of duty. She protected and supported her shy, stuttering, nervous husband through the strain of the Abdication and the second world war. Many people thought he might not have been able to carry on without her. When he died she was devastated, perhaps not so much at losing him but, Vickers suggests, her position as queen which she had so relished. Within a comparatively short time she picked herself up and created her own role as Queen Mother, actively representing the monarchy and her country as no other widowed Queen Consort had done. Through the troubles that assailed the monarchy in the 1990s she remained a rock of stability: popular, unchanging, a seemingly indestructible symbol of continuity.
Vickers cleverly indicates the steel at the heart of the soufflé by contrasting contemporary quotes. Cecil Beaton swooned:
Catty Stephen Tennant was less enchanted:“The Queen looked like a dream, a porcelain doll, with flawless little face like luminous china … Her smile is as fresh as a dewdrop, her regard uncompromising & kindly, altogether a face which reveals what the owner is — someone with the best instincts, strict in her likes, gay, sympathetic, witty, shrewd, wistful & so well educated that she makes one full of admiration rather than shame. She is a great lady and childish, an angel with genius & she makes every man feel she needs his protection though she can well get along on her own merits.
One observer described her as ‘a marshmallow made on a welding machine’. Dis- respectful wits nicknamed her ‘Grinners’ for her perpetual smile. Others referred to her laziness, love of luxury and greed. Diana Cooper said that she loved chocolate so much she even ate the Good Boy dog chocs. She was looked after by a household of 32 enjoying a Civil List income of £843,000 and the use of five large homes, Clarence House in London, Walmer Castle (as Warden of the Cinque Ports), Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, Birkhall on the Balmoral estate, and her own Castle of Mey in Caithness. Yet, seen by the nation as ‘one of us’, enjoying a tipple and a trip to the races, she largely escaped criticism. It comes as no surprise to learn that her favourite means of travel was by helicopter, skimming over the countryside as she skimmed over the surface of life.“She looked everything she was not: gentle, gullible, tenderness mixed with dispassionate serenity … Behind this veil she schemed and vacillated, hard as nails.
She was, nonetheless, a good hater as illustrated by one of Vickers’ better anecdotes:
The book reads like an official biography. Vickers has made good use of sources, both archival and private. He is at home in the courtier’s world and the circles which the Queen Mother inhabited and is aware of such little known aspects as the prickly relationship between her and Princess Margaret and her apparent lack of grief at her daughter’s death. He has written a detailed account (at times the minutiae are too minute) of a long and interesting life and that is a very considerable achievement in itself.“In later life the Queen Mother did not disguise her dislike of certain nationalities, notably the Germans [and the Japanese]. When Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan, son of Emperor Akihito, was staying for Ascot, she insisted that the Japanese sword of surrender be put on display in the Royal Library for his special interest. The Queen vetoed this, the Queen Mother countermanded the veto, but eventually the Queen won and the sword stayed in its cupboard. As the royal party processed into dinner, the Queen Mother said, ‘Come on everybody. Nip on! Nip on!’