Elizabeth: The Queen Mother
By Grania Forbes
These books are always full of surprises, not least those of a visual nature.
The current Queen is in her 80s and has always been two generations in front of me, so it was a great surprise to me to see photos of her that showed her to be a stunning young lady.
This effect, quite obviously, is magnified when the subject is her mother, who seems to have been one of the most captivatingly sweet children I think I’ve ever seen.
The surprises that I found in this book are not just of a visual nature, however. I had no idea that Elizabeth Bowes Lyon ran a military hospital for the wounded in WW1 and kept correspondance with those that she helped, nor that she and her husband, George VI, spent two evenings a week making ammunition during WW2, sticking with the rations that the civilians were entitled to (even when hosting guests of state). Until her death I knew of how she had endeared herself to the people of the East End for having stayed put during the Blitz, going on a walk about amongst the damage to chat to people and saying “I’m glad we were bombed. It makes me feel I can look the people of the East End in the eye.” Not for nothing the bond forged between her and the Londoners, as an elderly lady even stopping off at a pub for a pint of bitter.
I can’t really say much more. I’m still a republican, since there’s no way I can pretend that a non-existant deity ordains that a family rule over us, but I can wholeheartedly acknowledge how fortunate we’ve been to have had the two queens that we have.
Tags: Royalty