Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

Description

An authoritative and affectionate biography of the Queen Mother by a highly respected Royal biographer. Harold Nicolson called her 'the greatest Queen since Cleopatra', while Cecil Beaton called her 'a marshmallow made on a welding machine'. Stephen Tennant said- 'She looked everything that she was not- gentle, gullible, tenderness mingled with dispassionate serenity, cool, well-bred, remote. Behind this veil she schemed and vacillated, hard as nails.' Who was she? The Queen Mother's story has not yet been properly told. This was partly due to her long life, and the difficulty that always exists when a biography of a living person is attempted, partly because she was a queen - and the real person gets hidden behind the perceived image - and partly because she is hard to pin down. From her privileged aristocratic childhood, to the Abdication and the problems with Diana - this book questions how she faced her challenges and crises, assesses her role, how powerful she was, and how she coped. This is a candid, personal portrait of one of Britain's most loved national treasures. Hugo Vickers, an acknowledged expert on the House of Windsor, has spent seventeen years researching this book, and observed the Queen Mother in public and private over a period of forty years.

Hugo Vickers' books include Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece; Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough; Cecil Beaton; Vivien Leigh; Loving Garbo; Royal Orders; The Private World of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; and The Kiss, which won the 1996 Stern Silver Pen for Non-fiction.

"A bulging plum pudding of insider snippets in the Cecil Beaton tradition, with camp and catty asides laced with worldly wisdom... Vickers has done serious research in some important areas" -- Robert Lacey Sunday Times "This is the first full-length biography - and who better to write it than Hugo Vickers... He is at home in the courtier's world and the circles which the Queen Mother inhabited... A very considerable achievement" -- Sarah Bradford Spectator "A major new biography... Filled with telling anecdotes, it paints an affectionate yet revealing portrait" Daily Mail "There is a small handful of British royal biographies which have acquired classic status... To this number must certainly be added Hugo Vickers's life of Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It is a truly magnificent book... Written with true authority. Hugo Vickers knows his subject through and through... A monumental record of why we all found the Queen Mother such a loveable and inspiring person, and why her pluck and her humour appealed to so wide a public" -- A.N. Wilson Country Life "Witty and respectful ... An overall portrait which may well be as close as anyone will ever get to the truth" -- Craig Brown Mail on Sunday