Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the youngest daughter and the ninth of ten children of Claude Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis (later the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the Peerage of Scotland), and his wife, Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck. Her mother was descended from British Prime Minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, and Governor-General of India Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, who was the elder brother of another Prime Minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.[lower-alpha 3]

The location of her birth remains uncertain, but reputedly she was born either in her parents' Westminster home at Belgrave Mansions, Grosvenor Gardens, or in a horse-drawn ambulance on the way to a hospital.[8] Other possible locations include Forbes House in Ham, London, the home of her maternal grandmother, Louisa Scott.[9] Her birth was registered at Hitchin, Hertfordshire,[10] near the Strathmores' English country house, St Paul's Walden Bury, which was also given as her birthplace in the census the following year.[11] She was christened there on 23 September 1900, in the local parish church, All Saints, and her godparents included her paternal aunt Lady Maud Bowes-Lyon and cousin Venetia James.[12]

Glamis Castle, the Strathmores' Scottish home

She spent much of her childhood at St Paul's Walden and at Glamis Castle, the Earl's ancestral home in Scotland. She was educated at home by a governess until the age of eight, and was fond of field sports, ponies and dogs.[13] When she started school in London, she astonished her teachers by precociously beginning an essay with two Greek words from Xenophon's Anabasis. Her best subjects were literature and scripture. After returning to private education under a German Jewish governess, Käthe Kübler, she passed the Oxford Local Examination with distinction at age thirteen.[14]

On her fourteenth birthday, Britain declared war on Germany. Four of her brothers served in the army. Her elder brother, Fergus, an officer in the Black Watch Regiment, was killed in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915. Another brother, Michael, was reported missing in action on 28 April 1917.[15] Three weeks later, the family discovered he had been captured after being wounded. He remained in a prisoner of war camp for the rest of the war. Glamis was turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, which Elizabeth helped to run. She was particularly instrumental in organising the rescue of the castle's contents during a serious fire on 16 September 1916.[16] One of the soldiers she treated wrote in her autograph book that she was to be "Hung, drawn, & quartered ... Hung in diamonds, drawn in a coach and four, and quartered in the best house in the land."[17]

Prince Albert, Duke of York—"Bertie" to the family—was the second son of King George V. He initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to".[18] When he declared he would marry no other, his mother, Queen Mary, visited Glamis to see for herself the girl who had stolen her son's heart. She became convinced that Elizabeth was "the one girl who could make Bertie happy", but nevertheless refused to interfere.[19] At the same time, Elizabeth was courted by James Stuart, Albert's equerry, until he left the Prince's service for a better-paid job in the American oil business.[20]

Elizabeth (back row second from left) as a bridesmaid at the wedding of Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles, 1922

In February 1922, Elizabeth was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert's sister, Princess Mary, to Viscount Lascelles.[21] The following month, Albert proposed again, but she refused him once more.[22] Eventually, in January 1923, Elizabeth agreed to marry Albert, despite her misgivings about royal life.[23] Albert's freedom in choosing Elizabeth, not a member of a royal family, though the daughter of a peer, was considered a gesture in favour of political modernisation; previously, princes were expected to marry princesses from other royal families.[24] They selected a platinum engagement ring featuring a Kashmir sapphire with two diamonds adorning its sides.[25]

They married on 26 April 1923, at Westminster Abbey. Unexpectedly,[26] Elizabeth laid her bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on her way into the abbey,[27] in memory of her brother Fergus.[28] Elizabeth became styled Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York.[29] Following a wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace prepared by chef Gabriel Tschumi, the new Duchess and her husband honeymooned at Polesden Lacey, a manor house in Surrey, and then went to Scotland, where she caught "unromantic" whooping cough.[30]

Portrait by Philip de László, 1925

After a successful visit to Northern Ireland in July 1924, the Labour government agreed that Albert and Elizabeth could tour East Africa from December 1924 to April 1925.[31] The Labour government was defeated by the Conservatives in a general election in November (which Elizabeth described as "marvellous" to her mother)[32] and the Governor-General of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Sir Lee Stack, was assassinated three weeks later. Despite this, the tour went ahead, and they visited Aden, Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan, but Egypt was avoided because of political tensions.[33]

The Duchess of York in Queensland, 1927

Albert had a stammer, which affected his ability to deliver speeches, and after October 1925, Elizabeth assisted in helping him through the therapy devised by Lionel Logue, an episode portrayed in the 2010 film The King's Speech. In 1926, the couple had their first child, Princess Elizabeth—"Lilibet" to the family—who would later become Queen Elizabeth II. Albert and Elizabeth, without their child, travelled to Australia to open Parliament House in Canberra in 1927.[34] She was, in her own words, "very miserable at leaving the baby".[35] Their journey by sea took them via Jamaica, the Panama Canal and the Pacific; Elizabeth fretted constantly over her baby back in Britain, but their journey was a public relations success.[36] She charmed the public in Fiji when, shaking hands with a long line of official guests, a stray dog walked in on the ceremony and she shook its paw as well.[37] In New Zealand she fell ill with a cold and missed some engagements, but enjoyed the local fishing[38] in the Bay of Islands accompanied by Australian sports fisherman Harry Andreas.[39] On the return journey, via Mauritius, the Suez Canal, Malta and Gibraltar, their transport, HMS Renown, caught fire and they prepared to abandon ship before the fire was brought under control.[40]

Her second daughter, Princess Margaret Rose, was born at Glamis in 1930.

On 20 January 1936, King George V died and Albert's brother, Edward, Prince of Wales, became King Edward VIII. George had expressed private reservations about his successor, saying, "I pray God that my eldest son will never marry and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne."[41]

Just months into his reign, Edward forced a constitutional crisis by insisting on marrying the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Although legally Edward could have married Simpson, as King he was also head of the Church of England, which at that time did not allow divorced people to remarry. Edward's ministers believed that the people would never accept Simpson as Queen and advised against the marriage. As a constitutional monarch, Edward was obliged to follow ministerial advice.[42]

Rather than abandon his plans to marry Simpson, he chose to abdicate in favour of Albert,[43] who reluctantly became King in his place on 11 December 1936 under the regnal name of George VI. George VI and Elizabeth were crowned King and Queen of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions, and Emperor and Empress of India in Westminster Abbey on 12 May 1937, the date previously scheduled for Edward VIII. Elizabeth's crown was made of platinum and was set with the Koh-i-Noor diamond.[44]

Edward and Simpson married and became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, but while Edward was a Royal Highness, George VI withheld the style from the Duchess, a decision that Elizabeth supported.[45] Elizabeth was later quoted as referring to the Duchess as "that woman",[46] and the Duchess referred to Elizabeth as "Cookie", because of her supposed resemblance to a fat Scots cook.[5] Claims that Elizabeth remained embittered towards the Duchess were denied by her close friends; the Duke of Grafton wrote that she "never said anything nasty about the Duchess of Windsor, except to say she really hadn't got a clue what she was dealing with."[47]

The Queen Mother's funeral carriage. The coffin is draped with her personal standard, shown below.

On 30 March 2002, at 15:15 (GMT), Elizabeth died in her sleep at the Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, with her surviving daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, at her bedside.[128] She had been suffering from a cold for the previous four months.[130] At 101 years and 238 days old she was the longest-lived member of the royal family in British history. Her last surviving sister-in-law, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester,[137] exceeded that, dying aged 102 on 29 October 2004.[138]

Elizabeth grew camellias in every one of her gardens, and before her flag-draped coffin was taken from Windsor to lie in state at Westminster Hall, an arrangement of camellias from her own gardens was placed on top.[139] An estimated 200,000 people over three days filed past as she lay in state in Westminster Hall at the Palace of Westminster.[140] Members of the household cavalry and other branches of the armed forces stood guard at the four corners of the catafalque. At one point, her four grandsons Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Viscount Linley mounted the guard as a mark of respect—an honour similar to the Vigil of the Princes at the lying in state of King George V.[141][142]

On the day of her funeral, 9 April, the Governor General of Canada issued a proclamation asking Canadians to honour Elizabeth's memory that day.[143] In Australia, the Governor-General read the lesson at a memorial service held in St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney.[144]

In London, more than a million people filled the area outside Westminster Abbey and along the 23-mile (37 km) route from central London to Elizabeth's final resting place beside her husband and younger daughter in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.[145] At her request, after her funeral the wreath that had lain atop her coffin was placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, in a gesture that echoed her wedding-day tribute 79 years before.[146]

Elizabeth—known for her personal and public charm[18]—was one of the most popular members of the royal family,[147] and helped to stabilise the popularity of the monarchy as a whole.[148][149]

Critics included Kitty Kelley, who falsely alleged that during the Second World War Elizabeth did not abide by the rationing regulations.[150][151] This, however, was contradicted by the official records,[152][153] and Eleanor Roosevelt during her wartime stay at Buckingham Palace reported expressly on the rationed food served in the Palace and the limited bathwater that was permitted.[154][155] Claims that Elizabeth used racist slurs to refer to black people[150] were strongly denied by Major Colin Burgess,[156] the husband of Elizabeth Burgess, a mixed-race secretary who accused members of Prince Charles's Household of racial abuse.[157] Elizabeth made no public comments on race, but according to Robert Rhodes James in private she "abhorred racial discrimination" and decried apartheid as "dreadful".[158] Woodrow Wyatt records in his diary that when he expressed the view that non-white countries have nothing in common with "us", she told him, "I am very keen on the Commonwealth. They're all like us."[159] However, she did distrust Germans; she told Woodrow Wyatt, "Never trust them, never trust them."[160] While she may have held such views, it has been argued that they were normal for British people of her generation and upbringing, who had experienced two vicious wars with Germany.[161]

Bronze statue of Elizabeth on The Mall, London, overlooked by the statue of her husband King George VI

In his official biography, William Shawcross portrays Elizabeth as a person whose indomitable optimism, zest for life, good manners, mischievous sense of humour, and interest in people and subjects of all kinds contributed to her exceptional popularity and to her longevity. Sir Hugh Casson said Elizabeth was like "a wave breaking on a rock, because although she is sweet and pretty and charming, she also has a basic streak of toughness and tenacity. ... when a wave breaks on a rock, it showers and sparkles with a brilliant play of foam and droplets in the sun, yet beneath is really hard, tough rock, fused, in her case, from strong principles, physical courage and a sense of duty."[162] Sir Peter Ustinov described her during a student demonstration at the University of Dundee in 1968:

As we arrived in a solemn procession the students pelted us with toilet rolls. They kept hold of one end, like streamers at a ball, and threw the other end. The Queen Mother stopped and picked these up as though somebody had misplaced them. [Returning them to the students she said,] 'Was this yours? Oh, could you take it?' And it was her sang-froid and her absolute refusal to be shocked by this, which immediately silenced all the students. She knows instinctively what to do on those occasions. She doesn't rise to being heckled at all; she just pretends it must be an oversight on the part of the people doing it. The way she reacted not only showed her presence of mind, but was so charming and so disarming, even to the most rabid element, that she brought peace to troubled waters.[163]

Elizabeth was well known for her dry witticisms. On hearing that Edwina Mountbatten was buried at sea, she said: "Dear Edwina, she always liked to make a splash."[110] Accompanied by the gay writer Sir Noël Coward at a gala, she mounted a staircase lined with Guards. Noticing Coward's eyes flicker momentarily across the soldiers, she murmured to him: "I wouldn't if I were you, Noël; they count them before they put them out."[164]

After being advised by a Conservative Minister in the 1970s not to employ homosexuals, Elizabeth observed that without them, "we'd have to go self-service".[164] On the fate of a gift of a nebuchadnezzar of champagne (20 bottles' worth) even if her family did not come for the holidays, she said, "I'll polish it off myself."[165] Emine Saner of The Guardian suggests that with a gin and Dubonnet at noon, red wine with lunch, a port and martini at 6 pm and two glasses of champagne at dinner, "a conservative estimate puts the number of alcohol units she drank at 70 a week".[166] Her lifestyle amused journalists, particularly when it was revealed she had a multi-million pound overdraft with Coutts Bank.[167]

Her habits were parodied by the satirical 1980s television programme Spitting Image.[168] This was the first satirical depiction on television; the makers initially demurred from featuring her, fearing that it would be considered off-limits by most of the viewing public.[169] In the end, she was portrayed as a perpetually tipsy Beryl Reid soundalike.[170] She was portrayed by Juliet Aubrey in Bertie and Elizabeth, Sylvia Syms in The Queen, Natalie Dormer in W.E., Olivia Colman in Hyde Park on Hudson, Victoria Hamilton (Seasons 1 and 2) and Marion Bailey (Seasons 3 and 4) in The Crown, and in The King's Speech by Helena Bonham Carter, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her portrayal.[171][172]

The Queen Elizabeth Way Monument, near Toronto, with a bas-relief of Queen Elizabeth and King George VI

The Cunard White Star Line's RMS Queen Elizabeth was named after her. She launched the ship on 27 September 1938 in Clydebank, Scotland. Supposedly, the liner started to slide into the water before Elizabeth could officially launch her, and acting sharply, she managed to smash a bottle of Australian red over the liner's bow just before it slid out of reach.[173] In 1954, Elizabeth sailed to New York on her namesake.[174]

A statue of Elizabeth by sculptor Philip Jackson was unveiled in front of the George VI Memorial, off The Mall, London, on 24 February 2009, creating the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Memorial.[175]

In March 2011, her eclectic musical taste was revealed when details of her small record collection kept at the Castle of Mey were made public. Her records included ska, local folk, Scottish reels and the musicals Oklahoma! and The King and I, and artists such as yodeller Montana Slim, Tony Hancock, The Goons and Noël Coward.[176]

Eight years before her death, she had reportedly placed two-thirds of her money (an estimated £19 million)[177] into trusts, for the benefit of her great-grandchildren.[178] In her lifetime, she received £643,000 a year from the Civil List, and spent an estimated £1–2 million annually to run her household.[179] By the end of the 1990s, her overdraft was said to be around £4 million.[177][179] She left the bulk of her estate, estimated to be worth between £50 and £70 million, including paintings, Fabergé eggs, jewellery, and horses, to her surviving daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.[178][180] Under an agreement reached in 1993,[181] property passing from monarch to monarch is exempt from inheritance tax, as is property passing from the consort of a former monarch to the current monarch, so a tax liability estimated at £28 million (40 percent of the value of the estate) was not incurred.[182] The most important pieces of art were transferred to the Royal Collection by Elizabeth II.[178] Following her death, the Queen successfully applied to the High Court so that details of her mother's will would be kept secret.[183] This brought criticism from the Labour Party politicians and segments of the public, and the Queen eventually released the outlines of her mother's will.[180]

• Bradford, Sarah (1989), The Reluctant King: The Life and Reign of George VI, New York: St Martin's
• Forbes, Grania (1999), My Darling Buffy: The Early Life of The Queen Mother, Headline Book Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7472-7387-5
• Hogg, James; Mortimer, Michael, eds. (2002), The Queen Mother Remembered, BBC Books, ISBN 978-0-563-36214-2
• Howarth, Patrick (1987), George VI, Century Hutchinson, ISBN 978-0-09-171000-2
• Goldman, Lawrence (May 2006) "Elizabeth (1900–2002)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/76927, retrieved 1 May 2009 (Subscription required)
• Longford, Elizabeth (1981), The Queen Mother, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Roberts, Andrew (2000), Fraser, Antonia (ed.), The House of Windsor, London: Cassell and Co., ISBN 978-0-304-35406-1
• Shawcross, William (2009), Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-4050-4859-0
• Shawcross, William (2012), Counting One's Blessings: Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-75496-6
• Vickers, Hugo (2006), Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, Arrow Books/Random House, ISBN 978-0-09-947662-7

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

• Official website
• Elizabeth at the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Remember This – An Elegy on the death of HM Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother by Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, at the BBC
• The Queen Mother's Wedding on YouTube on The Royal Channel
• Newspaper clippings about Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW