Robert Lacey - The Crown: The Inside History

A fascinating exploration of Elizabeth IIs early years as Princess and Queen, complete with extensive research, additional material and beautifully reproduced photographs.

The things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God.

Elizabeth Mountbatten never expected her father to die so suddenly, so young, leaving her with a throne to fill and a global institution to govern. Crowned at 25, she was already a wife and mother. Follow the journey of a woman learning to become a queen.

As Britain lifted itself out of the shadow of war, the new monarch faced her own challenges. Her mother doubted her marriage; her uncle-in-exile derided her abilities; her husband resented the sacrifice of his career and family name; while her rebellious sister embarked on a love affair that threatened the centuries-old linksbetween the Church and the Crown. This is the story of how Elizabeth II drew on every ounce of resolve to ensure that the Crown always came out on top.

Netflixs original series The Crown dramatised Peter Morgans powerful portrayal of Britains longestreigning monarch. Written by royal biographer Robert Lacey, The Crown: The Inside History adds expert and in-depth detail to the events of the series, painting an intimate portrait of life inside Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street. Here is Elizabeth II as weve never seen her before.

Robert Lacey is the historical consultant to The Crown , having worked previously with Peter Morgan on his Oscar-winning movie The Queen . As a renowned British historian and the author of numerous international bestsellers, including Majesty , his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II, Robert has been writing about the Queen and her extraordinary life for more than 40 years. He is the ideal companion to explain and reveal the secrets of her long reign. www.robertlacey.com

First published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin in 2017 First published in the United Kingdom by Blink Publishing in 2017, an imprint of the Bonnier Publishing Group

Copyright Left Bank Pictures (Television) Limited, 2017
Text copyright Robert Lacey, 2017

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ISBN 9781760632557
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Designed by Emily Rough

THE
CROWN

FOREWORD BY

PETER MORGAN

W hat is real? And what is imagined? What is truth, and what is fiction? What happened? What did not? Its become clear that many viewers, while watching The Crown , did so while scrolling through the pages of Wikipedia, searching for answers to these questions.

It was an extraordinary pleasure to write The Crown , to anatomise the many vivid characters and events that make up the story in the years 19471955. But it was sheer agony to condense ten dramatic event-fi lled years of history into just ten hours of television. So I was delighted by the suggestion that the royal historian Robert Lacey should take up the challenge to clear things up and separate fact from fi ction while telling us a great deal more. So, let me hand you over to Robert to take you back to 1947, when the King realizes he is gravely ill and his eldest daughter, the shy, 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth is about to marry a handsome but fractious young foreigner of whom nobody seems comfortably sure

WOLFERTON SPLASH

Love and marriage

B uckingham Palace, 1947 reads the caption, and Episode 1 of The Crown takes us straight inside it to discover the cancer-stricken King George VI leaning over a lavatory bowl, painfully coughing up his lifes blood. The King is dying, make ready for the Queen... Kneeling in the palace throne room is Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten RN, lean and threadbare in his wartime uniform, ready to be ennobled before his wedding to Princess Elizabeth the next day. The Lord Chancellor, the Earl Marshal and a row of stern establishment faces look on as the ailing monarch takes hold of the sword that will transform his future son-in-law from commoner to royal, their eyes darting with alarm as the King starts to stutter. Then George VI gamely clenches his jaw, twists his tongue around Philips trio of titles, and rounds off the list with the highest honour in his gift, the Order of the Garter, with which Edward III first knighted his fighting companions in 1348. His Majesty has been pleased to authorise the use of the prefix His Royal Highness by Lieut. Philip Mountbatten, reported The Times next day, 20th November 1947, and to approve that the dignity of a Dukedom of the United Kingdom be conferred upon him by the name, style and title of Baron Greenwich of Greenwich [a tribute to Philips naval background], Earl of Merioneth [a nod to Wales] and Duke of Edinburgh [a traditional royal dukedom and a compliment to Scotland]... The King touched Lieut. Mountbatten on each shoulder with a sword as he knelt before him in the ceremony of the accolade of knighthood, and invested him with the insignia of the Order of the Garter.