Sarah Bradford - Elizabeth: A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen

PENGUIN BOOKS

ELIZABETH

Sarah Bradford is a historian and biographer. Her books include Cesare Borgia (1976), Disraeli (1982), winner of the New York Times Book of the Year, Princess Grace (1984), George VI (1989), Sacheverell Sitwell (1993) and Americas Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2000).

SARAH BRADFORD

A BIOGRAPHY OF HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN

Revised edition

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England

www.penguin.com

First published by William Heinemann Ltd 1996
Revised edition published by Mandarin Paperbacks 1997
This fully revised edition published in Penguin Books 2002
4

Copyright Sarah Bradford,1996, 2002
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-141-93333-7

For William

When I first began work on the original edition of this book in 1990, the royal family appeared unchanged, supremely tranquil, inviolable. Within two years the smooth surface had cracked to reveal a family riven by dangerous tensions to a degree unparalleled in recent history, and I found myself writing a book quite different from the one I had originally envisaged. The story ended in 1996 when the divorces of the Prince and Princess of Wales and of the Duke and Duchess of York seemed to draw a line under an unhappy and turbulent period.

Instead, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997 involved the monarchy in renewed turmoil; the changes in its wake have necessitated a complete rewrite of the final chapters, as have the constitutional reforms instituted by the New Labour government which came to power in May 1997.

Elizabeth celebrates her Golden Jubilee in 2002. She is the fifth longest-reigning monarch in British history, the longest-serving since the death of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, in 1901. It is a timely moment not only to look back on the life and reign of Elizabeth II, but also to gauge the nature of the challenges facing her as she guides the monarchy into the twenty-first century.

the unveiling of a memorial plaque to Queen Mary, 7 June 1967. (Popperfoto)

In a way I didnt have an apprenticeship, my father died much too young it was all very sudden, kind of taking on and making the best job you can. Its a question of just maturing into what youre doing and accepting that here you are and its your fate. I think continuity is very important. It is a job for life.

Elizabeth II on television, EIIR

On a bitterly cold early February afternoon in 1952 a British Overseas Airways Corporation Argonaut aircraft taxied to a halt at Londons Heathrow Airport. A reception line of members of the royal family and the British Government, among them the unmistakable figure of Winston Churchill, stood waiting on the tarmac. All were dressed in black mourning for the late King; despite the cold wind the men were hatless in honour of their new Queen. Aboard the aircraft a slim, young woman of twenty-five, her skin lightly tanned by the African sun, looked out of the window. Behind the line of men in dark overcoats ranged up to greet her loomed the black bulk of the ancient royal Daimlers. Oh, she said, a momentary gleam of grim humour lighting her seriousness, I see theyve brought the hearses. She had waited to the last moment before donning a black coat and hat, as if to put off for as long as she could the moment of formal acknowledgement that her father was dead and that what private life she had had was for ever over. As she stepped out to greet the members of her administration, she became an icon with a dual role: executive woman and symbol of her country first, wife and mother second. She had accepted her destiny.

Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of York was just ten years and eight months old on Thursday, 10 December 1936, when she realized that she would almost certainly be Queen of Great Britain. Tension had been building up over the dark December days as her mother lay ill with influenza in her third-floor bedroom and her father hurried in and out of the house, a haunted look on his face, the muscles in his cheek twitching with nerves. Outside the house, No. 145 Piccadilly, silent crowds gathered waiting to hear if and when Elizabeths father, Prince Albert, Duke of York, would succeed his older brother, King Edward VIII, Elizabeths Uncle David, as King of Great Britain, Emperor of India, King of the Dominions of Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand and titular head of the great British Empire on which the sun never set.

Elizabeth learned the truth from a servant; everyone else was too traumatized to think of keeping her informed of what was seen as one of the most disgraceful and dangerous episodes in the history of the royal family: her uncle had that morning abdicated his throne to marry an American divorce; her father, second son of the late King George V, would be King in his place. As her fathers eldest child, Elizabeth was first in line to succeed him. Even at the age of ten, she knew that this was not an occasion for celebration from either her own personal point of view or that of her family, the House of Windsor. She had seen her fathers distress at the prospect of becoming King and she had already had personal experience of the glass wall which divides royalty from the rest of mankind. According to one source, from that day she prayed nightly for the birth of a brother to supersede her in the royal succession. She was already sufficiently trained in the long history of her family and the British monarchy to know that a voluntary abdication was without precedent. Two of her ancestors, Charles I and James II, had been forced off the throne, but their bloodline, even if abruptly diverted, had returned with their descendants. Legitimacy of descent was the basis of the dynastic right by which her family held the British throne. It was the key to her own extraordinary destiny. Elizabeth knew that this was a turning-point in her life. Where any ordinary child would have headed the daily diary she kept simply with the date, when Elizabeth sat down to write up her swimming lesson notes for 10 December 1936, she headed her entry Abdication Day.