Matthew Dennison - The Queen: An Elegant New Biography of Her Majesty Elizabeth II

THE

QUEEN

The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victorias Youngest Daughter

Empress of Rome: The Life of Livia

The Twelve Caesars

Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions

Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West

Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter

The First Iron Lady: The Life of Caroline of Ansbach

Eternal Boy: The Life of Kenneth Grahame

THE

QUEEN

MATTHEW

DENNISON

AN APOLLO BOOK

www.headofzeus.com

An Apollo book
First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Matthew Dennison, 2021

The moral right of Matthew Dennison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for permission to reproduce material in this book, both visual and textual. In the case of any inadvertent oversight, the publishers will include an appropriate acknowledgement in future editions of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN [HB] 9781788545914
ISBN [E] 9781788545907

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For my mother

Well, shes it, really, isnt she, I mean, shes the Realm

A member of the crowd outside Westminster Abbey for the wedding of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson on 27 July 1986, explaining that she had come to see the Queen, not the bridal couple

I have always so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects.

Elizabeth I

The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable.

Proverbs 23.5

C ONSIDER FOR YOURSELF if what follows is a fairy tale.

Here is a baby girl, tiny, with cowlicks of pale hair.

Here is the prince, her father: sensitive in appearance, though emotionally undemonstrative; orthodox in his tastes for shooting, hunting and tennis; a nervous man who stammers, afraid of his parents, impeccably dressed. Her mother is a smiling, dimple-cheeked woman, indelibly patrician. Her tiny feet are the delight of female journalists, like the columnist in the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette who, in June 1934, informs her readers that few women can compete with her for daintiness of feet and ankles. To one another father and mother are Bertie and Elizabeth, to the world at large a royal duke and duchess, and admired. Sugary reverence is the keynote of their record in broadsheets, illustrated papers and the fledgling medium of the cinema newsreel. It will remain so.

In the background a king and queen, the babys paternal grandparents. They are everything a king and queen ought to be in 1926: earnest, unfashionable, imperturbably convinced of royaltys mission; dutiful, modest and intellectually unremarkable; concerned by the barbarism of the age and overstretched tentacles of British might that wind about the globe; preoccupied less constructively with minutiae of dress, and the horrors of jazz music and nail polish. Castles and palaces are home to them, as they shall be to Bertie and Elizabeth and their newborn daughter. Millions on millions acclaim them, for this king is also an emperor, global sovereign over men and women of myriad faiths and ethnicities as his granddaughter shall be, though she will inherit only tatters of Empire and a hope for the future.

In time, in the best storytellers tradition, the baby will acquire through marriage a sable-haired aunt, who is vilified and banished: the equivalent of a wicked stepmother whose shadow darkens her childhood and changes the course of her life. Later, she herself will marry a handsome prince from across the seas. His name, Philip, means lover of horses, her other passion, and their marriage, that lasts into its eighth decade, will support her into her mid-nineties. She will ride in a golden coach; diamonds will sparkle in her hair; hospitals, sports centres, a luxury liner, Parisian flower market, chocolate mints and a pale-flowered rhododendron, and global initiatives targeting leadership, blindness and forestry conservation will bear her name. Her sons and grandsons will marry beautiful women. And, late in life, the Vatican will bestow upon her a medieval-sounding epithet, the last Christian monarch, that smudges the boundaries between the sacred and the secular to raise her above the epoch-changing squabbles of statesmen. From infancy she will occupy public and private worlds. In her lifetime her fame will eclipse that of Augustus, Napoleon, even Hitler; her image will imprint coins, stamps and, apparently, the nations dreams. Her legacy will be less bloody than those of historys great men, less ambitious, without vainglory.

The fairy godmother at her cradle grants her long life, earthly riches, an equable disposition, stamina, humility and love; she bestows conservative instincts. With age comes wisdom and moral authority. In lesser measure the baby inherits her mothers steel, her fathers temper, caution and stubbornness, both parents deep religious convictions.

The baby born by Caesarean section in the early hours of 21 April 1926, after a day of rain, is baptised five weeks later in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. She is Princess Elizabeth of York. She will become, as she swears at the meeting of her Accession Council on 8 February 1952, Elizabeth the Second by the Grace of God of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith. Her names are those of her mother, great-grandmother and grandmother, a family inheritance as well as her first (unknowing) encounter with that philosophy of continuity so dear to royalty. George V and Queen Mary are her grandparents. The name of the wicked aunt is Wallis, wrong on so many counts.

If a fairy tale requires a prophecy, in the late spring of 1926 sections of the media unite in their clairvoyance. The silent Path news bulletin that records her birth is filmed in black and white. Its promise is simple but startling: Queen of Hearts To-day, She may one day be Queen of England. The Daily Sketch informs its readers a possible Queen of England was born yesterday.

And so, as we have seen, it comes to pass despite the babys sex, her fathers status as a kings second son and the good health of the uncle who ought to displace both father and daughter: Edward, Prince of Wales, so briefly and dramatically Edward VIII. The National Anthems prayer for her protection is granted: hers becomes the nations longest reign. Into a third millennium she perpetuates a model of monarchy traceable to her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.