The Real Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II

304 Pages·2012·1.44 MB·English

by  Andrew Marr

For my mother, Anne Valerie Marr, sometimes mistaken for …
Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Preface to the U.S. edition

Prologue: What the Queen Does
PART ONE
Dynasty Is Destiny: How the British Monarchy Remade Itself
PART TWO
Lilibet

Interlude: The Queen in the World
PART THREE
The Queen at Work

Interlude: Britannia and the Waves
PART FOUR
Off with Her Head! The Queen in the Sixties

Interlude: Money
PART FIVE
Into the Maelstrom

Epilogue: The Future

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

Also by Andrew Marr

Copyright
Preface to the U.S. Edition

Why should Americans be interested in Queen Elizabeth II, monarch of the
United Kingdom and fifteen other countries, from Canada and Australia to tiny
Tuvalu? It is a good question. She is a kind of anti-celebrity, a woman happiest
in scarf, old coat and rubber boots, out with her dogs or horses. Though
enormously wealthy, she eats frugally, keeping her breakfast cereals in plastic
boxes and switching off unnecessary lights as she passes through rooms. She has
a wonderful smile when she chooses to use it, but otherwise her face falls
naturally into a rubbery solemnity she herself has likened to Miss Piggy. Her
formal power is very small, and almost entirely irrelevant to the lives of those
who are not her subjects.
Her son Charles—who as he approaches his own old age looks increasingly
like his Hanoverian ancestor George III, the King who lost the American
colonies—is hardly a celebrity either. The last time Americans became fixated
by his story was when he separated from his far more media-friendly wife Diana,
who was later killed in a Paris road accident. Now, with Kate Middleton, the
middle-class woman whose wedding to Prince William, the Queen’s grandson,
was watched by a third of the world’s television audience, the House of Windsor
may have a new star. But the Queen herself has never played to the cameras and
lives a life about as out of step as it’s possible to be from the glossy, brash, fast-
moving world of comtemporary culture.
This is exactly why she ought to fascinate anyone interested in American
politics and history, as well as those simply curious about modern royalty. And
since the Queen has no equivalent in the United States, her story presents a
series of striking contrasts. The first, most obvious one is that she has been head
of state for so very long. In 2012 she celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, marking
the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the British throne. Before our eyes,
she has grown from the willowy, dark-haired young mother of the 1950s into the
shrewd great-grandmother of today. Now, at eighty-five, she is the second-
longest-reigning monarch in British history. Only her great predecessor Queen
Victoria spent more time in London’s palaces. That means she has known,