Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

659 Pages·2012·10 MB·English

by  Sally Bedell Smith

The Queen leaving the Belgian Embassy in London, 1963. Reginald Davis MBE (London)

Copyright © 2012 by Sally Bedell Smith
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing
Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Sally Bedell.
Elizabeth the Queen : inside the life of a modern monarch / Sally Bedell Smith.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-67964393-7
1. Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain, 1926– 2. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth II, 1952– 3.
Queens—Great Britain—Biography. I. Title.
DA490.S55 2011
941.084092—dc23
[B]
2011023661
www.atrandom.com
Cover photograph: © Yousuf Karsh
v3.1
From “The Opening of Parliament,”
M W ,
ARY ILSON
wife of Harold Wilson,
Prime Minister, 1964–70 and 1974–76
They love her for her wisdom and her pride, Her friendship and her quiet majesty;
And soon the streets of Britain will be thronged
With crowds rejoicing in her Jubilee
But as the cool unfaltering voice reads on, A different picture forms upon the air—
A small quick figure, walking all alone
Across a glen studded with standing deer …
She notes a crumbling wall, an open gate, With countrywoman’s eyes she views the scene;
Yet, walking free upon her own estate
Still, in her solitude, she is the Queen
“She sort of expands when she laughs.
She laughs with her whole face.”
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in New Brunswick, Canada, during
her Golden Jubilee celebrations, October 2002. Norm Betts/Rex USA
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
PREFACE
A Royal Education
ONE
Love Match
TWO
Destiny Calls
THREE
“Ready, Girls?”
FOUR
Affairs of State
FIVE
Made for Television
SIX
New Beginnings
SEVEN
Refuge in Routines
EIGHT
Daylight on the Magic
NINE
Ring of Silence
TEN
“Not Bloody Likely!”
ELEVEN
Feeling the Love
TWELVE
Iron Lady and English Rose
THIRTEEN
A Very Special Relationship
FOURTEEN
Family Fractures
FIFTEEN
Annus Horribilis
SIXTEEN
Tragedy and Tradition
SEVENTEEN
Love and Grief
EIGHTEEN
Moving Pictures
NINETEEN
A Soldier at Heart
TWENTY
Long Live the Queen
TWENTY-ONE
Afterword
Photo Insert 1
Photo Insert 2
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOURCE NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
PREFACE
A P W C Middleton on April 29,
T THE END OF THE WEDDING OF RINCE ILLIAM AND ATHERINE
2011, the radiant couple turned before walking down the aisle at
Westminster Abbey and stood before his grandparents, Queen Elizabeth
II and Prince Philip. The newlyweds were celebrated for their romantic
love match, and for the young prince’s determination to marry his soul
mate despite her being a “commoner”—having neither royal nor
aristocratic origins. The bride and groom gave a low curtsy and neck
bow to the Queen, who looked sturdy and stoic at age eighty-five. She
signaled her approval with an almost imperceptible nod.
Seventy-two years earlier the Queen had made a similarly independent
decision about love. When she was only thirteen, on the first afternoon
she spent with eighteen-year-old Prince Philip of Greece, a strikingly
handsome but impecunious British naval officer in training, Elizabeth
fell in love. Eight years later they married under the same Gothic arches
of Westminster Abbey. While everything else in the life of Lilibet, as she
was called, was laid out for her, she made the most important decision
on her own, against the wishes of her mother, who preferred a titled
English aristocrat. “She never looked at anyone else,” said Elizabeth’s
cousin Margaret Rhodes.
It was a sign of remarkable certitude on the part of then-Princess
Elizabeth, not to mention strength and confidence in a girl so young. But
that unwavering decision is just one of many surprising aspects I
discovered about the woman who has reigned for sixty years as Queen of
the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland,
along with fifteen other realms and fourteen territories around the
world. Her role and how she manages to perform it seemed to me to
defy rational explanation: a hereditary position consecrated by God,
embodying a multicultural and multifaith nation far different from the