Comprehensive information and links about The Queen Mother

The Queen Mother was the Queen Consort of George VI of the United Kingdom from 1936 to 1952 and the mother of his successor, Queen Elizabeth II, the current British monarch. From 1952 to her death in 2002, she was known as .

Elizabeth was the last Queen of Ireland and Empress of India. As Queen Consort, Elizabeth was famous for her role in providing moral support to the British public during World War II. In her later years, she was a consistently popular member of the British Royal Family, when other members of the family were suffering from low levels of public popularity.

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Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was the fourth daughter and the ninth of ten children of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis, (later 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne), and his wife, Nina Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck. She reportedly was born in her parents' London home, though the location of her birth remains uncertain. Her birth was registered at Hitchin, Hertfordshire, near the Strathmores' country house St. Paul's Walden Bury. This unconventional registration has led to numerous rumours over the years regarding Elizabeth's actual parentage, with some critics surmising that she actually was the daughter of the Lord Strathmore by a Welsh maid, hence the unusual six-week delay in the registration of her birth. Others have pointed out that Elizabeth, born seven years after the next-youngest Bowes-Lyon child, resembled neither her parents nor her siblings in any discernible fashion. An urban myth in the 1960s even claimed that she adopted by the Earl and Countess and was in fact one of twins born to a working class woman in Waterford in Ireland. The rumour even claimed that she was in fact a couple of years older than had been announced. The rumour was universally dismissed. A distant family link between the Bowes-Lyon family and the Waterford area is believed to be the cause of the rumours. .

She spent much of her childhood at St. Paul's Walden Bury and at Glamis Castle, the Earl's ancestral home in Glamis, Angus, Scotland.

The First World War broke out when she was fourteen. Her elder brother, Fergus, an officer in the Black Watch Regiment, was killed in action at Loos, France in 1915. Another brother, Michael, was reported missing in action in May 1917. However, he had actually been captured after being wounded and remained in a Prisoner of War camp for the rest of the War. Glamis was turned into a convalescence home for wounded soldiers, which Elizabeth helped to run. One of the soldiers she treated wrote on a card that she was to be "Hung, drawn and quartered: hung in diamonds, drawn by the best carriages, and quartered in the finest palaces in the land."

When Prince Albert, the second son of George V, proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, she turned him down: "Afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to." When he declared he would marry no other, his mother, the formidable Queen Mary, visited Glamis to see for herself the girl who had stolen her son's heart. She then arranged for Albert's rival, the Earl of Moray, to be conveniently dispatched to a post overseas, clearing the prince's way.

They married on April 26, 1923 at Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth laid her bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on her way into the Abbey, a gesture which every royal bride since has copied, though she chose to do this on the way back from the altar rather than to it. She became . They honeymooned at Polesden Lacey, a manor house in Surrey, and then went to Scotland. In 1926 the couple celebrated the birth of their first child, Elizabeth, who would later become Queen Elizabeth II. Another daughter, Margaret Rose, was born four years later.

On January 20, 1936, King George V died, and the succession passed to Albert's brother, Prince Edward the Prince of Wales, who became King Edward VIII. George and Mary were forthcoming as to their reservations about their eldest child. Indeed, George had expressed the wish that nothing come between Albert and Princess Elizabeth and the throne.

As if granting his parents' wish, Edward forced a constitutional crisis by insisting on marrying the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Although, legally, Edward could have married Mrs Simpson and remained king, his ministers advised him that the people would never accept her as queen and indeed that they would be obliged to resign if he insisted. So, Edward abdicated the throne in favour of Albert, who had no desire to become king, and had even less training for the role (despite his parents' aforementioned hopes for him). Nevertheless, Albert became king and took the name George VI. He and Elizabeth were crowned King George VI and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Emperor and Empress of India (until 1947) on May 12, 1937. Her crown contained the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Her crown was heavily based on that of Queen Mary, whose crown was taken to Garrard's with "the purpose of preparing designs for a new Crown for the Queen." [1] The arches on the crown are detachable, a feature which was used in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth did not wear the arches at her daughter's coronation.

It is said Albert wept on hearing the news of the abdication, and that Elizabeth never forgave Edward and Mrs Simpson for their actions. When the ex-king and his wife were created Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth was responsible for the decision not to give the Duke's wife the of Her Royal Highness.

In June 1939, Elizabeth and her husband became the first reigning British king and queen to visit Canada and the United States. The Canadian portion of the tour was extremely extensive, from coast to coast and back, and the royal couple's reception by the Canadian public (as by the American public during the brief foray into the United States) was extremely enthusiastic, dissipating in large measure any residual feeling that George and Elizabeth were in any way a lesser substitute for the charismatic Edward. In later years Elizabeth was quoted as saying, "Canada was the making of us."

During World War II, the King and Queen became symbols of the nation's resistance, and Elizabeth publicly refused to leave London during the Blitz, despite being advised by the Cabinet to travel to safety in Canada. "The Princesses will never leave without me; I will not leave without the King, and the King will never leave," she said. She often made visits to parts of London that were targeted by the German Luftwaffe, in particular the East End, near London's docks. Buckingham Palace itself took several hits during the of the bombing, prompting Elizabeth to say, "Now I feel I can look the East End in the face."

For security and family reasons, the king and queen spent their nights not at the Palace (which in any case had lost much of its staff to the army) but at Windsor Castle, about 20 miles (35 kilometres) west of central London, where the princesses lived during the war years. However, they did spend the day in the Palace.

Because of her effect on British morale, Adolf Hitler called her "The most dangerous woman in Europe," and said that "If [Winston] Churchill is the man in Europe I must fear most, then surely she is the woman I have most to fear of in Europe." Prior to the war, however, both she and her husband like most of parliament and the United Kingdom were strong supporters of appeasement and Neville Chamberlain, believing after the experience of the First World War that war had to be avoided at all costs. After the resignation of Chamberlain, the King commissioned Winston Churchill to form a government.

"The Queen Dowager" could not be used because a senior widowed queen, Queen Mary, the widow of King George V, was still alive. Popularly, she was simply "the Queen Mother" or "the Queen Mum".

To keep occupied, the widowed queen oversaw the restoration of the remote Castle of Mey on the Caithness coast of Scotland, which later became her favourite home. She also developed an interest in horse racing that continued for the rest of her life. However, Winston Churchill became concerned for her mental state, after learning that she had held a seance to try to contact her dead husband, and urged her to end her retirement. So she resumed her public duties, and eventually became as busy as Queen Mother as she had been as Queen.

Before the advent of Diana, Princess of Wales, and after her death, the Queen Mother was by far the most popular member of the British Royal Family, with a charm and theatrical flair that marked her apart. Her signature dress of large upturned hat with netting and dresses with draped panels of fabric created a distinctive royal wardrobe.

Behind the soft charm, however, lay a canny intelligence and iron will, as demonstrated by the shrewd support she gave George VI, her thwarting of the ambitions of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and also by her sheer endurance. Like many of her generation, the Queen Mother held a "never complain, never explain" attitude to life, which saw her through many private sorrows and difficulties.

The Queen Mother had a love of the arts which included purchasing works by Claude Monet, Augustus John and Peter Carl Fabergé, among others. These were transferred to the Royal Collection after her death.

In her later years, she became known for her longevity. Her birthdays became times of celebration and, as a popular figure, she helped to stabilise the popularity of the monarchy as a whole.

Though after being severely chastised by George V for giving an interview to the press early in her marriage she declined to do so again, the media regularly quoted some of her 'one-liners' revealing a dry and often sardonic wit. Coming across a group of teenagers throwing stones at cars, she wound down the window of her passing Daimler and asked them to stop, with the riposte: "Whatever would American tourists think?" On one occasion, when in her nineties, she asked a group of pensioners "is it just me or are pensioners getting younger these days?" On another occasion, she was rumoured to have urged her daughter the Queen not to have a second glass of wine at lunch, with the admonition, "Is that wise, darling? Remember you have to reign all afternoon."

On another occasion, accompanied by the writer and wit Sir Noel Coward, who was homosexual, to a gala function, the two mounted a staircase lined with guardsmen. Noticing Coward's eyes flicker momentarily across the soldiers, she murmured to him without missing a beat: "I wouldn't if I were you, Noel; they count them before they put them out."

After her death, her great-grandsons, Princes William and Harry told the media of another amusing incident. The one hundred-year-old lady had walked in on them during Christmas at Sandringham while they were watching a video of the controversial English comedian Ali G. The princes showed her how to click her fingers while enunciating Ali's signature catchphrase which she wasted no time in using. Rising from her seat after Christmas dinner, she reportedly looked the Queen in the eye, clicked her fingers, and like Ali G, quipped: "Respec'!" ( claimed that royal commentators privately believed this story to have been an invention.)

She also employed a largely homosexual personal staff and once said, after her gin and tonic was continuously delayed by backstairs bickering, "When one of you young queens has finished, can you bring this old Queen a drink?" According to an article in (November 10, 2002), after being advised by a Tory Minister in the 1970s not to employ homosexuals, the Queen Mother observed that without them, "we'd have to go self-service."

The Queen Mother's hundredth birthday was celebrated in a number of ways, including a parade that celebrated the highlights of her life. Though 100 years old she insisted on standing for over an hour while the parade passed by, brushing away aides who sought to get her to sit on a chair kept in readiness. The last function the Queen Mother attended was the funeral of her second daughter Princess Margaret.

The Queen Mother survived her younger daughter, and two nephews — Gerald Lascelles and Prince William of Gloucester. Also she was one of two surviving daughters-in-law of King George V and Queen Mary; the other being Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. The sisters-in-law were Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, who died in 1968, and the Duchess of Windsor, who died in 1986.

Death

The Queen Mother's death had been anticipated for many years, with broadcasting organisations holding regular internal rehearsals in preparation. Indeed, in November 1993 a Sky TV employee had caught sight of such a rehearsal and, thinking it to be a real broadcast, leaked it via his mother to the Australian media, which then put out premature reports of her death.

But having lived longer than all expectations, Queen Elizabeth died peacefully in her sleep at the Royal Lodge at Windsor, with the current queen at her bedside, at around 3:15pm on March 30, 2002 (Easter Saturday). She was 101 years old, and at the time held the record for the longest-lived royal in British history. (That record would later be broken on July 24, 2003 by her last surviving sister-in-law Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, who later died aged 102 on October 29, 2004.)

More than 200,000 people filed by her coffin as it lay in state in Westminster Hall of the Palace of Westminster for three days. Many of them braved lines that snaked back through Victoria Tower Gardens, across Lambeth Bridge, and along the south bank of the Thames for as long as fourteen hours in cold winds. There were so many people that officials had to extend the opening hours through the nights and up until dawn on the day of the funeral.

Her four grandsons stood guard at the catafalque for twenty minutes on the 8th April, echoing a similar occasion when the four sons of the late Queen Mother's father-in-law, King George V, did so during his lying-in-state. [2] She had six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren at the time of her death.

At the same time Queen Mother lay in state, U.S. President George W. Bush paid his respects to her, doing so as Prime Minister Tony Blair visited him at his ranch in Texas, as they both discussed the Middle East. Blair made note of the lying in state in the news conference. [3]

On the day of the Queen Mother's funeral, 9 April, more than a million people filled the area outside Westminster Abbey and along the 23-mile route from central London to her final resting place beside her husband and younger daughter in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. At her request, after her funeral the wreath that had lain atop her coffin was placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, a gesture that eloquently echoed her wedding-day tribute.

Criticisms

During the war, the royal family claimed to be surviving on rations like the rest of the population; according to Kitty Kelley's controversial and poorly documented 1997 book , however (which, indeed, remains unpublished in the United Kingdom for fear of successful libel action) their French chef René Roussin later reported that they ate extravagantly, and the then Queen gained 12 pounds in one year. But this is at variance with Eleanor Roosevelt's account of the austerity of Buckingham Palace during her wartime visit there. Despite clothes rationing, she also had numerous expensive clothes made, including silk gowns - even though silk was banned from sale as it was required for parachute manufacture. A 1993 article in confirmed that research into records showed that the royal family received far more wartime clothes rationing coupons than their subjects.

"Westminster AbbeyThe location of the wedding (1923), coronation (1937) and funeral (2002) of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon."

In 1953, Marion Crawford, former nanny to the Queen Mother's daughters Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, wrote a book about them, The Little Princesses. Even though the revelations in the book were quite innocuous, its breach of privacy caused an outrage both in the press and to the Royal family. The Queen Mother, who had hitherto been a great friend of Crawford, refused ever to speak to her again, as did the rest of the Royal family. A Channel 4 documentary about the incident, (broadcast in 2000), portrayed this as a heartless overreaction. [4]

The Queen Mother ensured that her daughters were taught at home by governesses rather than receive a formal education among commoners. When Princess Margaret died, commentators remarked that it was unfortunate that she had been deprived of the opportunity of a proper education (something that she often complained of in later life) as she had been intelligent and talented. [5] Queen Elizabeth herself commented on her poor education at a function with British ministers from Harold Wilson's government in the 1960s.

The Queen Mother reportedly had staunchly right-wing views [6]. This may have been referred to obliquely by the report of her death on BBC Radio 4 news, which mentioned her 'old-fashioned' views, as did her obituary in The Times.

Some claim that at the Duke of Windsor's 1972 funeral, the Queen Mother refused to speak to his wife Wallis Simpson. Kitty Kelley claims that Elizabeth refused to allow Prince Charles to meet Wallis at the airport; and that though she invited Wallis to stay at Buckingham Palace after the funeral, on her arrival the whole royal family departed for Windsor and left her in the palace alone. Whatever the truth of the matter, Wallis was by now in advancing senility, confused and possibly sedated during her visit and chatted throughout the funeral with the Queen; the Queen Mother's supposed heartless diffidence can hardly have been accurately interpreted.

Towards the end of her life, the Queen Mother's extravagant life Co received some negative comment, and was remarked upon in some obituaries, though largely with a measure of affectionate amusement rather than serious complaint [8]

The Queen Mother had a penchant for drink and horse racing, and Kitty Kelley claimed that her gambling was so extensive she even had her own bookie wire installed in her house to provide up-to-the-minute race results. The Queen Mother's habits were often parodied by the satirical 1980s television programme - portraying her with a cockney accent (a comment on her seldom speaking publicly and on her wartime visits to the East End) and an ever-present copy of the . One episode depicted her competing with Princess Margaret (also known for drinking) in an arm-wrestling match for a bottle of vodka.

In 1987 it was revealed that she had two nieces Katherine Bowes-Lyon and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon. Both were long-term patients in a psychiatric hospital but the Royal Family had told Burke's Peerage that the sisters had died decades earlier. When Nerissa finally did die, her grave was initially marked only with a plastic tag and a serial number. [9] Critics highlighted the story as an example of Elizabeth's indifference and cruelty to the plight of some family members. Supporters and some historians in response said she did no more than behave as had been the norm for people of her class and generation towards mentally ill members of her family. (Comparisons were made with the treatment, by her parents-in-law, of their son, Prince John.)

In early 2000, several boxes of papers belonging to Sir Walter Monckton were released by Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, and it was discovered that several items from just before World War Two were missing, including correspondence between the Queen Mother (then Queen), and the pro-appeasement Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. According to 'a senior government figure' quoted by The Independent On Sunday, the missing letters concerned the Queen Mother's desire for the preservation of the Monarchy in the event of a Nazi occupation of the United Kingdom. [10] The papers are now in the Royal Archives, where they are expected to be released in 2037, one century after Queen Elizabeth's coronation.

The Queen Mother's coat of arms were the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom impaled with the arms of those of her father, Earl of Strathmore. Outside Scotland: 1st and 4th quarters, argent, a lion rampant Azure, armed and langued gules, within a double tressure flory-counter-flory of the second (Lyon) 2nd and 3rd, ermine three bows, stringed paleways proper (Bowes). Supporters: Dexter, a lion Or armed and langued Gules royally crowned proper; Sinister, a lion per fesse or and gules. The shield is surrounded by the Garter. In Scotland, the 1st and 4th quarters of the Royal Arms were transposed with the rampant lion of Scotland and the 2nd quarter featured the three lions passant guardant of England (the Garter was also replaced with the Thistle collar).

The Queen Mother was also entitled to grant a Royal Warrant to suppliers of services, who would display her arms on their signage and packaging. The Queen Mother's arms are still shown today, and will do until 2007, when they automatically expire.

Remember This - An Elegy on the death of HM QUEEN ELIZABETH,THE QUEEN MOTHER by Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, at the BBC News website.