Counting One's Blessings
The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
William Shawcross's official biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, published in September 2009, was a huge critical and commercial success.One of the great revelations of the book was Queen Elizabeth's insightful, witty private correspondence. Indeed, The Sunday Times described her letters as "wonderful . . . brimful of liveliness and irreverence, steeliness and sweetness."
Now, in Counting One's Blessings, Shawcross has put together a selection of her letters, drawing on the vast wealth of material in the Royal Archives and at Glamis Castle. Queen Elizabeth was a prolific correspondent, from her early childhood before World War I to the very end of her long life at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and her letters offer readers a vivid insight into the real person behind the public face.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the eve of WWII, Queen Elizabeth, consort to King George VI, famously declared that she would not leave London: "The children could not go without me, I could not possibly leave the King, and the King would never go." Her stalwart devotion to family and country were why her country loved her, and form the most notable aspect of this collection of many of the letters she composed throughout her long life. (She died at 101 in 2002). Royal watchers will enjoy reading about the Windsors through the Queen Mother's comforting and intimate, although not revealing, voice, such as this observation about her scandal-plagued brother-in-law, the one-time King Edward VIII (David to the family): "David does not seem to possess the faculty for making others feel wanted." Insights into the Queen Mother's character include some surprising glimmers of humor and a deep compassion for the English people but are not enough to mitigate excessive length and the lack of a strong editorial hand. Shawcross covers this material more efficiently in his own biography of the Queen Mother.
