Innholdsfortegnelse for The Queen (2019) i The Queen

When Elizabeth II was born in April 1926, Stanley Baldwin was prime minister, the General Strike was a few weeks away and the scars of the First World War were strongly evident in British society. Since then, Britain has experienced tremendous changes, but one thing has remained constant – the Queen, our longest-reigned and longest-lived monarch. In this collector’s edition, we’ve compiled and updated a number of articles that have appeared in BBC History Magazine and The Queen, a special edition published in 2016. We’ve also included several new articles, written specially for this edition. You’ll discover the Queen’s journey from a young princess with no expectations of the crown, through her wartime service, marriage and family, to her recent jubilee triumphs. At the same time, we chart some of…

Queen Victoria hated babies. Though she had nine of her own, she despised being pregnant, viewed breastfeeding with disgust and found her offspring “ugly” and “frog-like”. Maternal she was not. Fortunately, attitudes towards royal children have changed dramatically since then. Following Prince Charles’s christening, the then Princess Elizabeth wrote to a friend, saying of her son: “Don’t you think he is quite adorable? I still can’t believe he is really mine.” Gone is the belief that children should be seen and not heard, and with each new generation modern philosophies have been embraced. The Duchess of Cambridge, now a mother of three, does carry out royal duties yet seems to be given the time and space to focus a lot of her attention on her young family. Given the nature…

In 2015, Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch in British history and on 6 February 2017, having reigned for 65 years, the first to mark their Sapphire Jubilee. Now in her nineties, she seems to lack neither the physical nor mental powers to continue for some time yet. Comparisons with the previous longest-reigning monarch, Victoria, are inevitable and, in at least four respects, illuminating. To begin with, Victoria saw herself as the daughter of a soldier and therefore a ‘warrior queen’, a monarch in whose hands defence and foreign policy rested. By contrast, Elizabeth is the daughter of a reluctant, hesitant king – a man who, before he unexpectedly became king, and substantially after too, looked to the philanthropic side of monarchy. This has also been the core of…

Shortly before 3am on 21 April 1926, a little girl was born to Prince Albert, Duke of York and his wife Elizabeth. The new arrival’s exhausted mother had been hoping for a girl, while her father could barely contain his joy. “We always wanted a child,” Albert wrote afterwards, “to make our happiness complete.” Few could have guessed it at the time, but that little girl would become perhaps the most recognisable British face of the century. In many ways, her life could hardly have been more different from the experiences of most ordinary people. Elizabeth II has never shopped at Asda or at Aldi; never spent a week at Butlin’s or at Center Parcs; never filled in a pools coupon or gambled on the Lottery; never worried about her…

Dickie Arbiter is Queen Elizabeth’s former press secretary, a seasoned television and radio commentator and author of On Duty with the Queen (Blink, 2014). He looks at life within Buckingham Palace past and present on page 34. Victoria Arbiter is an experienced broadcaster who has served as royal commentator for CBS, ABC and CNN. On page 6 she takes us through milestones in the Queen’s life, then on page 42 she examines the tension between family life and royal duties. Stephen Bates is a former royal correspondent of The Guardian and author of Royalty Inc: Britain’s Best-Known Brand (Aurum, 2015). His book A Short History of the British Monarchy (Old Street) will be published in 2020. On page 86 Stephen looks at public attitudes to the Queen’s jubilees, then on…

In April 1926, Britain was on the brink of the General Strike called by the TUC. There had been an economic perfect storm: the postwar crash in coal prices, combined with the government putting Britain on the gold standard, had put mining under pressure. After a government commission recommended reducing miners’ wages, the stage was set for an all-out strike of miners and other workers covered by the TUC, including railway and transport workers. But despite being in a crisis, the home secretary Sir William Joynson Hicks could not be excused witnessing the legitimacy of a royal baby. The Duke and Duchess of York – George V’s second son, Bertie and his wife, the former Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon – were expecting their first child. Although the baby was not a direct…

1 The King’s Speech (Dir: Tom Hooper, 2010) Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce Princess Elizabeth appears in only a few scenes of The King’s Speech, which is set from 1925 to 1939, but the film portrays events that would frame her life. Certainly one of the key developments of her life was the growth of mass media and the demands that this placed on the monarchy. In a scene set in 1934, George V completes his Christmas Day radio broadcast, and then vents his resentment to his son Albert (the future George VI). “In the past, all a king had to do was look respectable in uniform and not fall off his horse,” he fumes, “but now we must invade people’s homes and ingratiate ourselves with…

The recent years of Elizabeth’s reign have witnessed several quiet revolutions: the rise to prominence of a new generation, with some unexpected new members, and an increased awareness of Prince Charles as his mother’s natural successor. But perhaps the most surprising is this – a fresh appreciation of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Prickly and sometimes problematic, yes, but one half of the partnership that has triumphed over not only the ups and downs common to any couple, but the fluctuating fortunes of the British monarchy. This is the longest marriage in British royal history, and Prince Philip has, said the Queen in her Golden Wedding speech in 1997, “quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years”. A partnership that has entered its eighth decade, a feat for…

The Queen’s 65th anniversary of acceding to the throne passed without fanfare. On 6 February 2017 she spent the day privately at Sandringham, as she does every year, going diligently through the red boxes of official documents sent to her daily by the Government. The chief reason for the lack of ceremony on the actual anniversary is that the date of her accession is also the day of her father’s death and the Queen likes to spend it in quiet reflection. George VI was found dead in bed by his valet in 1952, having suffered a heart attack in his sleep. He had been ill with lung cancer but his death was unexpected, which is why Elizabeth II succeeded to the throne while on a tour in Kenya. Will there…

The Crown (Creator: Peter Morgan) With Claire Foy, Matt Smith, John Lithgow, Olivia Colman, Tobias Menzies Since the release of the first season in 2016, The Crown has enjoyed worldwide success. Season one deals with the period from the Queen’s marriage to Prince Philip in 1947 until 1955, while season two covers the years 1956 to 1964, from the Suez Crisis to the birth of Prince Edward. The third season, bringing the story of the House of Windsor forward to 1976, is eagerly awaited. But while it makes good television drama, how true is it to historical fact? Like The Godfather, The Crown begins with a wedding. The ailing Don (King George VI) is about to marry off his daughter to a young upstart (Prince Philip) eager to muscle in…

On the morning of 6 February 1952, when the BBC broadcast on the radio that King George VI had died at Sandringham overnight in his sleep, men stopped their cars, got out and stood to attention as a mark of respect. The septuagenarian prime minister, Winston Churchill, spending the morning in bed with a cigar and working on state papers, burst into tears when Sir Edward Ford, the assistant private secretary at Buckingham Palace, took a taxi round to Downing Street to break the news. Churchill exclaimed: “Bad news? The worst!” There was a sense of genuine national shock. Despite the fact that the king had been seriously ill with cancer for some time and had undergone an operation to remove his diseased left lung a few months earlier, there…