Counting One's Blessings The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

by Shawcross, William

• ISBN13: 9780374185220
• ISBN10: 0374185220
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-11-27
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

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 Timesdescribed her letters as "wonderful . . . brimful of liveliness and irreverance, steeliness and sweetness." Now, 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 earliest childhood before the First World War 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.

Author Biography

William Shawcross became a writer after leaving University College Oxford in 1968. He was in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet occupation; this inspired his first book, a biography of Alexander Dubček, the Czechoslovak leader, which was published in 1970. Since then he has written and travelled widely. In 1995 he wrote the BBC Television series Monarchy. In 2002 his BBC Television series and book, Queen and Country, celebrated the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and examined the changing face of Britain during her reign. He is also the author of Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11 and the Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (2012). He lives in England.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xiii
Elizabeth	p. 1
Duchess of York	p. 69
Queen	p. 241
Queen Mother	p. 449
Appendix: Family Trees	p. 623
Notes	p. 629
Index	p. 647
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