The Queen's Reaction to The Death of Margaret & Her Mother | Elizabeth: Our Queen | Channel 5

Jan 7, 2021 • In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II's sister Princess Margaret's health deteriorated, causing her to pass away. A few weeks later, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth II's mother, also died at the age of 102. Check out Elizabeth: Our Queen to see The Queen's reaction to both of their deaths, the funerals and how this changed the royal family.

The Tension Between the Queen Mother & Prince Philip | Behind Closed Doors | Timeline

The Coronation in 1953 appeared to be a glittering triumph for the House of Windsor. But behind the scenes there was a three-cornered story of jealousy and rivalry at the highest level.

On one side Prince Philip was at odds with the Queen Mother over his desire to modernise the monarchy. On the other the old Queen was jealous of her daughter's sudden rise to power. The Coronation was a critical year for the young Queen Elizabeth. She was preparing to undergo the most ancient and important royal ritual, but the two people closest to her, the Queen Mother and Prince Philip had very different ideas about how it should be handled. Philip, the dashing but dangerously modern consort, was anxious that the Coronation should not be simply a stuffy replay of previous reigns. He wanted 'some features relevant to the world today'. But he was fiercely resisted by the Queen Mother and by Princess Mary, who referred to Philip as 'the Hun'.

The new Queen was caught in the middle. In Coronation Coup, we learn that Mountbatten, who had engineered the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth wanted the family name changed to Windsor-Mountbatten after her accession. Also, while the new Queen largely sided with her mother over arrangements for the Coronation, she backed Philip over perhaps the most important decision to televise the ceremony inside Westminster Abbey. In doing so she set a precedent for television to be given access to the most intimate rituals.

The Queen Mother: An Affectionate Tribute | The Crown Documentary | Timeline

As old as the century she lived in, the Queen Mother was a revered figure in British life. A symbol of courage in the Second World War and an enduring icon of stability, the Queen Mother maintained a level of loyalty and affection matched only by the Queen herself. This remarkable portrait digs beneath the surface and presents a balanced account of her life.

Opinion —
Johann Hari: Gin, Servants and Bloodlines for Royalty's Alf Garnett in a Tiara
THE INDEPENDENT: To be fair to her, the Queen Mother did do one thing well. She supported far-right politics

It must be exhausting to be a monarchist, forever finding ways to pretend a family of cold, talentless snobs are better than the rest of us. They have to make gold out of mud. The system of monarchy – selecting a head of state solely because of the womb they passed through, and surrounding them with sycophants from the moment they emerge – produces warped and dim people and demands that we scrape before them. What's a poor monarchist to do? They can only lavish a thick cream of adjectives – "dignity", "charm", "majesty" – over the Windsor family in the hope that some of us are fooled.

This process corrupts even the most intelligent monarchists. A strange case study is the new, authorised, 1,000-plus pages biography of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the "Queen Mother") by William Shawcross. He is a smart man: his study of the secret bombing of Cambodia by Henry Kissinger is extraordinary. Yet as a monarchist he has an impossible task. He has to present a cruel, bigoted snob who fleeced millions from the British taxpayer as a heroine fit to rule over us. His mind turns to mush. Before the real Bowes-Lyon is lost in a frenzy of royalist rimming, we should remember who she really was: more Imelda Marcos than the good fairy Glinda.

By the time she died, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was treating the British Treasury – our tax money – as her personal piggy bank, with her bills running way beyond the millions she was allotted every year. Even the ultra-Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont complained that "she far exceeds her Civil List and the Treasury gets very het up about it". She used the money to pay for 83 full-time staff, including four footmen, two pages, three chauffeurs (what do they do, split her into three parts for transportation?), a private secretary, an orderly, a housekeeper, five housemaids... the list goes on and on. She even insisted that it was a legitimate use of public funds to maintain a full-time "Ascot office", whose job was to do nothing but keep a register of members of the Royal Enclosure and send them entry vouchers. >>> Johann Hari | Friday, September 25, 2009

Queen Mother on 'Abhorrent' Diana, Princess of Wales
THE TELEGRAPH: The late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, reacted with "utter abhorrence" to Diana, Princess of Wales's decision to "wash the dirty linen in public" by disclosing details of the breakdown of her marriage.

An official biography published today describes how Queen Elizabeth was "deeply shocked" when it emerged that Princess Diana had collaborated with Andrew Morton on the book Diana: Her True Story, which caused a sensation when it was published 17 years ago.

She was also dismayed by the Prince of Wales's decision to discuss his private life with the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby for a TV programme in which he admitted he had been unfaithful.

Queen Elizabeth revealed her thoughts about her grandson's divorce in a series of previously unpublished interviews with Sir Eric Anderson, the former Provost of Eton College, which were made available to the biographer William Shawcross.

"It is always a mistake to talk about your marriage," she told Mr Anderson, who spent a total of 20 hours interviewing her.

Details of Queen Elizabeth's thoughts on the Royal divorce are contained in Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography, which was commissioned by the Queen.

In 1992, Andrew Morton's book disclosed that the Princess of Wales had attempted suicide on at least five occasions in the 1980s, suffered from bulimia and felt rejected both by Prince Charles and other members of the Royal family, including the Queen.

At the time of its publication, it was rumoured that the Princess herself had helped Mr Morton with the book, and after her death in 1997 Mr Morton confirmed that the Princess had indeed been the main source, and had even checked the proofs of the book for accuracy.

In 1995 the Princess recorded a Panorama interview in which she talked about the Prince of Wales's affair with the then Camilla Parker Bowles, saying: "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

Mr Shawcross notes: "(Queen Elizabeth) had been sympathetic to both the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York over the enormous pressures they faced from the media. But the washing of dirty linen in public was utterly abhorrent to Queen Elizabeth. >>> Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter | Thursday, September 17, 2009