Wisteria
Courtier
- Joined
- May 12, 2009
- Messages
- 632
- City
- Maidenhead
- Country
- United Kingdom
To parody Hardy when talking to Laurel, Wallis was definitely a different kettle of fish from Camilla who could never be compared to Wallis.
In a strange sort of way I think this is a reliable biography. That she chose to gloss or rather skate over the failed marriages of he three eldest grandchildren says it all.
She came from an era when writing letters was an art and she was a really good story teller which probably explains the burning of a lot of her private letters by Princess Margaret. It would never have occurred to her that they would be read by strangers or even worse, published!
It also explains her reference toand her abhorrance of the way the Wales' chose to
Whilst she obviously consented to being interviewed, it is an absolute certainty that she would never ever have discussed what she considered private with anyone.
As to the lack of letters from Princess Diana, I have always wondered whatever happened to Diana's half of the the correspondence between them. That they have never been published in any expose seems to indicate that they really did share a private and intimate relationship. Basically none of our business.
Daily Express | UK News :: Diana axed from royal history
I think this criticism is unfair, Diana was such a short part of QEQMs life.
Trust The Mail!
We learn little of the Queen Mother’s views of the Charles and Diana crisis, which threatened to destabilise the monarchy, and nothing at all of her role in it. Yet by common consent, that role was pivotal
Their interpretation of this is -One former lady-in-waiting is on record as explaining her impatience with Diana was based on her disappointment that ‘a girl from a good family could have taken on marriage to the heir to the throne without understanding the implications’.
‘I know she’s very young,’ she said, ‘but she ought to have known better.’
The ‘implications’ that the Queen Mother was referring to involved her old-fashioned view of a traditional aristocratic marital order in which ‘men have affairs, women do not.
The Queen Mother belonged to a different era - one in which the Royal Family kept their Edwardian private lives distinctly separate from their very public roles. Newspapers, and particularly the ravenous tabloid press of the 1980s, changed all that. But was Prince Charles guilty of sucking up to and encouraging the media? Of course he was, and you can hardly blame him given Diana’s easy manipulation of public opinion. So the Queen Mother’s advice and example was, in retrospect, as wise as you’d expect from a woman that lived to her 102nd year.
I find all the whinging about the lack of chapters covering the disintergation of the marriages of her daughter and three eldest grandchildren utterly repugnant and totally irrelevant.
We have all had our pound of flesh. We are not entitled to a drop of blood!
You said it! What a pair of vicious carping wastrels.They, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, did not need the Queen Mother to make their lives hell. They managed that very well on their own!
. . the exact same issue ? I don't think so!It's only relevant MARG, in that the same situation, exactly, resulted in Elizabeth Duchess of York becoming Queen. I find it interesting that you dont consider the exact same issue with her grandson, 1st in line to the throne, to be relevant.
This woman met all the truely great movers and shakers of the 20th Century but no, all that pales into insignificance when measured against prurient curiousity about her family's dirty linen! Which to be honest, hardly rates a footnote in history let alone a toe print in her biography. That is her biography, not some sordid little muck-raking rag and, as with her cancer scare, private.
We have all had our pound of flesh. We are not entitled to a drop of blood!
The problem with Shawcross giving so little away about the Queen Mother's attitude to Diana (and Camilla) is that it leaves a vacuum which will be filled by both informed and ignorant speculation as to the reason why. Obviously there would be some confidantes of the QM who know exactly what she thought, and they were probably interviewed by Shawcross as part of his research.I'm actually thankful that this biography doesn't dwell a lot on matters...
I was about to go to my local bookshop and buy a copy but I've only just learned it comes out on the 20th of October in the states. I'll just have to keep my checking this forum for the good details.
To ensure that as many parties as possible are protected from this type of situation I believe the personal diaries of Elizabeth II will not be made available for publication until something like fifty years (it could even be more) after her death.
The Queen would entrust her diaries and personal papers to the Librarian of the Royal Library in Windsor Castle (the Librarian is a member of the Royal Household).
Certain documents would be marked "not to be released until..." and those instructions would be followed to the letter.
No doubt the Librarian already has quite a sizeable collection of Elizabeth II's private papers securely stored.
This is why I believe the destruction of Queen Victoria's diaries by Princess Beatrice and the destruction of some of the Queen Mother's correspondence by Princess Margaret was needless historic vandalism. The documents could simply have been placed in the custodianship of the Royal Librarian to ensure they would lie securely for half or a full century before seeing the light of day. Princess Beatrice at least transcribed parts of her mother's diaries but the papers destroyed by Margaret are lost to history forever.