Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Paperback)

I believe it is pretty hard to write the very first full biography on the life of a personality more or less every one of us remembers and has formed an opinion already. The first biography sets the standards and the ground on which future biographies will be measured. And here Hugo Vickers has done a great job. The book is very well written and highly enjoyable to read. There was never ever a moment where I wanted to stop reading further. One learns a hell of a lot about her life; her family, the Royal Family and the changing of times.

Alas, there is a but to this all. I was missing the passages on the political importance of the Queen Mother during her time as consort and during her time as Queen Mother. As consort one kind of knows that she was the "most dangerous woman in Britain" as Hitler was suppose to say, keeping up spirits and being the power behind the throne. But there is not much about this in the book. The Queen Mother did not like to be described as such as she properly felt it would diminish the achievements of The King; her beloved husband. How was really the "working relationship" between King and Queen, did she influence decisions, if yes how far. Here Vickers is really shy and not knowledgeable. The passages on the abdication and the Windsor’s, the Princess Margaret's affaires or later on the younger royals are less then satisfactory. Something is simply missing and one gets the impression that she was simply a by-stander. Does one really believe this? Maybe she was but than she could hardly be the greatest consort ever. I wished he would have given more concrete thought about this and spending less energy and pages on the Queen Mother's outfits and color schemes of her dresses. This is all a bit to "loyal" and keeping with the myth. Maybe Vickers is a bit to close to her and bit too admiring. He is at least honest about his association with the Queen Mother, but I am not sure that his assessment of his own level of objectivity is correct.

All in all, it is a book one should read and should not miss. But I believe this is not the last word on the Queen Mother and future biographies will have to be written in order complete the picture of the Queen Mother. The Queen Mother was an extraordinary personality and to capture this one needs an extraordinary biography. This is a very good one, but not an extraordinary one.

Therefore, I feel 4 stars is the appropriate rating.

Little is written of her emotions surrounding the births of her daughters, their marriages or even her relationships with her sisters in laws except in a passing phrase here or there. A whole chapter is spent on the Crawfie situation and in that chapter more information than necessary is given on the people who led Crawfie astray in writing her memories.

Another chapter is devoted to her staff. While that is nice, I really was not interested in reading about early biographical information on her staff. Most of it was totally irrelevant to the life of the Queen Mum.

Much was given over to her clothing changes during a photo shoot with Cecil Beaton, a whole page of the paintings in her home etc. While when her father died, we are only told that she went north for the funeral and the coffin was carried on a cart to the cemetary? Did she not have any feelings? Did his death not make a difference to her?

Missing in the book is the Queen Mum's role in raising her children, running a palace, coping with the real fears of the war, depression etc. Even though I know the story of the Queen Mum well, I thought that I would gain more insight from this long promised book. I can only call it dry, emotionless and full of the minutiae of useless information about people around her, not her life.

I kept reading to the end, wanting, hoping to be taken into the story, into her chambers and salons, sit next to her at a dinner party and find out what really drove this woman.

Instead I found a lifeless story,rushed in parts because the author was trying to cram every social event that she ever attended into the book. That got old after awhile.

If you like to read the old social columns full of fluff and trivia, this is the book for you. If you want to gain more insight into the woman whose life spanned two centuries through many major historical events, look elsewhere.