The Queen: 1926–2022
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For years she prayed for her mother to give birth to a son. She longed to be spared her destiny as Britain's future Queen. Her dream was to live in the country surrounded by children, dogs and horses.
But Elizabeth did her duty, the young princess pledging before her people that she would dedicate her whole life to the service of Britain and the Commonwealth. She hoped that that day would be a long way off. It was not to be. Only twenty-five when she became Queen after the premature death of her father, King George Vl, Elizabeth became the stuff of superlatives: the longest reigning, most travelled and, for a shy woman, the Queen who shook more hands and made more small talk than any other monarch in history. She was seen and believed by millions, either in person, on television or film.
Elizabeth was set firmly on the road to becoming sovereign because of the D word - divorce. In 1936, her uncle David, King Edward VIII, wanted to marry a twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson. When he couldn't, he abdicated. After that national trauma, divorce and the fall-out from divorce shaped her reign. She witnessed her sister Margaret, three of her children and several grandchildren divorce. And she lived long enough to see the wheel turn full circle, watching as another American divorcee, Meghan Markle, walked down the aisle with her grandson Prince Harry.
While her reign was defined by divorce, her private life was moulded by an irascible husband, an extravagant mother and a querulous eldest son. In the winter of her reign she refereed a war between two of her grandsons, brothers William and Harry who were once inseparable friends. As the first monarch to reign for seventy years, she became, following a once in a lifetime pandemic, the reassuring face of hope and optimism, the grandmother to the nation.
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Andrew Morton is a leading authority on modern celebrity and royalty, and author of the internationally bestselling biography Diana: Her True Story. Revealing the secret world of the Princess of Wales, the book spent fifty-eight weeks in the bestseller lists, was translated into thirty-five languages and inspired films, documentaries and commentaries about the royal family.
Since, Morton has gone on to write No. 1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers on Monica Lewinsky, Madonna, David and Victoria Beckham, Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie, as well as a ground-breaking new biography of Wallis Simpson, Wallis in Love: The Untold True Passion of the Duchess of Windsor. The winner of numerous awards, he divides his time between London and Los Angeles.
