The Last Great Edwardian Lady Book

A chatty, informative book about the life and frocks of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Ingrid Seward's The Last Great Edwardian Lady is a book monarchists will swoon over and from which republicans may well take quiet satisfaction. Seward stresses the extent to which Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was a child of the Edwardian if not in some respects Victorian aristocracy; duty was the price the upper-classes paid for superiority, and personal emotions were a menace. Married off to the Prince of Wales' younger brother, she helped mould him into a viable alternative when Edward VIII proved unsatisfactory; during World War II she rewrote herself as a national heroine: "I feel quite exhausted after seeing and hearing so much sadness, sorrow, heroism and magnificent spirit" she wrote to Queen Mary. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that Queen Elizabeth's remark about the bombing of Buckingham Palace--"at last I can look the East End in the face"--guaranteed the monarchy for 50 years. Seward is informative to the point of obseqiousness on the Queen Mother's dresses, servants, dogs, horses and drinking habits; she is tactfully clear about the difficult personal relationships of the House of Windsor without, in general, allocating blame. She makes plausible, almost attractive, the Queen Mother's loathing for the Duchess of Windsor and is intelligent about the clashes between her and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. --Roz KaveneyRead More