Young Elizabeth: The Making of our Queen

Williams, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297867814 ISBN 13: 9780297867814

Publisher: W&N, 2012

We can hardly imagine a Britain without Elizabeth II on the throne. It seems to be the job she was born for. And yet, for much of her early life, the young princess did not know the role that her future would hold. She was our accidental Queen.
As a young girl, Elizabeth was among the guests in Westminster Abbey watching her father being crowned, making her the only monarch to have attended a parent's coronation. Kate Williams explores the sheltered upbringing of the young princess, with a gentle father and domineering mother, her complicated relationship with her sister, Princess Margaret, and her dependence on her nanny, Marion 'Crawfie' Crawford. She details the profound and devastating impact of the abdication crisis, when, at the impressionable age of eleven, Elizabeth found her position changed overnight: no longer a minor princess she was now heiress to the throne.
Elizabeth's determination to share in the struggles of her people marked her out from a young age. Her father initially refused to let her volunteer as a nurse during the Blitz, but relented when she was eighteen and allowed her to work as a mechanic and truck driver for the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service. It was her forward-thinking approach that ensured that her coronation was televised, against the advice of politicians at the time.
Kate Williams reveals how the 25-year-old young Queen carved out a lasting role for herself amid the changes of the twentieth century. Her monarchy would be a very different one to that of her parents and grandparents. And its continuing popularity in the twenty-first century owes much to the intelligence and elusive personality of this remarkable woman.

Review:

It was deft of Williams to concentrate upon little Lilibet as her subject, and this was my favourite of the many royal books which have been published in the last six months (A N Wilson THE SPECTATOR)

An entertaining account of [the Queen's] formative years (Philip Eade THE DAILY TELEGRAPH)

Rich with princess anecdotes... Williams's book weaves the Second World War, vast social change and the royal upheaval of abdication and celebration of coronation into energised, nostalgic storytelling (Kerry Fowler GET UP AND GO, published with THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Book Description:

The story of how Elizabeth became Queen