1937 George VI & Queen Elizabeth Coronation Silver Medal Royal Mint Boxed 32mm

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Seller: dealerschoice73 ✉️ (218) 100%, Location: Dorset, GB, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 116010100492 1937 George VI & Queen Elizabeth Coronation Silver Medal Royal Mint Boxed 32mm.

1937 Royal Mint George VI and Queen Elizabeth Coronation Silver Medal

This is an official sterling silver commemorative medallion that was issued by the Royal Mint for the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother) in 1937. It is a beautiful and nicely conceived medallion, with the King's portrait on the obverse and the Queen's portrait on the reverse, both designs by Percy Metcalfe. It is 32mm in diameter and weighs 15.8g of 0.925 silver. Condition of this medal is superb as shown with no obvious wear. 

However, as you can see, the most striking feature of the medal is the rainbow toning which has developed in the last six years or so while it has been in my possession. Both sides have extensive gold and orange shades in the centre, turning predominantly blue towards the periphery. It is subtle though, depending on the angle of view and the light.

It comes in its original Royal Mint red card box of issue. The base is fine but the lid has had some repairs.

George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George; 14 December 1895 – 6 February 1952) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was concurrently the last Emperor of India until August 1947, when the British Raj was dissolved.

The future George VI was born in the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria; he was named Albert at birth after his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort, and was known as "Bertie" to his family and close friends. His father ascended the throne as King George V in 1910. As the second son of the king, Albert was not expected to inherit the throne. He spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Prince Edward, the heir apparent. Albert attended naval college as a teenager and served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during the First World War. In 1920, he was made Duke of York. He married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. In the mid-1920s, he engaged speech therapist Lionel Logue to treat his stammer, which he learned to manage to some degree. His elder brother ascended the throne as Edward VIII after their father died in 1936, but Edward abdicated later that year to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson; Albert thereby became the third monarch of the House of Windsor, taking the regnal name George VI.

In September 1939, the British Empire and most Commonwealth countries—but not Ireland—declared war on Nazi Germany. War with the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan followed in 1940 and 1941, respectively. George VI was seen as sharing the hardships of the common people and his popularity soared. Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz while the King and Queen were there, and his younger brother the Duke of Kent was killed on active service. George became known as a symbol of British determination to win the war. Britain and its allies were victorious in 1945, but the British Empire declined. Ireland had largely broken away, followed by the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. George relinquished the title of Emperor of India in June 1948 and instead adopted the new title of Head of the Commonwealth. He was beset by smoking-related health problems in the later years of his reign and died of a coronary thrombosis in 1952. He was succeeded by his elder daughter, Elizabeth II.

The future George VI was born at York Cottage, on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria. His father was Prince George, Duke of York (later King George V), the second and eldest surviving son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). His mother, the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary), was the eldest child and only daughter of Francis, Duke of Teck, and Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck. His birthday, 14 December 1895, was the 34th anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort. Uncertain of how the Prince Consort's widow, Queen Victoria, would take the news of the birth, the Prince of Wales wrote to the Duke of York that the Queen had been "rather distressed". Two days later, he wrote again: "I really think it would gratify her if you yourself proposed the name Albert to her."

The Queen was mollified by the proposal to name the new baby Albert, and wrote to the Duchess of York: "I am all impatience to see the new one, born on such a sad day but rather more dear to me, especially as he will be called by that dear name which is a byword for all that is great and good." Consequently, he was baptised "Albert Frederick Arthur George" at St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham on 17 February 1896. Formally he was His Highness Prince Albert of York; within the family he was known informally as "Bertie". The Duchess of Teck did not like the first name her grandson had been given, and she wrote prophetically that she hoped the last name "may supplant the less favoured one". Albert was fourth in line to the throne at birth, after his grandfather, father and elder brother, Edward.

Albert was ill often and was described as "easily frightened and somewhat prone to tears". His parents were generally removed from their children's day-to-day upbringing, as was the norm in aristocratic families of that era. He had a stammer that lasted for many years. Although naturally left-handed, he was forced to write with his right hand, as was common practice at the time. He had chronic stomach problems as well as knock knees, for which he was forced to wear painful corrective splints.

Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901, and the Prince of Wales succeeded her as King Edward VII. Prince Albert moved up to third in line to the throne, after his father and elder brother.

Military career and education

Beginning in 1909, Albert attended the Royal Naval College, Osborne, as a naval cadet. In 1911 he came bottom of the class in the final examination, but despite this he progressed to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. When his grandfather, Edward VII, died in 1910, his father became King George V. Edward became Prince of Wales, with Albert second in line to the throne.

Albert spent the first six months of 1913 on the training ship HMS Cumberland in the West Indies and on the east coast of Canada. He was rated as a midshipman aboard HMS Collingwood on 15 September 1913. He spent three months in the Mediterranean, but never overcame his seasickness. Three weeks after the outbreak of World War I he was medically evacuated from the ship to Aberdeen, where his appendix was removed by Sir John Marnoch. He was mentioned in despatches for his actions as a turret officer aboard Collingwood in the Battle of Jutland (31 May – 1 June 1916), the great naval battle of the war. He did not see further combat, largely because of ill health caused by a duodenal ulcer, for which he had an operation in November 1917.

In February 1918 Albert was appointed Officer in Charge of Boys at the Royal Naval Air Service's training establishment at Cranwell. With the establishment of the Royal Air Force Albert transferred from the Royal Navy to the Royal Air Force. He served as Officer Commanding Number 4 Squadron of the Boys' Wing at Cranwell until August 1918, before reporting to the RAF's Cadet School at St Leonards-on-Sea. He completed a fortnight's training and took command of a squadron on the Cadet Wing. He was the first member of the British royal family to be certified as a fully qualified pilot.

Albert wanted to serve on the Continent while the war was still in progress and welcomed a posting to General Trenchard's staff in France. On 23 October, he flew across the Channel to Autigny. For the closing weeks of the war, he served on the staff of the RAF's Independent Air Force at its headquarters in Nancy, France. Following the disbanding of the Independent Air Force in November 1918, he remained on the Continent for two months as an RAF staff officer until posted back to Britain. He accompanied Belgian King Albert I on his triumphal re-entry into Brussels on 22 November. Prince Albert qualified as an RAF pilot on 31 July 1919 and was promoted to squadron leader the following day.

In October 1919, Albert went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history, economics and civics for a year, with the historian R. V. Laurence as his "official mentor". On 4 June 1920 his father created him Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney. He began to take on more royal duties. He represented his father, and toured coal mines, factories, and railyards. Through such visits he acquired the nickname of the "Industrial Prince". His stammer, and his embarrassment over it, together with a tendency to shyness, caused him to appear less confident in public than his older brother, Edward. However, he was physically active and enjoyed playing tennis. He played at Wimbledon in the Men's Doubles with Louis Greig in 1926, losing in the first round. He developed an interest in working conditions, and was president of the Industrial Welfare Society. His series of annual summer camps for boys between 1921 and 1939 brought together boys from different social backgrounds.

Marriage

In a time when royalty were expected to marry fellow royalty, it was unusual that Albert had a great deal of freedom in choosing a prospective wife. An infatuation with the already-married Australian socialite Lady Loughborough came to an end in April 1920 when the King, with the promise of the dukedom of York, persuaded Albert to stop seeing her. That year, he met for the first time since childhood Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the youngest daughter of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. He became determined to marry her. Elizabeth rejected his proposal twice, in 1921 and 1922, reportedly because she was reluctant to make the sacrifices necessary to become a member of the royal family. In the words of her mother Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, Albert would be "made or marred" by his choice of wife. After a protracted courtship, Elizabeth agreed to marry him.

Albert and Elizabeth were married on 26 April 1923 in Westminster Abbey. Albert's marriage to someone not of royal birth was considered a modernising gesture. The newly formed British Broadcasting Company wished to record and broadcast the event on radio, but the Abbey Chapter vetoed the idea (although the Dean, Herbert Edward Ryle, was in favour).

From December 1924 to April 1925, the Duke and Duchess toured Kenya, Uganda, and the Sudan, travelling via the Suez Canal and Aden. During the trip, they both went big-game hunting.

Because of his stammer, Albert dreaded public speaking. After his closing speech at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley on 31 October 1925, one which was an ordeal for both him and his listeners, he began to see Lionel Logue, an Australian-born speech therapist. The Duke and Logue practised breathing exercises, and the Duchess rehearsed with him patiently. Subsequently, he was able to speak with less hesitation. With his delivery improved, the Duke opened the new Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, during a tour of the empire with the Duchess in 1927. Their journey by sea to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji took them via Jamaica, where Albert played doubles tennis partnered with a black man, Bertrand Clark, which was unusual at the time and taken locally as a display of equality between races.

The Duke and Duchess had two children: Elizabeth (called "Lilibet" by the family) who was born in 1926, and Margaret who was born in 1930. The close and loving family lived at 145 Piccadilly, rather than one of the royal palaces. In 1931, the Canadian prime minister, R. B. Bennett, considered the Duke for Governor General of Canada—a proposal that King George V rejected on the advice of the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, J. H. Thomas.

Reluctant king

King George V had severe reservations about Prince Edward, saying "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months" and "I pray God that my eldest son will never marry and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne." On 20 January 1936, George V died and Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. In the Vigil of the Princes, Prince Albert and his three brothers (the new king, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent) took a shift standing guard over their father's body as it lay in state, in a closed casket, in Westminster Hall.

As Edward was unmarried and had no children, Albert was the heir presumptive to the throne. Less than a year later, on 11 December 1936, Edward abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson, who was divorced from her first husband and divorcing her second. Edward had been advised by British prime minister Stanley Baldwin that he could not remain king and marry a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands. He abdicated and Albert, though he had been reluctant to accept the throne, became king. The day before the abdication, Albert went to London to see his mother, Queen Mary. He wrote in his diary, "When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child."

On the day of Edward's abdication, the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Irish Free State, removed all direct mention of the monarch from the Irish constitution. The next day, it passed the External Relations Act, which gave the monarch limited authority (strictly on the advice of the government) to appoint diplomatic representatives for Ireland and to be involved in the making of foreign treaties. The two acts made the Irish Free State a republic in essence without removing its links to the Commonwealth.

Across Britain, gossip spread that Albert was physically and psychologically incapable of being king. No evidence has been found to support the contemporaneous rumour that the government considered bypassing him, his children and his brother Henry, in favour of their younger brother George, Duke of Kent. This seems to have been suggested on the grounds that George was at that time the only brother with a son.

Early reign

Albert assumed the regnal name "George VI" to emphasise continuity with his father and restore confidence in the monarchy. The beginning of George VI's reign was taken up by questions surrounding his predecessor and brother, whose titles, style and position were uncertain. He had been introduced as "His Royal Highness Prince Edward" for the abdication broadcast, but George VI felt that by abdicating and renouncing the succession, Edward had lost the right to bear royal titles, including "Royal Highness". In settling the issue, George's first act as king was to confer upon his brother the title "Duke of Windsor" with the style "Royal Highness", but the letters patent creating the dukedom prevented any wife or children from bearing royal styles. George VI was forced to buy from Edward the royal residences of Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House, as these were private properties and did not pass to him automatically. Three days after his accession, on his 41st birthday, he invested his wife, the new queen consort, with the Order of the Garter.

George VI's coronation at Westminster Abbey took place on 12 May 1937, the date previously intended for Edward's coronation. In a break with tradition, his mother Queen Mary attended the ceremony in a show of support for her son. There was no Durbar held in Delhi for George VI, as had occurred for his father, as the cost would have been a burden to the Government of India. Rising Indian nationalism made the welcome that the royal party would have received likely to be muted at best, and a prolonged absence from Britain would have been undesirable in the tense period before the Second World War. Two overseas tours were undertaken, to France and to North America, both of which promised greater strategic advantages in the event of war.

The growing likelihood of war in Europe dominated the early reign of George VI. The King was constitutionally bound to support Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. When the King and Queen greeted Chamberlain on his return from negotiating the Munich Agreement in 1938, they invited him to appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with them. This public association of the monarchy with a politician was exceptional, as balcony appearances were traditionally restricted to the royal family. While broadly popular among the general public, Chamberlain's policy towards Hitler was the subject of some opposition in the House of Commons, which led historian John Grigg to describe the King's behaviour in associating himself so prominently with a politician as "the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign in the present century".

In May and June 1939, the King and Queen toured Canada and the United States; it was the first visit of a reigning British monarch to North America, although he had been to Canada prior to his accession. From Ottawa, they were accompanied by the Canadian prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, to present themselves in North America as King and Queen of Canada. Both Governor General of Canada Lord Tweedsmuir and Mackenzie King hoped that the King's presence in Canada would demonstrate the principles of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which gave full sovereignty to the British Dominions. On 19 May, George VI personally accepted and approved the Letter of Credence of the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Daniel Calhoun Roper; gave Royal Assent to nine parliamentary bills; and ratified two international treaties with the Great Seal of Canada. The official royal tour historian, Gustave Lanctot, wrote "the Statute of Westminster had assumed full reality" and George gave a speech emphasising "the free and equal association of the nations of the Commonwealth".

The trip was intended to soften the strong isolationist tendencies among the North American public with regard to the developing tensions in Europe. Although the aim of the tour was mainly political, to shore up Atlantic support for the United Kingdom in any future war, the King and Queen were enthusiastically received by the public. The fear that George would be compared unfavourably to his predecessor was dispelled. They visited the 1939 New York World's Fair and stayed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House and at his private estate at Hyde Park, New York. A strong bond of friendship was forged between the King and Queen and the President during the tour, which had major significance in the relations between the United States and the United Kingdom through the ensuing war years.

Second World War

Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the United Kingdom and the self-governing Dominions other than Ireland declared war on Nazi Germany. George VI and his wife resolved to stay in London, despite German bombing raids. They officially stayed in Buckingham Palace throughout the war, although they usually spent nights at Windsor Castle. The first night of the Blitz on London, on 7 September 1940, killed about one thousand civilians, mostly in the East End. On 13 September, the King and Queen narrowly avoided death when two German bombs exploded in a courtyard at Buckingham Palace while they were there. In defiance, the Queen declared: "I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel we can look the East End in the face." The royal family were portrayed as sharing the same dangers and deprivations as the rest of the country. They were subject to British rationing restrictions, and U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt remarked on the rationed food served and the limited bathwater that was permitted during a stay at the unheated and boarded-up Palace. In August 1942, the King's brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service.

In 1940, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, though personally George would have preferred to appoint Lord Halifax. After the King's initial dismay over Churchill's appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the Cabinet, he and Churchill developed "the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister". Every Tuesday for four and a half years from September 1940, the two men met privately for lunch to discuss the war in secret and with frankness. The King related much of what the two discussed in his diary, which is the only extant first-hand account of these conversations.

Throughout the war, the King and Queen provided morale-boosting visits throughout the United Kingdom, visiting bomb sites, munitions factories, and troops. The King visited military forces abroad in France in December 1939, North Africa and Malta in June 1943, Normandy in June 1944, southern Italy in July 1944, and the Low Countries in October 1944. Their high public profile and apparently indefatigable determination secured their place as symbols of national resistance. At a social function in 1944, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, revealed that every time he met Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he thought Montgomery was after his job. The King replied: "You should worry, when I meet him, I always think he's after mine!"

In 1945, crowds shouted "We want the King!" in front of Buckingham Palace during the Victory in Europe Day celebrations. In an echo of Chamberlain's appearance, the King invited Churchill to appear with the royal family on the balcony to public acclaim. In January 1946, George addressed the United Nations at its first assembly, which was held in London, and reaffirmed "our faith in the equal rights of men and women and of nations great and small".

Empire to Commonwealth

George VI's reign saw the acceleration of the dissolution of the British Empire. The Statute of Westminster 1931 had already acknowledged the evolution of the Dominions into separate sovereign states. The process of transformation from an empire to a voluntary association of independent states, known as the Commonwealth, gathered pace after the Second World War. During the ministry of Clement Attlee, British India became the two independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in August 1947. George relinquished the title of Emperor of India, and became King of India and King of Pakistan instead. In late April 1949, the Commonwealth leaders issued the London Declaration, which laid the foundation of the modern Commonwealth and recognised the King as Head of the Commonwealth. In January 1950, he ceased to be King of India when it became a republic, and remained King of Pakistan until his death. Other countries left the Commonwealth, such as Burma in January 1948, Palestine (divided between Israel and the Arab states) in May 1948 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

In 1947, the King and his family toured southern Africa. The prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Jan Smuts, was facing an election and hoped to make political capital out of the visit. George was appalled, however, when instructed by the South African government to shake hands only with whites, and referred to his South African bodyguards as "the Gestapo". Despite the tour, Smuts lost the election the following year, and the new government instituted a strict policy of racial segregation.

Illness and death

The stress of the war had taken its toll on the King's health, made worse by his heavy smoking and subsequent development of lung cancer among other ailments, including arteriosclerosis and Buerger's disease. A planned tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed after the King suffered an arterial blockage in his right leg, which threatened the loss of the leg and was treated with a right lumbar sympathectomy in March 1949. His elder daughter Elizabeth, the heir presumptive, took on more royal duties as her father's health deteriorated. The delayed tour was re-organised, with Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, taking the place of the King and Queen.

The King was well enough to open the Festival of Britain in May 1951, but on 4 June it was announced that he would need immediate and complete rest for the next four weeks, despite the arrival of Haakon VII of Norway the following afternoon for an official visit. On 23 September 1951, he underwent a surgical operation where his entire left lung was removed by Clement Price Thomas after a malignant tumour was found. In October 1951, Elizabeth and Philip went on a month-long tour of Canada; the trip had been delayed for a week due to the King's illness. At the State Opening of Parliament in November, the King's speech from the throne was read for him by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simonds. His Christmas broadcast of 1951 was recorded in sections, and then edited together.

On 31 January 1952, despite advice from those close to him, the King went to London Airport to see Elizabeth and Philip off on their tour to Australia via Kenya. It was his last public appearance. Six days later, at 07:30 GMT on the morning of 6 February, he was found dead in bed at Sandringham House in Norfolk. He had died in the night from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 56. His daughter flew back to Britain from Kenya as Queen Elizabeth II.

From 9 February for two days George VI's coffin rested in St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, before lying in state at Westminster Hall from 11 February. His funeral took place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on the 15th. He was interred initially in the Royal Vault until he was transferred to the King George VI Memorial Chapel inside St George's on 26 March 1969. In 2002, fifty years after his death, the remains of his widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the ashes of his younger daughter Princess Margaret, who both died that year, were interred in the chapel alongside him.

Legacy

In the words of Labour Member of Parliament (MP) George Hardie, the abdication crisis of 1936 did "more for republicanism than fifty years of propaganda". George VI wrote to his brother Edward that in the aftermath of the abdication he had reluctantly assumed "a rocking throne" and tried "to make it steady again". He became king at a point when public faith in the monarchy was at a low ebb. During his reign, his people endured the hardships of war, and imperial power was eroded. However, as a dutiful family man and by showing personal courage, he succeeded in restoring the popularity of the monarchy.

The George Cross and the George Medal were founded at the King's suggestion during the Second World War to recognise acts of exceptional civilian bravery. He bestowed the George Cross on the entire "island fortress of Malta" in 1943. He was posthumously awarded the Ordre de la Libération by the French government in 1960, one of only two people (the other being Churchill in 1958) to be awarded the medal after 1946.

Colin Firth won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as George VI in The King's Speech, a 2010 film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Honours and arms

As Duke of York, Albert bore the royal arms of the United Kingdom differenced with a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing an anchor azure—a difference earlier awarded to his father, George V, when he was Duke of York, and then later awarded to his grandson Prince Andrew, Duke of York. As king, he bore the royal arms undifferenced.

 Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 to 6 February 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was concurrently the last Empress of India until the British Raj was dissolved in August 1947. After her husband died, she was officially known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

Born into a family of British nobility, Elizabeth came to prominence in 1923 when she married Prince Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary. The couple and their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, embodied traditional ideas of family and public service. The Duchess undertook a variety of public engagements and became known for her consistently cheerful countenance.

In 1936, Elizabeth's husband unexpectedly became king as George VI when his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in order to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Elizabeth then became queen consort. She accompanied her husband on diplomatic tours to France and North America before the start of the Second World War. During the war, her seemingly indomitable spirit provided moral support to the British public. After the war, her husband's health deteriorated, and she was widowed at the age of 51. Her elder daughter, aged 25, became the new queen.

After the death of Queen Mary in 1953, Elizabeth was viewed as the matriarch of the British royal family. In her later years, she was a consistently popular member of the family, even at times when other royals were suffering from low levels of public approval. She continued an active public life until just a few months before her death at the age of 101, seven weeks after the death of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret.

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the youngest daughter and the ninth of ten children of Claude Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis (later the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the Peerage of Scotland), and his wife, Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck. Her mother was descended from British prime minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, and Governor-General of India Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, who was the elder brother of another prime minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

The location of Elizabeth's birth remains uncertain, but reputedly she was born either in her parents' Westminster home at Belgrave Mansions, Grosvenor Gardens, or in a horse-drawn ambulance on the way to a hospital. Other possible locations include Forbes House in Ham, London, the home of her maternal grandmother, Louisa Scott. Her birth was registered at Hitchin, Hertfordshire, near the Strathmores' English country house, St Paul's Walden Bury, which was also given as her birthplace in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. She was christened there on 23 September 1900, in the local parish church, All Saints.

Elizabeth spent much of her childhood at St Paul's Walden and at Glamis Castle, the Earl's ancestral home in Scotland. She was educated at home by a governess until the age of eight, and was fond of field sports, ponies and dogs. When she started school in London, she astonished her teachers by precociously beginning an essay with two Greek words from Xenophon's Anabasis. Her best subjects were literature and scripture. After returning to private education under a German Jewish governess, Käthe Kübler, she passed the Oxford Local Examination with distinction at age thirteen.

On Elizabeth's fourteenth birthday, Britain declared war on Germany. Four of her brothers served in the army. Her elder brother, Fergus, an officer in the Black Watch Regiment, was killed in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915. Another brother, Michael, was reported missing in action on 28 April 1917. Three weeks later, the family discovered he had been captured after being wounded. He remained in a prisoner of war camp for the rest of the war. Glamis was turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, which Elizabeth helped to run. She was particularly instrumental in organising the rescue of the castle's contents during a serious fire on 16 September 1916. One of the soldiers she treated wrote in her autograph book that she was to be "Hung, drawn, & quartered ... Hung in diamonds, drawn in a coach and four, and quartered in the best house in the land." On 5 November 1916, she was confirmed at St John's Scottish Episcopal Church in Forfar.

Prince Albert, Duke of York—"Bertie" to the family—was the second son of King George V. He initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to". When he declared he would marry no other, his mother, Queen Mary, visited Glamis to see for herself the girl who had stolen her son's heart. She became convinced that Elizabeth was "the one girl who could make Bertie happy", but nevertheless refused to interfere. At the same time, Elizabeth was courted by James Stuart, Albert's equerry, until he left the prince's service for a better-paid job in the American oil business.

In February 1922, Elizabeth was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert's sister, Princess Mary, to Viscount Lascelles. The following month, Albert proposed again, but she refused him once more. Eventually in January 1923, Elizabeth agreed to marry Albert, despite her misgivings about royal life. Albert's freedom in choosing Elizabeth, not a member of a royal family, though the daughter of a peer, was considered a gesture in favour of political modernisation; previously, princes were expected to marry princesses from other royal families. They selected a platinum engagement ring featuring a Kashmir sapphire with two diamonds adorning its sides.

The couple married on 26 April 1923, at Westminster Abbey. Unexpectedly, Elizabeth laid her bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on her way into the abbey, in memory of her brother Fergus. Elizabeth became styled Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York. Following a wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace prepared by chef Gabriel Tschumi, Elizabeth and Albert honeymooned at Polesden Lacey, a manor house in Surrey owned by the wealthy socialite and friend Margaret Greville. They then went to Scotland, where she caught "unromantic" whooping cough.

After a successful royal visit to Northern Ireland in July 1924, the Labour government agreed that Albert and Elizabeth could tour East Africa from December 1924 to April 1925. The Labour government was defeated by the Conservatives in a general election in November (which Elizabeth described as "marvellous" to her mother) and the Governor-General of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Sir Lee Stack, was assassinated three weeks later. Despite this, the tour went ahead, and they visited Aden, Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan, but Egypt was avoided because of political tensions.

Albert had a stammer, which affected his ability to deliver speeches, and after October 1925, Elizabeth assisted in helping him through the therapy devised by Lionel Logue, an episode portrayed in the 2010 film The King's Speech. In 1926, the couple had their first child, Princess Elizabeth—"Lilibet" to the family—who would later become Queen Elizabeth II. Albert and Elizabeth, without their child, travelled to Australia to open Parliament House in Canberra in 1927. She was, in her own words, "very miserable at leaving the baby". Their journey by sea took them via Jamaica, the Panama Canal and the Pacific; Elizabeth fretted constantly over her baby back in Britain, but their journey was a public relations success. She charmed the public in Fiji when, as she was shaking hands with a long line of official guests, a stray dog walked in on the ceremony; she shook its paw as well. In New Zealand she fell ill with a cold and missed some engagements, but enjoyed the local fishing in the Bay of Islands accompanied by Australian sports fisherman Harry Andreas. On the return journey, via Mauritius, the Suez Canal, Malta and Gibraltar, their transport, HMS Renown, caught fire and they prepared to abandon ship before the fire was brought under control.

The couple's second daughter, Princess Margaret, was born at Glamis Castle in 1930. The couple initially lived at White Lodge, Richmond Park, before moving to 145 Piccadilly.

On 20 January 1936, George V died and his eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, became King Edward VIII. Just months into Edward's reign, his decision to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson caused a constitutional crisis that resulted in his abdication. Elizabeth's husband, Albert, reluctantly became king in his brother's place on 11 December 1936 under the regnal name of George VI. Elizabeth and her husband were crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor and Empress of India, in Westminster Abbey on 12 May 1937, the date previously scheduled for Edward VIII. Elizabeth's crown was made of platinum and was set with the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

Edward married Wallis Simpson, and they became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, but while Edward was a Royal Highness, George VI withheld the style from Wallis, a decision that Elizabeth supported. Elizabeth was later quoted as referring to Wallis as "that woman", and Wallis referred to Elizabeth as "Cookie", because of her supposed resemblance to a fat Scots cook Claims that Elizabeth remained embittered towards Wallis were denied by her close friends; the Duke of Grafton wrote that she "never said anything nasty about the Duchess of Windsor, except to say she really hadn't got a clue what she was dealing with".

In summer 1938, a state visit to France by the King and Queen was postponed for three weeks because of the death of Elizabeth's mother, Lady Strathmore. In two weeks, Norman Hartnell created an all-white trousseau for Elizabeth, who could not wear colours as she was still in mourning. The visit was designed to bolster Anglo-French solidarity in the face of aggression from Nazi Germany. The French press praised the demeanour and charm of the royal couple during the delayed but successful visit, augmented by Hartnell's wardrobe.

Nevertheless, Nazi aggression continued, and the government prepared for war. After the Munich Agreement of 1938 appeared to forestall the advent of armed conflict, the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain was invited onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen to receive acclamation from a crowd of well-wishers. While broadly popular among the general public, Chamberlain's policy towards Hitler was the subject of some opposition in the House of Commons, which led historian John Grigg to describe George VI's behaviour in associating himself so prominently with a politician as "the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign in the present century". However, historians argue that the King only ever followed ministerial advice and acted as he was constitutionally bound to do.

In May and June 1939, Elizabeth and her husband toured Canada from coast to coast and back, the first time a reigning monarch had toured Canada. They also visited the United States, spending time with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House and his Hudson Valley estate. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt said that Elizabeth was "perfect as a Queen, gracious, informed, saying the right thing & kind but a little self-consciously regal". The tour was designed to bolster trans-Atlantic support in the event of war, and to affirm Canada's status as an independent kingdom sharing with Britain the same person as monarch.

According to an often-told story, during one of the earliest of the royal couple's repeated encounters with the crowds, a Boer War veteran asked Elizabeth, "Are you Scots or are you English?" She replied, "I am a Canadian! Their reception by the Canadian and U.S. public was extremely enthusiastic, and largely dissipated any residual feeling that they were a lesser substitute for Edward. Elizabeth told Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, "that tour made us", and she returned to Canada frequently both on official tours and privately.

During the Second World War, the royal couple became symbols of the fight against fascism. Shortly after the declaration of war, The Queen's Book of the Red Cross was conceived. Fifty authors and artists contributed to the book, which was fronted by Cecil Beaton's portrait of Elizabeth and was sold in aid of the Red Cross. She also broadcast to the nation in an attempt to comfort families during the evacuation of children and the mobilisation of fighting-age men. Elizabeth publicly refused to leave London or send the children to Canada, even during the Blitz, when the British Cabinet advised her to do so. She declared, "The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave."

Elizabeth visited troops, hospitals, factories, and parts of Britain that were targeted by the German Luftwaffe, in particular the East End near London's docks. Her visits initially provoked hostility; rubbish was thrown at her and the crowds jeered, in part because she wore expensive clothes that served to alienate her from people suffering the deprivations of war. She explained that if the public came to see her they would wear their best clothes, so she should reciprocate in kind; Norman Hartnell dressed her in gentle colours and avoided black to represent "the rainbow of hope". When Buckingham Palace itself took several hits during the height of the bombing, Elizabeth said, "I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face."

Though the King and Queen spent the working day at Buckingham Palace, partly for security and family reasons they stayed at night at Windsor Castle about 20 miles (32 km) west of central London with their daughters. The palace had lost much of its staff to the army, and most of the rooms were shut. The windows were shattered by bomb blasts, and had to be boarded up. During the "Phoney War" the Queen was given revolver training because of fears of imminent invasion.

French prime minister Édouard Daladier characterised Elizabeth as "an excessively ambitious young woman who would be ready to sacrifice every other country in the world so that she may remain Queen." Adolf Hitler is said to have called her "the most dangerous woman in Europe" because he viewed her popularity as a threat to German interests. However, before the war both she and her husband, like most of Parliament and the British public, had supported appeasement and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, believing after the experience of the First World War that war had to be avoided at all costs. After the resignation of Chamberlain, the King asked Winston Churchill to form a government. Although the King was initially suspicious of Churchill's character and motives, in due course both the King and Queen came to respect and admire him.

In the 1945 British general election, Churchill's Conservative Party was soundly defeated by the Labour Party of Clement Attlee. Elizabeth's political views were rarely disclosed, but a letter she wrote in 1947 described Attlee's "high hopes of a socialist heaven on earth" as fading and presumably describes those who voted for him as "poor people, so many half-educated and bemused. I do love them." Woodrow Wyatt thought her "much more pro-Conservative" than other members of the royal family, but she later told him, "I like the dear old Labour Party." She also told the Duchess of Grafton, "I love communists."

During the 1947 royal tour of South Africa, Elizabeth's serene public behaviour was broken, exceptionally, when she rose from the royal car to strike an admirer with her umbrella because she had mistaken his enthusiasm for hostility. The 1948 royal tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed because of George's declining health. In March 1949, he had a successful operation to improve the circulation in his right leg. In summer 1951, Elizabeth and her daughters fulfilled the King's public engagements in his place. In September, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. After a lung resection, he appeared to recover, but the delayed trip to Australia and New Zealand was altered so that Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, went in the King and Queen's place in January 1952. George VI died in his sleep on 6 February 1952 while Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were in Kenya on a Commonwealth tour, and with George's death his daughter immediately became Queen Elizabeth II.

Shortly after George VI's death, Elizabeth began to be styled as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother because the normal style for the widow of a king, "Queen Elizabeth", would have been too similar to the style of her elder daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. Popularly, she became the "Queen Mother" or the "Queen Mum". She was devastated by her husband's death and retired to Scotland. However, after a meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, she broke her retirement and resumed her public duties. Eventually she became just as busy as queen mother as she had been as queen consort. In July 1953, she undertook her first overseas visit since the funeral when she visited the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland with Princess Margaret. She laid the foundation stone of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland—the current University of Zimbabwe. Upon her return to the region in 1957, Elizabeth was inaugurated as the college's president, and attended other events that were deliberately designed to be multi-racial. During her daughter's extensive tour of the Commonwealth over 1953–54, Elizabeth acted as a counsellor of state and looked after her grandchildren, Charles and Anne. In February 1959, she visited Kenya and Uganda.

Elizabeth oversaw the restoration of the remote Castle of Mey, on the north coast of Scotland, which she used to "get away from everything" for three weeks in August and ten days in October each year. She developed her interest in horse racing, particularly steeplechasing, which had been inspired by the amateur jockey Lord Mildmay in 1949. She owned the winners of approximately 500 races. Her distinctive colours of blue with buff stripes were carried by horses such as Special Cargo, the winner of the 1984 Whitbread Gold Cup, and Devon Loch, which spectacularly halted just short of the winning post at the 1956 Grand National and whose jockey Dick Francis later had a successful career as the writer of racing-themed detective stories. Peter Cazalet was her trainer for over 20 years. Although (contrary to rumour) she never placed bets, she did have the racing commentaries piped direct to her London residence, Clarence House, so she could follow the races. As an art collector, she purchased works by Claude Monet, Augustus John and Peter Carl Fabergé, among others.

In February 1964, Elizabeth had an emergency appendectomy, which led to the postponement of a planned tour of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji until 1966. She recuperated during a Caribbean cruise aboard the royal yacht, Britannia. In December 1966, she underwent an operation to remove a tumour, after she was diagnosed with colon cancer. Contrary to rumours which subsequently spread, she did not have a colostomy. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984 and a lump was removed from her breast. Her bouts with cancer were never made public during her lifetime.

During her widowhood, Elizabeth continued to travel extensively, including on over forty official visits overseas. In 1975, she visited Iran at the invitation of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The British ambassador and his wife, Anthony and Sheila Parsons, noted how the Iranians were bemused by her habit of speaking to everyone regardless of status or importance, and hoped the Shah's entourage would learn from the visit to pay more attention to ordinary people. Between 1976 and 1984, she made annual summer visits to France, which were among 22 private trips to continental Europe between 1963 and 1992.

In 1982, Elizabeth was rushed to hospital when a fish bone became stuck in her throat, and had an operation to remove it. Being a keen angler, she calmly joked afterwards, "The salmon have got their own back." Similar incidents occurred at Balmoral in August 1986, when she was hospitalised at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary overnight but no operation was needed, and in May 1993, when she was admitted to the Infirmary for surgery under general anaesthetic.

In 1987, Elizabeth was criticised when it emerged that two of her nieces, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, had been committed to a psychiatric hospital in Redhill, Surrey, in 1941 because they had severe learning disabilities. However, Burke's Peerage had listed the sisters as dead, apparently because their mother, Fenella (Elizabeth's sister-in-law), "was 'extremely vague' when it came to filling in forms and might not have completed the paperwork for the family entry correctly". When Nerissa died in 1986, her grave was originally marked with a plastic tag and a serial number. Elizabeth said that the news of their institutionalisation came as a surprise to her.

In her later years, Elizabeth became known for her longevity. Her 90th birthday—4 August 1990—was celebrated by a parade on 27 June that involved many of the 300 organisations of which she was a patron. In 1995, she attended events commemorating the end of the war fifty years before, and had two operations: one to remove a cataract in her left eye, and one to replace her right hip. In 1998, her left hip was replaced after it was broken when she slipped and fell during a visit to Sandringham stables.

Elizabeth's 100th birthday was celebrated in a number of ways: a parade that celebrated the highlights of her life included contributions from Sir Norman Wisdom and Sir John Mills; her image appeared on a special commemorative £20 note issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland; and she attended a lunch at the Guildhall, London, at which George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, accidentally attempted to drink her glass of wine. Her quick admonition of "That's mine!" caused widespread amusement. In November 2000, she broke her collarbone in a fall that kept her recuperating at home over Christmas and the New Year.

On 1 August 2001, Elizabeth had a blood transfusion for anaemia after suffering from mild heat exhaustion, though she was well enough to make her traditional appearance outside Clarence House three days later to celebrate her 101st birthday. Her final public engagements included planting a cross at the Field of Remembrance on 8 November 2001; a reception at the Guildhall, London, for the reformation of the 600 Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force on 15 November; and attending the re-commissioning of HMS Ark Royal on 22 November.

In December 2001, aged 101, Elizabeth fractured her pelvis in a fall. Even so, she insisted on standing for the national anthem during the memorial service for her husband on 6 February the following year. Just three days later, their second daughter Princess Margaret died. On 13 February 2002, Elizabeth fell and cut her arm in her sitting room at Sandringham House; an ambulance and doctor were called, and the wound was dressed. She was still determined to attend Margaret's funeral at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, two days later on the Friday of that week, even though the Queen and the rest of the royal family were concerned about the journey the Queen Mother would face to get from Norfolk to Windsor; she was also rumoured to be hardly eating. Nevertheless, she flew to Windsor by helicopter, and so that no photographs of her in a wheelchair (which she hated being seen in) could be taken—she insisted that she be shielded from the press—she travelled to the service in a people carrier with blacked-out windows, which had been previously used by Margaret.

On 5 March 2002, Elizabeth was present at the luncheon of the annual lawn party of the Eton Beagles, and watched the Cheltenham Races on television; however, her health began to deteriorate precipitously during her last weeks, after retreating to Royal Lodge for the final time.

On 30 March 2002, at 15:15 GMT, Elizabeth died at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, at the age of 101. Her surviving daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, was by her side. The Queen Mother had been suffering from a chest cold since Christmas 2001. At 101 years and 238 days old she was the first member of the British royal family to live past the age of 100. She was the longest-living member of the British royal family at the time of her death. Her surviving sister-in-law, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, exceeded that, dying at the age of 102 on 29 October 2004. She was one of the longest-lived members of any royal family.

Elizabeth grew camellias in each of her gardens, and before her flag-draped coffin was taken from Windsor to lie in state at Westminster Hall, an arrangement of camellias from her own gardens was placed on top. An estimated 200,000 people over three days filed past as she lay in state in Westminster Hall at the Palace of Westminster. Members of the household cavalry and other branches of the armed forces stood guard at the four corners of the catafalque. At one point, her four grandsons–Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Viscount Linley–mounted the guard as a mark of respect, an honour similar to the Vigil of the Princes at the lying in state of King George V.

On the day of Elizabeth's funeral, 9 April, the governor-general of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson, issued a proclamation asking Canadians to honour Elizabeth's memory that day. In Australia, Governor-General Peter Hollingworth read the lesson at a memorial service held in St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney.

In London, more than a million people filled the area outside Westminster Abbey and along the 23-mile (37 km) route from central London to Elizabeth's final resting place in the King George VI Memorial Chapel beside her husband and younger daughter in St George's Chapel. At her request, after her funeral the wreath that had lain atop her coffin was placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, in a gesture that echoed her wedding-day tribute 79 years before.

Known for her personal and public charm, Elizabeth was one of the most popular members of the royal family, and helped to stabilise the popularity of the monarchy as a whole.

Elizabeth's critics included Kitty Kelley, who falsely alleged that she did not abide by the rationing regulations during the Second World War. This, however, was contradicted by the official records, and Eleanor Roosevelt during her wartime stay at Buckingham Palace reported expressly on the rationed food served in the Palace and the limited bathwater that was permitted. Claims that Elizabeth used racist slurs to refer to black people were strongly denied by Major Colin Burgess, the husband of Elizabeth Burgess, a mixed-race secretary who accused members of Prince Charles's Household of racial abuse. Elizabeth made no public comments on race, but according to Robert Rhodes James in private she "abhorred racial discrimination" and decried apartheid as "dreadful". Woodrow Wyatt records in his diary that when he expressed the view that non-white countries have nothing in common with "us", she told him, "I am very keen on the Commonwealth. They're all like us." However, she did distrust Germans; she told Woodrow Wyatt, "Never trust them, never trust them." While she may have held such views, it has been argued that they were normal for British people of her generation and upbringing, who had experienced two vicious wars with Germany.

In his official biography, William Shawcross portrays Elizabeth as a person whose indomitable optimism, zest for life, good manners, mischievous sense of humour, and interest in people and subjects of all kinds contributed to her exceptional popularity and to her longevity. Sir Hugh Casson said Elizabeth was like "a wave breaking on a rock, because although she is sweet and pretty and charming, she also has a basic streak of toughness and tenacity. ... when a wave breaks on a rock, it showers and sparkles with a brilliant play of foam and droplets in the sun, yet beneath is really hard, tough rock, fused, in her case, from strong principles, physical courage and a sense of duty." Sir Peter Ustinov described her during a student demonstration at the University of Dundee in 1968:

As we arrived in a solemn procession the students pelted us with toilet rolls. They kept hold of one end, like streamers at a ball, and threw the other end. The Queen Mother stopped and picked these up as though somebody had misplaced them. [Returning them to the students she said,] 'Was this yours? Oh, could you take it?' And it was her sang-froid and her absolute refusal to be shocked by this, which immediately silenced all the students. She knows instinctively what to do on those occasions. She doesn't rise to being heckled at all; she just pretends it must be an oversight on the part of the people doing it. The way she reacted not only showed her presence of mind, but was so charming and so disarming, even to the most rabid element, that she brought peace to troubled waters.

Elizabeth was well known for her dry witticisms. On hearing that Edwina Mountbatten was buried at sea, she said: "Dear Edwina, she always liked to make a splash." Accompanied by the gay writer Sir Noël Coward at a gala, she mounted a staircase lined with guards. Noticing Coward's eyes flicker momentarily across the soldiers, she murmured to him: "I wouldn't if I were you, Noël; they count them before they put them out."

After being advised by a Conservative minister in the 1970s not to employ homosexuals, Elizabeth observed that without them, "we'd have to go self-service". On the fate of a gift of a nebuchadnezzar of champagne (20 bottles' worth) even if her family did not come for the holidays, she said, "I'll polish it off myself." Emine Saner of The Guardian suggests that with a gin and Dubonnet at noon, red wine with lunch, a port and martini at 6 pm and two glasses of champagne at dinner, "a conservative estimate puts the number of alcohol units she drank at 70 a week". Her lifestyle amused journalists, particularly when it was revealed she had a multi-million pound overdraft with Coutts Bank.

Elizabeth's habits were parodied by the satirical 1980s television programme Spitting Image. This was the first satirical depiction on television; the makers initially demurred from featuring her, fearing that it would be considered off-limits by most of the viewing public. In the end, she was portrayed as a perpetually tipsy Beryl Reid soundalike. She was portrayed by Juliet Aubrey in Bertie and Elizabeth, Sylvia Syms in The Queen, Natalie Dormer in W.E., Olivia Colman in Hyde Park on Hudson, Victoria Hamilton (Seasons 1 and 2), Marion Bailey (Seasons 3 and 4) and Marcia Warren (Season 5) in The Crown and in The King's Speech by Helena Bonham Carter, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her portrayal.

The Cunard White Star Line's RMS Queen Elizabeth was named after her. She launched the ship on 27 September 1938 in Clydebank, Scotland. Supposedly, the liner started to slide into the water before Elizabeth could officially launch her, and acting sharply, she managed to smash a bottle of Australian red over the liner's bow just before it slid out of reach. In 1954, Elizabeth sailed to New York on her namesake.

A statue of Elizabeth by sculptor Philip Jackson was unveiled in front of the George VI Memorial, off The Mall, London, on 24 February 2009, creating the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Memorial.

In March 2011, Elizabeth's eclectic musical taste was revealed when details of her small record collection kept at the Castle of Mey were made public. Her records included ska, local folk, Scottish reels and the musicals Oklahoma! and The King and I, and artists such as yodeller Montana Slim, Tony Hancock, The Goons and Noël Coward.

Eight years before her death, Elizabeth had reportedly placed two-thirds of her money (an estimated £19 million)[184] into trusts, for the benefit of her great-grandchildren. In her lifetime, she received £643,000 a year from the Civil List, and spent an estimated £1–2 million annually to run her household. By the end of the 1990s, her overdraft was said to be around £4 million. She left the bulk of her estate, estimated to be worth between £50 and £70 million, including paintings, Fabergé eggs, jewellery, and horses, to her surviving daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. Under an agreement reached in 1993, property passing from monarch to monarch is exempt from inheritance tax, as is property passing from the consort of a former monarch to the current monarch, so a tax liability estimated at £28 million (40 percent of the value of the estate) was not incurred. The most important pieces of art were transferred to the Royal Collection by Elizabeth II. Following her death, the Queen successfully applied to the High Court so that details of her mother's will would be kept secret. This brought criticism from the Labour Party politicians and segments of the public, and the Queen eventually released the outlines of her mother's will.

Elizabeth's coat of arms was the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom (in either the English or the Scottish version) impaled with the canting arms of her father, the Earl of Strathmore; the latter being: 1st and 4th quarters, Argent, a lion rampant Azure, armed and langued Gules, within a double tressure flory-counter-flory of the second (Lyon); 2nd and 3rd quarters, Ermine, three bows stringed paleways proper (Bowes). The shield is surmounted by the imperial crown, and supported by the crowned lion of England and a lion rampant per fess Or and Gules.

Name    Birth      Death    Marriage             Their children     Their grandchildren

Date      Spouse

Elizabeth II          21 April 1926      8 September 2022           20 November 1947          Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh              Charles III            William, Prince of Wales

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

Anne, Princess Royal       Peter Phillips

Zara Tindall

Prince Andrew, Duke of York       Princess Beatrice

Princess Eugenie

Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh            Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor

James Mountbatten-Windsor, Earl of Wessex

Princess Margaret            21 August 1930 9 February 2002               6 May 1960

Divorced 11 July 1978     Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon     David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon         Charles Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley

Lady Margarita Armstrong-Jones

Lady Sarah Chatto           Samuel Chatto

Arthur Chatto

Ancestors of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

8. Thomas Lyon-Bowes, Lord Glamis

4. Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne    

9. Charlotte Grimstead

2. Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne    

10. Oswald Smith

5. Frances Smith              

11. Henrietta Mildred Hodgson

1. Elizabeth, Queen of the United Kingdom          

12. Lord Charles Cavendish-Bentinck

6. Charles Cavendish-Bentinck    

13. Anne Wellesley

3. Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck      

14. Edwyn Burnaby

7. Louisa Burnaby            

15. Anne Caroline Salisbury

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External links

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother at the official website of the Royal Family

Queen Elizabeth at the official website of the Royal Collection Trust

Newspaper clippings about Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Portraits of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother at the National Portrait Gallery, London Edit this at Wikidata

British royalty

Vacant

Title last held by

Mary of Teck      Queen consort of the United Kingdom

and the British Dominions

1936–1952          Succeeded by

Philip of Greece and Denmark

as consort

Empress consort of India

1936–1947          Title abandoned on 22 June 19481

Academic offices

Preceded by

The Earl Baldwin of Bewdley

Visitor of Girton College, Cambridge

1948–2002          Succeeded by

The Baroness Hale of Richmond

Preceded by

?

President of the Royal College of Music

1953–1993          Succeeded by

The Prince of Wales

Preceded by

The Earl of Athlone

Chancellor of the University of London

1955–1981          Succeeded by

The Princess Anne

New institution  Chancellor of the University of Dundee

1967–1977          Succeeded by

The Earl of Dalhousie

Honorary titles

New title             Grand Master of the Royal Victorian Order

1937–2002          Succeeded by

The Princess Royal

Preceded by

Sir Robert Menzies

Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports

1978–2002          Succeeded by

The Lord Boyce

Notes and references

1. "No. 38330". The London Gazette. 22 June 1948. p. 3647.

Articles and topics related to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata

Categories: Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother1900 births2002 deaths19th-century British people19th-century British women20th-century British people20th-century British women21st-century British people21st-century British womenBowes-Lyon familyBritish AnglicansBritish centenariansBritish queens consortBritish women in World War IIBurials at St George's Chapel, Windsor CastleChancellors of the University of DundeeChancellors of the University of LondonCompanions of the Order of the Crown of IndiaDames Grand Cross of the Order of St JohnDames Grand Cross of the Order of the British EmpireDames Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian OrderDaughters of British earlsDuchesses of YorkEnglish anti-fascistsGeorge VIGrand Cordons of the Order of the Precious CrownGrand Cross of the Legion of HonourGrand Crosses of the Order of St. SavaGrand Crosses of the Order of the Crown (Romania)Grand Crosses of the Order of the Sun of PeruHonorary Companions of the Order of CanadaHonorary air commodoresHouse of WindsorIndian empressesInfectious disease deaths in EnglandJewellery collectorsLadies of the GarterLadies of the ThistleLords Warden of the Cinque PortsMembers of the Order of New ZealandMembers of the Royal Red CrossNobility from Angus, ScotlandPeople from HitchinQueen mothersRecipients of the War Cross with Sword (Norway)Residents of White Lodge, Richmond ParkVictoria Medal of Honour recipientsWives of British princesWomen centenarians

 

  • Condition: Medal in choice rainbow-toned condition. Box lid has had repairs to a previous tear and split edges.
  • Composition: Sterling silver
  • Time Period: 20th Century
  • Period: 20th Century
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom
  • Country/Region: British
  • Country of Origin: Great Britain

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