From "New York Times" bestselling author Sally Bedell Smith comes a magisterial new biography of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, one of the world's most fascinating, enigmatic, and admired women.
Sally Bedell Smith is known for her compulsively readable, prodigiously researched portraits of iconic public figures, from the Clintons to the Kennedys to Princess Diana. In "Elizabeth the Queen," she explores in intimate detail the public and private life of the most prominent monarch of our time: the eldest daughter of King George VI, who ascended to the throne in 1952 at the tender age of twenty-five and has beguiled royal observers ever since.
In an enterprising feat of scholarship, Smith managed to get the first look at a trove of research materials that bring fresh insights into Queen Elizabeth's professional and family relationships, including those with her husband of nearly sixty-five years, Prince Philip, her four headline-grabbing children, and her grandchildren William and Harry. Here is a compelling profile drawn from the Queen's personal correspondence, the unpublished journals of a former American ambassador, and hundreds of interviews with some of the Queen's closest friends (a number of whom have not spoken before), key advisers, family and neighbors, as well as former heads of state, first ladies and ambassadors from the U.K., U.S., and Canada.
Published to coincide with the British monarch's sixtieth year on the throne--her Diamond Jubilee--in 2012, Sally Bedell Smith's groundbreaking biography is an up-close and eye-opening look at Elizabeth the leader, strategist, and diplomat; the daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother: Elizabeth the Queen.