On Christmas Day in 1957, a young Queen Elizabeth contrasted the dizzying advances in technology — which made a televised broadcast of her message possible — with the very ethical foundations that defined a truly regal persona. “Today, we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle,” Elizabeth stated, “but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest.”
The remarkable point to be made nearly 70 years on, and with emotion in the wake of her recent passing, is that she lived those very values during the course of her service.
As a result, it is baffling to me that so many people would base their knowledge of Queen Elizabeth II and her extraordinary life by binge watching “The Crown,” a series laden with the extra baggage of its “mature” TV rating. I would argue that reading and listening to professional biographies, memoirs and letters is the better way to access the life of England’s longest reigning monarch.
I will concede that getting royal history “right” is tough work.
For one, the sovereign rarely, if ever, sits for interviews. Second, as an unwritten rule, palace insiders and staff are forbidden from laying out royal “laundry” — clean or dirty — for public examination. In rare instances, historians are given access to royals or snatch anecdotes from second hand about the existing monarch and share them, more as unsubstantiated oral accounts of royal life rather than documents open to the scrutiny of historical analysis. Finally, written documents produced by the crown are ferreted away behind release dates that can extend to decades or centuries down the road. For example, the historian Andrew Roberts only just received permission from the Royal Archives to use documents for his magisterial biography of King George III, entitled “The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III.”
Based on my own reading of four biographies and a memoir, I would recommend three books to those interested in accessing Elizabeth’s life and legacy. I offer you an encounter, a portrait and a panorama. For those interested, read on.
In spite of the strict prohibition of pulling back the curtain on royal life, Elizabeth and her sister Margaret’s early life was revealed to a hungry public in the unauthorized memoir of their childhood tutor, entitled “The Little Princesses: The Story of the Queen’s Childhood by her Nanny, Marion Crawford.” Crawford paid a high price for the great service she has done for Elizabeth’s biographers. The Windsor family shunned Crawford for the rest of her life. Regardless, you cannot read a biography of Elizabeth that is not highly informed by this remarkable document. It is, if you will, an early encounter with the queen.
Crawford makes prescient comments about the character and talents of both sisters. Here is the stoicism and sense of duty of a young Elizabeth. There is the creativity, musical talent and playfulness of Margaret. Throughout is the united sense of the family — “We four,” comprised of King George VI, Elizabeth the Queen Mother and their two daughters. Incidentally, there are lots of lessons about good parenting to learn in this brief window onto the life of the family until the wedding of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
If Crawford’s memoir offered an unequaled encounter with the young princess, Matthew Dennison’s recent biography, “The Queen,” provides a highly polished literary portrait of the sweep of Elizabeth’s life. Dennison’s 500-page masterpiece lavishes 200 pages on the princess’ heir apparency. We learn that though efforts were made to present her as an accessible royal, her actual station made her an extraordinarily unique individual of great interest to the British public, particularly after her father’s elevation to the throne with the abdication of Edward VII. The prose is exquisite, literary really in tone and uses newspapers, portraits of the queen through the years, as well as the ephemera of stamps and postcards to convey Elizabeth II as a product of her time.
Finally, Robert Hardeman’s “Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II,” set for release in the United States on Dec. 13 (though available in its British edition through Amazon), offers a life of Elizabeth II against the tapestry of global affairs. Running right up to the present, Hardeman, a journalist, offers the most comprehensive history, including the true value of her contributions to U.K. and European diplomacy, the joy that she felt in carrying out her duties, and a careful debunking of the exaggerations and mischaracterizations found in “The Crown.”
While watching a television series does not make one a well-informed “royal watcher,” reading about the life of Elizabeth presents a dignified view of a leader worthy of emulation, whose innovation was her adherence to tradition, in a fast-changing 21st century.
Evan Ward is associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, where he teaches courses on world history. He purchases his own books and did not receive free copies or promotional consideration for the books discussed above.