“The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave.”
In a public declaration in the early years of World War II. Sourced from the British Royal Family History website.
Isabel Ângela Margarida Bowes-Lyon , também conhecida como A Rainha-Mãe, foi a esposa do rei Jorge VI e rainha consorte do Reino Unido da Grã-Bretanha e Irlanda do Norte de 1936 até 1952. Ela é mãe da rainha Isabel II do Reino Unido e da princesa Margarida, Condessa de Snowdon.
Nascida na nobreza britânica, era filha de Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14.º Conde de Strathmore e Kinghorne, e sua esposa Cecília Cavendish-Bentinck. Ela ganhou proeminência em 1923 ao se casar com Alberto, Duque de Iorque, o segundo filho do rei Jorge V e da rainha Maria. O casal e suas duas filhas representavam os ideais de família e serviço público. Isabel participou de uma grande variedade de eventos públicos e ficou conhecida popularmente como a "duquesa sorridente".Em 1936, seu marido inesperadamente se tornou rei quando seu irmão Eduardo VIII abdicou para se casar com Wallis Simpson. Como rainha consorte, Isabel acompanhou Jorge VI em viagens diplomáticas pela França e América do Norte antes do início da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Seu espírito indômito foi uma fonte de apoio moral ao povo britânico durante o conflito. Em reconhecimento ao seu papel de trunfo para os interesses britânicos, Adolf Hitler a descreveu como "a mulher mais perigosa na Europa". Após a guerra, a saúde do rei piorou e ele morreu em 1952.
Com a morte da rainha Maria em 1953, Eduardo VIII morando no exterior e sua filha sendo rainha, Isabel se tornou o membro mais velho da família real britânica e assumiu uma posição matriarcal. Nos anos posteriores, ela sempre foi popular com o público, mesmo com outros membros da família passando por períodos de impopularidade. Ela continuou a ter uma ativa vida pública até alguns meses antes de morrer aos 101 anos, sete semanas depois da morte de sua filha Margarida.
Wikipedia
“The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave.”
In a public declaration in the early years of World War II. Sourced from the British Royal Family History website.
On the fate of a gift of a nebuchadnezzar of champagne (20 bottles' worth) even if her family didn't come for the holidays.
Quoted by Graham Taylor in Elizabeth: The Woman and the Queen (2002)
“Never trust them, never trust them. They can't be trusted.”
On the Germans, to Woodrow Wyatt (16 November 1991), as quoted in The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt: Volume Two (2000) by Woodrow Wyatt, p. 608
“I wouldn't if I were you, Noël; they count them before they put them out.”
Murmured to the gay writer Sir Noël Coward at a gala. While she mounted a staircase lined with Guards, she noticed Coward's eyes flicker momentarily over the soldiers; as quoted by Thomas Blaikie in You look awfully like the Queen: Wit and Wisdom from the House of Windsor (2002)
“We'd have to go self-service.”
After a Tory minister advised her not to employ homosexuals.
[Summerskill, Ben, Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber, The Observer, 10 November 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/nov/10/monarchy.bensummerskill]
“I am glad we have been bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye.”
After the Luftwaffe bombed the Buckingham Palace whilst the King and Queen were in residence on 13 September 1940.
[Davies, Caroline, How the Luftwaffe bombed the palace, in the Queen Mother's own words, The Guardian, 13 September 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/sep/13/queen-mother-biography-shawcross-luftwaffe]
“Dear Edwina, she always liked to make a splash.”
On hearing that Edwina Mountbatten had been buried at sea, as quoted in The Straits Times [Singapore] (7 August 2000)
“Was this yours? Oh, could you take it?”
On returning a toilet roll to a demonstrator who had thrown it at her, as quoted by Sir Peter Ustinov in The Queen Mother Remembered (2002), BBC Books
As quoted by Michael Parker in Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography (2009)<!-- Shawcross -->
On being warned that a functionary to whom she was about to be introduced was a communist, as quoted by the Duchess of Grafton in The Queen Mother Remembered (2002), BBC Books
As quoted by Lord Home of the Hirsel in The Queen Mother Remembered (2002), BBC Books
Said to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, when she realised he had taken her glass of wine just as she prepared to propose a toast during a lunch to celebrate her 100th birthday.
Vickers
Hugo
Elizabeth, The Queen Mother
Arrow Books/Random House
2006
490
978-0-09-947662-7
“Since I have landed in Quebec, I think we can say that I am Canadian.”
Answering two Boer War veterans of Scottish heritage in Quebec who had asked the Queen if she was Scots or English.
[Elizabeth II, Elizabeth II, 2002, Speech by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Ceremonial and Canadian Symbols Promotion > The Canadian Monarchy, Vancouver, Ottawa, Queen's Printer for Canada, http://www.pch.gc.ca/queen/, 7 November 2007, harv]