Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the wife of King George VI. She was the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. Born into a family of British nobility, she came to prominence in 1923. She married the Duke of York, the second son of George V and Queen Mary.
About Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in brief
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the wife of King George VI. She was the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. Born into a family of British nobility, she came to prominence in 1923. She married the Duke of York, the second son of George V and Queen Mary. In 1936, her husband unexpectedly became king when his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in order to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. 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 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 when other members 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 years, 238 days, which was seven weeks after theDeath of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret, in 1997. She is buried at St Paul’s Walden Bury, Hertfordshire, where she was christened on 23 September 1900, in the local parish church, All Saints, and her godparents included her paternal aunt Lady Maud Bowe-L Lyon and cousin Venetia James. The location of her 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 mother was descended from British Prime Minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, and Governor-General of India Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley. 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. Elizabeth helped organise the rescue of the castle’s contents during a serious fire on 16 September 1916, which she was particularly instrumental in turning into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. She wrote in her book that she was ‘afraid to be drawn, drawn, quartered in diamonds, drawn in a coach and four, and Quartered in the best house in the land’ When he declared he would no longer feel free to speak and act as I ought to, she said: ‘Bertie, I really feel no free to marry you’ He initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being fearful that he would never be free to talk and act again.
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