Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the wife of King George VI. She was also the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. Born into a family of British nobility, she came to prominence in 1923. She accompanied her husband on diplomatic tours to France and North America before the start of the Second World War.
About Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in brief
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the wife of King George VI. She was also the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. Born into a family of British nobility, she came to prominence in 1923. The couple embodied traditional ideas of family and public service. 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 1953. 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 Bowes, 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.
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 to turn Glamis Castle into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, which she was particularly instrumental in organising during serious fire on 16 September 1916. She wrote in her autograph book that she was ‘afraid, never to be free to speak and never to think again’ when he declared he would ‘never feel free to act as he ought to’. He initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being ‘frightened’ to think and to think that he would never be free again. She passed the Oxford Local Examination with distinction at age 13. She became the last Empress consort of India, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to be known as ‘The Queen Mother’ after her husband’s death in 1952.
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