Counting One's Blessings: The Selected Letters Of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother

A revealing selection of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s letters, edited by her official biographer. William Shawcross’s official biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, published in September 2009, was a huge critical and commercial success. One of the great revelations of the book was Queen Elizabeth’s insightful, witty private correspondence. Indeed, The Sunday Times described her letters as “wonderful . . . brimful of liveliness and irreverence, steeliness and sweetness.”

Now, in Counting One’s Blessings, Shawcross has put together a selection of her letters, drawing on the vast wealth of material in the Royal Archives and at Glamis Castle. Queen Elizabeth was a prolific correspondent from her earliest childhood before World War I to the very end of her long life at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and her letters offer readers vivid insight into the real person behind the public face.