Now we can look the East End in the face.

I grew up in the East End, never heard a bad word against the Royal Family. However, those who lived through the war may have a different story.

What book is it Floradora9? I don't think the Mass Observation records are particularly negative about the role of the King and Queen in wartime.
My mother and baby sister were bombed out of their home in Croydon in one of the first air raids of 1940. They were evactuated to a cottage 5 miles from Biggin Hill and witnessed the Battle of Britain overhead.

‘An iron fist in a velvet glove’ is one description of the QM.

Yes, looked all sweetness and light, but underneath a shrewd, astute, calculating woman, who was most definitely the power behind her husband’s throne.

And probably her daughter’s too, for a good few years.

Squiffy, I think glinting eyes are considered as eyes of steel.

SiobhanSharpe

I’ve also heard less than favourable things about the late QM -that she was a crashing snob for one and was far from the ‘sweet old lady’ image.
Her parents dangled her front of George VI (before he was king) and she was not that keen on him, he wasn’t too bright and had a bad stammer. (And she was keener on the more glamorous brother Edward, who became king and then abdicated.) However, she was persuaded.

She never wanted to be Queen, just privileged, so set her cap at the "spare".

Think she has to take the blame for not letting him marry Camilla in the first place.

My father was always most uncomplimentary about the Queen Mother, but, being young, I never thought to ask him why. Another of those questions you wished you’d asked and didn’t.

A great aunt of mine, long gone now, was a nanny to a landed family and took her charges to Buck House for birthdays, apparently there was a lot of gossip amongst the nannies about QEQM and the way staff were treated. Who knows such a long time later, attitudes were so different from now.