[If] I were equal to your ladyship, where would be the pleasure to me? For it would be counterbalanced by the pain of feeling that [the footmen] Thomas and John were equal to me.’Crichton the butler in J. M. Barrie’s playThe Admirable Crichton, 1902‘His whole time being mine, he is not to leave h...
Though her realm saw a vast increase in wealth during the course of her reign, with the already-comfortable becoming better off and social mobility greater than it had ever been – the middle class quintupled in size – this still left many millions who were impoverished, barely able to earn a livi...
Elizabeth knew, and hated him. She was disappointed when war did not break out in 1938 over Czechoslovakia and was rebuked by her nurserymaid, Miss MacDonald: ‘You don’t know what war is like!’ When it did come the following year, she found out soon enough. Just over a month later, some 800 men w...
The daughter of a long-lived mother (who was almost 102 when she died), she may well continue to rule for some time yet. Her presence has dominated almost the entire post-war era in Britain, so that to many of her subjects the notion of the country without Queen Elizabeth at its head is difficult...