Such fun!

Nearly all the pages in this book are filled with thank-you letters. As a child, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was writing to thank for presents of sweets and chocolates. As the Duke of York’s betrothed, she was writing ‘Dear Prince Bertie, Thank you ten million times for sending me all those gramophone records, which arrived in record time (oh! A joke, accident I promise).’ To Queen Mary, as a dutiful Duchess of York, she was writing  ‘Thank you very much for my delightful time at Balmoral’. As a widow, ‘My darling Lilibet, I did so love my week at Windsor, and send millions of thanks for so much sweetness & thought and care for your venerable parent.’ Even at the age of 100 she was writing to thank Prince Charles for a bath towel, and to Princess Alexandra for a ‘heavenly luncheon party’.

This record of 100 years of impeccable good manners — all the recipients are ‘angelic’, ‘darling’, ‘such fun’, ‘delightful’ — will bring a smile to every reader. That is guaranteed, because earnest republicans, or sophisticated readers of other kinds will not open it; only the millions of fans will read it, and it will remind them of what a jolly, life-enhancing person she was.

She was not entering a competition with Pliny or Mme de Sévigné when she dashed off these lines, and they were not meant to be works of literature. But taken as a whole, they do convey a Wodehousian breeziness, a determination to enjoy herself, and an ability to find almost everything an absolute hoot. ‘The Serbian visit was terribly funny. They walk about all day in musical comedy uniforms’ (1923). Or, in 1954 to Princess Margaret, ‘I thought of you a lot in Virginia. I longed for you to be there & hear their Southern drawls, “Miiighty kind, mam”, they say, taking longer than you can believe to say “mighty”.