THE UNTOLD LIFE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH ~THE QUEEN MOTHER BY LADY COLIN CAMPBELL (Dynasty Press Ltd. London)
PETER JARRETTE AND LADY COLIN CAMPBELL HAVE A Q&A FOR THE READERS OF CARIBBEAN BELLE MAGAZINE.
READ EXCERPTS HERE AND GO ONLINE TO READ THE INTERVIEW IN FULL IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF Caribbean BELLE: www.caribbeanbelle.com
TO OBTAIN YOUR COPY OF THE UNTOLD LIFE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH ~THE QUEEN MOTHER VISIT DYNASTY PRESS LTD. HERE:
www.dynastypress.co.uk
Q&Q WITH LADY COLIN CAMPBELL ON THE QUEEN MOTHER DYNASTY
PRESS LTD., LONDON:
PETER JARRETTE
BELLE readers met Lady Colin Campbell, the best selling
international author, last year in an exclusive BELLE interview at her
London home. Now in Queen Elizabeth II’s
Diamond Jubilee year explodes the
book about Britain’s late, most senior royal, Queen Elizabeth the Queen
Mother. Lady Colin Campbell’s latest
work has eyes wide and tongues wagging around the world with revelations of the
real life and times of this long-lived royal steeped in modern history.
BELLE and Peter Jarrette re-visit the famous Jamaican born Lady
Colin Campbell, herself a royal and international high-society figure for an
exclusive Q&A for the Caribbean on her recently released international tome
on this much admired royal. THE QUEEN
MOTHER is available worldwide and details for stockists are at www.dynastypress.co.uk
BELLE: How has the build up to The Queen Mother (TQM) kept you engaged since you graced the pages of BELLE
late last year and how long has the work involved to bring this blockbuster to
the world’s eyes taken you?
Lady CC: TQM has taken me one year to prepare, beginning to
end. However, the main part of my
research...the juicy bits have been
known to me for years. The important elements of TQM have been known to me for
much of my life by the sheer virtue of the people I have known, the people I
still know and the people I have been related to. These will be the bits not accessible to the
public at large or most writers and journalists. The year has been dedicated to
fleshing out TQM’s story, researching her important ‘dates’, a perfunctory
search that has required much time and diligence but these details are the nuts
and bolts that must be very sound in fact. This citing of dates and places in
the life and times of a subject are naturally the muscle, bones and flesh of
the telling of a story of this calibre and of an historical figure such as
TQM. The research can be arduous but it
must all stand-up and be accurate. TQM enjoyed a long life, nearly 102 eventful
years and I set about to detail not only her life and settings but also the
lives of those around her and how her story impacted on others. I have written
about her before in my 1993 book Royal
Marriages less comprehensively but still that gave me a further starting
advantage as I had previous research to draw on.
BELLE: How did you come to write TQM, what inspired you to enlighten the world
about this intriguing figure from the British royal family?
Lady CC: It was suggested to me that I tell the story since I knew
the real story and I had the courage
to do so. It occurred to me that if I passed without writing this work on TQM
her true story would disappear. This is the story that other people TQM and I
knew in common were privy to as well and from these circles were a number of
individuals who, again, encouraged my move forward with the truth. As we knew
of the fictional Diana before the
world learned of the factual Diana
there is the fictional Queen Mother. Before I wrote 1992’s The Real Diana the truth about The Princess of Wales was only
hinted at by other writers. In the case of TQM it occurred to me that unless I
began to write her true story nothing would be written to such depth on her, or
it was not very likely to be. As I am
getting on in years so are the people who are closest to the true story and in
fact even TQM’s grandchildren are no longer youngsters! You know, writers like Hugo Vickers knew a whole lot more than they finally wrote on this
formidable woman’s real life story. So many other writers who have embarked on
delivering the real-life facts behind the fiction of royals in the end only
hint at the truth. The story of Queen
Elizabeth, the Queen Mother now is an historical subject and though she will
always have relevance, the likelihood of a younger writer coming along in 10 or
20 years to write on her real life in depth is remote at best and so I felt it
was now or never. It would be a shame to let a fabulous historical figure, such
as she was, disappear couched in fantasy when her reality is much more interesting.
BELLE: What were some of the most engaging qualities of TQM?
Lady CC: Having met her first hand I found her to be so many
things...TQM was utterly charming, magnificent, charismatic and truly
extraordinary! She shone like a beacon and not because she was the TQM. The
woman herself was magnetic. I am not alone in saying that the secret of her
success as TQM, why she became such a revered figure was that she, as a Bowes
Lyon personified the exquisite Bowes Lyon manners. She was well-bred and her
charm and superb manners appeared to be natural. I have never encountered
manners in any walk of life or nationality that can or ever will match her
own. Elizabeth, the Queen Mother loved
people and in turn she loved to be loved by people. She loved her exulted role
as Queen Mother to her nation and the Commonwealth. She was consistent in it
and at it and functioned with pure enjoyment. She could turn the otherwise dull
into the spectacular. TQM wanted to be entertained and to be entertaining and
easily displayed her ability to entertain with her quick wit and extremely
sharp intelligence. She loved jokes and laughter and didn’t stand on too much
ceremony but she did like people to be respectful in how they interacted with
her. She was also very kind to workers, attendants and staff. She had
personality in abundance and set out to be that marvellous personality and
always behaved as such.
BELLE: In your opinion what are some of the most misunderstood things about
the life and time of TQM?
Lady CC: That she was a
victim of fate who had a great destiny foisted upon her. That she was a sweet
old lady who was a prisoner of circumstance. Why, she even said herself, “I’m not as nice as people think I am.”
People don’t realise to what extent she was the architect of the Duke and
Duchess of Windsor’s destruction.
BELLE: As a wife how would TQM have summed up her marriage?
Lady CC: Her husband, Bertie, George VI thought her the most
wonderful woman on earth because she was such a strong, forceful and
inaccessible figure. Both her husband
and his brother The Duke of Windsor wanted strong, dominant, intense, witty and
ultimately inaccessible women to replicate their mother, Queen Mary, who loved
them but was distant. They wanted great
homemakers who were highly domestic unlike royal women of those days. Both of
these women, Queen Mary and her daughter-in-law TQM, kept their men at an
arms-length, whose devotion they ended up appreciating. However neither woman
would have married those men if they weren’t the Prince of Wales and the Duke
of York respectively. They married them purely for advancement. They functioned
within their marriages at a certain level of disdain for their husbands. This remains an interesting phenomenon played-out
still in penthouses, chateaus, castles and in many properly middle class
marriages around the world!
BELLE:
We asked your publishers about their role in this internationally explosive
book and one of their Directors did have a moment to comment: “Nothing I can say is of
much relevance to anyone – we are just the publisher, letting our author tell
her story as she wishes and we have no particular stance or axe to grind
against the monarchy or anyone else for that matter.”
BELLE would like to thank you for your time with us again and to finally
ask...what will we be reading from you next time?
Lady CC: A very modern book on contemporary etiquette!
TO READ THIS INTERVIEW IN ITS ENTIRETY VISIT CARIBBEAN BELLE ONLINE AT www.caribbeanbelle.com OR VISIT BARNES & NOBLE ONLINE AT http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
CaribbeanBELLE is available through the Caribbean and via Barnes & Noble online for USA/CANADA
PETER JARRETTE IS AN AUTHOR/ARTIST MULTI MEDIA PRESENTER
www.facebook.com/peter.jarrette
Absolute Brighton Magazine * CaribbeanBELLE Magazine *
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.