Elizabeth the Queen Read Online Free Page A

gets a ripple on, there was a baby for you—Oh boy.”
    Queen Elizabeth taught her daughter to read at age five and devoted considerable time to reading aloud the children’s classics. As soon as Lilibet could write, her mother encouraged her to begin the lifelong habit of recording her impressions in a diary each night. During her father’s coronation in 1937, the eleven-year-old princess kept a lively journal, “From Lilibet by Herself .” “The arches and beams at the top [of Westminster Abbey] were covered with a sort of haze of wonder as Papa was crowned,” she wrote. When her mother was crowned and the white-gloved peeresses put on their coronets simultaneously, “it looked wonderful to see arms and coronets hovering in the air and then the arms disappear as if by magic.”
    A T AN EARLY AGE , Elizabeth’s parents began arranging for her to sit for portraits. She would repeat this ritual more than 140 times throughout her life, making her the most painted monarch in history. For the royal family, portraits have long been an essential part of image making, helping to shape the way the public sees its regal icons. When asked if she kept her portraits, the Queen replied, “No, none. They’re all painted for other people.”
    Hungarian Alexius de László, a widely admired society portrait artist, was hired to capture Lilibet in oils for the first time. She was just seven. László found her to be “intelligent and full of character,” although he conceded she was “very sleepy and restless.” Aristocratic matrons enjoyed the company of the smooth-talking sixty-four-year-old artist, but Elizabeth thought he was “horrid,” as she recalled years later with a grimace. “He was one of those people who wanted you to sit permanently looking at you.” The resulting ethereal image—a favorite of her mother’s—shows the young princess in ruffled silk, with blond curls and wide blue eyes, holding a basket of flowers. Yet her unsmiling expression betrays a whiff of exasperation.
    The second artist to capture Elizabeth’s image was another Hungarian, sculptor Zsigmond Strobl, who had eighteen sessions with her from 1936 to 1938. She was older, by then the heiress presumptive, and eager to chat with the Hungarian journalist who joined the sittings to help her pass the time in conversation. Being painted or sculpted from life reinforced the virtue of patience. As Queen she would also find her sittings to be an oasis of uncluttered time when she could unwind, connect with a stranger in a private and unthreatening way, speak expansively—sometimes quite personally—and even crack jokes. “It’s quite nice,” she said during a sitting before her eightieth birthday as she flashed an impish smile. “Usually one just sits, and people can’t get at you because one’s busy doing nothing.”
    A favorite topic during the Strobl sculpting sessions was the world of horses, which had become Elizabeth’s full-blown passion as well as another opportunity for learning. Her father bred and raced thoroughbreds, continuing a royal tradition, and he introduced her to all aspects of the equine world, starting with her first riding lesson at age three. By 1938 she began learning how to ride sidesaddle, a necessary skill for the yearly Trooping the Colour ceremony celebrating the sovereign’s birthday when she would be required to ride in a red military tunic, long navy blue riding skirt, and black tricorn cap at the head of a parade of more than 1,400 soldiers.
    Her twice weekly riding lessons helped her develop athleticism and strength and taught her how to keep a cool head in moments of danger. She experienced the uninhibited joy of vaulting fences and cantering across fields and through woodlands—sensations that would temporarily liberate her from the restrictions of her official life. Although she tried fox hunting while in her teens—first with the Garth Foxhounds in Berkshire, then with the Beaufort Hunt in