The Queen's Secret: A Novel of England's World War II Queen
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About the Book
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Behind the Book
Reading Group Guide
About the Author
Meet Karen Harper
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author KAREN HARPER is a former Ohio State University instructor and high school English teacher. Published since 1982, she writes contemporary suspense and historical novels about real British women. Two of her recent Tudor-era books were bestsellers in the United Kingdom and in Russia. Harper won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Dark Angel, and her novel Shattered Secrets was judged one of the best books of the year by Suspense Magazine.
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About the Book
Behind the Book
Writing this novel was especially exciting for me because I had actually seen in person several of the important characters. From a historical novel, no less! Hm, am I getting older?
In 1986, on one of my husband’s and my numerous trips to England, we came upon Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, posing for photos on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral. We couldn’t speak to her, of course, but stayed in the small, admiring crowd. It was before I had a smartphone with a camera and I was so gobsmacked (as the Brits like to say) that I just stared. Then, with a wave and a smile, up she went into the cathedral. Since she was born in 1900, she was either eighty-five or -six then and looked great.
However, I have actually met former general and president Dwight Eisenhower at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where I did my undergrad work. He came to speak at a convocation, and I was one of the student ushers. I had a moment where he spoke to me, but all I can remember from that very brief conversation was that his eyes were an intense light blue, and that he said I reminded him of his granddaughter. I assumed later he meant Susan Eisenhower. Since my father had been a B-17 pilot, dropping bombs on Germany, he was even more impressed that I had met Eisenhower than I was at the time. (Can you find the brief mention of how the big Flying Fortress B-17 bombers helped defeat Germany? I had to work that into the story somewhere.)
I admit to being a rabid Anglophile. Or, in my case with all the novels I’ve written about real British women of importance, a better term might be Angloholic or Anglomaniac. On our trips to the UK, we have seen in person Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip (obviously two other characters in this story), and Prince Charles, and we joined in a walkabout with Princess Anne at Leeds Castle in Kent when we just happened to be there on the same day she was promoting her Save the Children charity. I have yet to “run into” the younger generation of royals.
When I began to research the woman I knew as “the Queen Mum,” I found that she was more than the smiling matriarch and granny who doted on Prince Charles and remained very close to her daughter Elizabeth, though Princess Margaret’s antics drove her to distraction. If you’d like a look at how the younger daughter turned out, one recent nonfiction book is Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown (HarperCollins, London, 2017), which has recently been released in the States.
I used two books as my primary references in writing about the life of George VI’s consort, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. One was William Shawcross’s The Queen Mother: The Official Biography (Vintage Books, New York, 2009). This is a huge volume. Since it is a book the queen approved, of course what is there and what isn’t needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I think very few of us would give the nod to an “official biography” that is a tell-all.
Although one of the other books I consulted was what I would call a tell-all, its author did move in the same social circles as the royals. This is Lady Colin Campbell’s The Queen Mother: The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2012).
I also consulted various books on King George, Winston Churchill, and Dwight Eisenhower. Churchill and the King by Kenneth Weisbrode (Viking, New York, 2013) was excellent. Churchill is a key character in my recent novel American Duchess, so I had previously read a great deal about him. We have visited numerous Churchillian sites in England including his underground war room, his birthplace, and his grave. Other references and personal visits gave me background for places like Buckingham Palace, which I have toured, and numerous other British and Scottish sites.
I also researched the dark days of the Blitz in London in such books as London Was Ours: Diaries and Memoirs of the London Blitz by Amy Helen Bell (I.B. Tauris, London, 2008) and The Longest Night: The Bombing of London on May 10, 1941 by Gavin Mortimer (Berkley Calibre, New York, 2005).
There are numerous videos on YouTube and other sites where the royal Windsors of this era come to life, including the king’s and queen’s speeches to their nation in wartime. Googling Elizabeth’s 1939 wartime speech to women of the Empire (eight minutes long) lets you hear her voice. Speeches by the king and Churchill can be Googled as can so much about the war.
A couple of random facts I found interesting: In 2011, with the help of Prince Charles, the body of the queen’s lost brother Fergus was located in a mass grave in a quarry from the days of WWI. A memorial stone was placed there, though the queen never knew it, since she died on March 30, 2002, at the age of a hundred and one. “Lilibet” was at her bedside when she died. Sadly, Princess Margaret had died only the month before, on February 9, 2002, at age seventy-one. Of course, “Bertie” had died in 1952 at age fifty-six, so the Queen Mum lived many years beyond him, making new friends and a new/old life for herself.
Those closest to King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, saw the man for the self-centered, shallow, callous person he was. Alan Lascelles once confided to Prime Minster Stanley Baldwin that he thought it best for the country if Edward would fall off his horse and break his neck. “God forgive me,” said Baldwin, “so do I.” During the war, the Duke of Windsor was heard to say that a heavy bombardment of England would make it ready for peace with Hitler.
The damning evidence about his hoping to return to England after the war and play an important part as “caretaker king” or advisor to Elizabeth has been recently revealed in royal biographer Christopher Wilson’s articles in London newspapers. Wilson names Kenneth de Courcy as the duke’s confidant who revealed the Windsors’ letters and scheme.
The duke did return briefly to London in 1952 for Bertie’s funeral. Elizabeth blamed him for helping to bring on her husband’s early death and barely looked his way. The duke returned for two other royal funerals, but was never received by Bertie’s widow. However, his niece Elizabeth ordered a royal funeral in England when he died, and he and his wife are buried in the royal grounds at Frogmore, Windsor.
I must admit, though I have always seen David/King Edward VIII/the Duke of Windsor as a bit of a villain, I do recognize that he, like Bertie, and their brother George, Duke of Kent, had a difficult upbringing. I have studied that in great detail and presented it as part of the plot in my earlier historical novel The Royal Nanny. So I could not resist having that nanny, Charlotte Bill (Lala), in her retirement in a scene in this novel.
There is an unusual paranormal point of interest, besides the monster of Glamis. There have been reports of strange scratching sounds in the area of Buckingham Palace near where P.C. Stephen Robertson was buried under rubble and died during the bombing of the grounds. One report of a ghostly figure of a policeman in a wartime uniform has been seen, but it “dissolved before the onlooker” (from The Queen’s House by Edna Healey).
By the way, if you saw the excellent movie The Darkest Hour about Churchill, it had one flaw. It left out that Queen Elizabeth was present at the P.M. and king’s weekly meetings, and, if the king was absent, the P.M. met with the queen. She helped Bertie to make important decisions and often bolstered him, something perhaps not a popular fact with the men who then ran and recorded wartime history in the kingdom.
Prince Charles was very close to his grandmother. There is a YouTube video dated July 21, 2015, that you can see by Googling “Pr
ince Charles speaks about the death of his grandmother.” He loved her dearly, and she had a huge effect on him. Here are a few of the thoughts with which he eulogized her: “She meant everything to me.” She was fun, full of laughter and affection. She wrote wonderful letters full of wisdom from her experiences. She was a magical grandmother.
And, I add to that, she was a strong queen too, when that was sorely needed. The facts of history are important—to know what happened, even how it happened. But I love historical fiction because it gets inside history and the lives of those for whom it was the day-to-day present. Historical fiction not only lets the reader know what happened to people, but gives a glimpse into how they thought and felt.
Karen Harper
February 2019
Reading Group Guide
The Queen Elizabeth of this novel is not just the smiling, waving figure many of us recall. When she was Duchess of York and then queen during WWII, what were her good and bad characteristics?
The “surrogate” mother solution was not unknown among British aristocrats who were childless or needed “heirs and spares,” although it would have been nearly impossible for royals to pull that off. (There was a huge scandal in 1688 when Queen Mary of Modena was accused of sneaking a baby into her birthing room in a warming pan.) But how would you feel if you received such news that your “mother” was not your birth mother? Is it understandable that Elizabeth would hide the news? Be haunted by it? Why did she finally tell Bertie about that but not tell him her secret about David?
Does Elizabeth’s hatred of Wallis Simpson stem only from the fact that Wallis was a rival whom David preferred? Was it because Elizabeth caught Wallis making fun of the “dowdy duchess”? Or was it more?
Why do you think Bertie fell so hard for Elizabeth Bowes Lyon? It is most unusual and almost scandalous for a member of the royal family to have a proposal of marriage rebuffed not once, but twice. Why did he persist, and why did she finally accept?
Is the queen good at assessing the loyalty and character of other people such as Winston? Brendan Bracken? David, Prince of Wales and later king?
It is unusual for me to write a main female royal protagonist who is overweight, drinks, and keeps huge secrets. Do you see her as sympathetic or do these traits weaken her in your eyes?
How are the personalities of the two princesses different? And, as far as you can tell, why? Do you recall Princess Margaret in her heyday? If so, does this childhood portrait of her ring true? Have you seen such differences in sisters close in age?
Since there are so many historical characters in this novel, it could have been written without the minor fictional characters of Bessie Miller and Rowena Fitzgerald. But how do they contribute to this portrait of the queen and London at war?
On top of the war and her other problems, the queen has a “mother-in-law” challenge. Does she handle this well? Is she especially burdened by her mother-in-law being a former queen? How have you or others you know dealt with a mother-in-law situation?
During the war and the necessary American “invasion of England,” what were some of the differences between the Americans and the Brits? Would that still be true today?
The king and queen were very wary of Winston Churchill in the beginning of the story. How and why do their attitudes change? Have you had such a relationship that went up or down over time?
Does Bertie and Elizabeth’s visit to his former nanny throw light on the characters of Bertie and David? I was amazed when I wrote The Royal Nanny about Charlotte Bill’s life that the children’s early years so impacted their adulthoods. Have you found this to be true in your life or the lives of others?
Praise for
American Duchess
“Harper entices readers with this lively novel about wealthy American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. . . . Harper’s story highlights how the wealth that prevented Consuelo from making her own decisions also enabled her to better the lives of those less fortunate. This immersive novel believably puts the reader in Consuelo’s shoes.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A sweeping history of the Gilded Age, this novel is for fans of historical fiction, PBS’s Downton Abbey, and the recent royal wedding.”
—Library Journal
“This tender, well-researched novel lets readers see the economic, social, and political highlights of the nineteenth-century Gilded Age brought to life through Consuelo Vanderbilt’s eyes.”
—Booklist
The It Girls
“The It Girls is a glorious romp through the lives and loves of the scintillating Sutherland sisters. Karen Harper does a wonderful job of bringing Lucile and Elinor to life in this richly imagined and impeccably researched novel. Readers who enjoy historical fiction are in for a treat!”
—Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home
“Fans of Kathleen Tessaro and Penny Vincenzi will enjoy the layers of intrigue and the sweeping plot. Harper’s ability to shift between raw ambition and tender compromise makes this family-focused novel a genuine delight.”
—Booklist
The Royal Nanny
“From cozy firesides of country houses to glittering halls of ancestral estates, Karen Harper gives the reader unprecedented access to a world of monarchs. Told through the eyes of an endearing narrator, The Royal Nanny is a gem, revealing that those forgotten in history are often the true treasures.”
—Erika Robuck, nationally bestselling author of Hemingway’s Girl
“Peels back the decades and pulls aside a protective veil of secrecy, helping us understand the forebears of Queen Elizabeth II, including her father, King George VI, of The King’s Speech fame. A compulsive, page-turning read that reveals both the gilt and the tarnish of the British Royal Crown.”
—Sandra Byrd, author of Mist of Midnight
“Fans of Downton Abbey will devour this vivid tale of one nanny’s unwavering love and sacrifices endured for the sake of the royal children in her care. Full of emotion and heart, Lala redefines the meaning of motherhood while Harper gives us a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of the royals.”
—Renée Rosen, author of White Collar Girl
“This is a beautifully told novel of a woman who was surrounded by all the glitz and glamour of royalty but remained unaffected. . . . Readers will greatly admire the protagonist while learning about the quirks of the royal family and the events that shook the world in the early 20th century.”
—Historical Novel Society
Also by Karen Harper
American Duchess
The It Girls
The Royal Nanny
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE QUEEN’S SECRET. Copyright © 2020 by Karen Harper. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photographs © Fox Photos/Stringer/Getty Images (Queen Mother); © Stephen Mulcahey/Trevillion Images
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition MAY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-288549-4
Version 03132020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-288548-7
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297965-0 (library edition)
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sp; Print ISBN: 978-0-06-302770-1 (international edition)
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