Elizabeth & Philip
A Story of Young Love, Marriage, and Monarchy
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This deeply moving story explores the attractions—and the tensions—that defined the most extraordinary royal marriage of the past seventy-five years.
She was peaches-and-cream innocence; he was a handsome war hero. Both had royal blood coursing through their veins. The marriage of Britain's Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in November 1947 is remembered as the beginning of an extraordinary lifelong union, but their success was not guaranteed. Elizabeth and Philip: A Story of Young Love, Marriage, and Monarchy plunges the reader back into 1940s Britain, where a teenage princess fell in love with a foreign prince. There were fears of a flirtatious "Greek" fortune hunter stealing off with England's crown jewels—and then subsequent efforts by the Establishment to reframe Philip as the perfect fit for Britain's most famous family.
Drawing on original archives as well as interviews with Elizabeth and Philip's contemporaries who are still alive today, historian Dr. Tessa Dunlop discovers a post-war world on the cusp of major change.
Unprecedented opinion on Philip's suitability was a harbinger of pressures to come for a couple whose marriage was branded the ultimate global fairytale. Theirs was a partnership like no other. Six years after Elizabeth promised to be an obedient wife, Philip got down on bended knee and committed himself as the queen's "liege man of life and limb."
This deeply touching history explores the ups and downs, as well as the attractions and the tensions, that defined an extraordinary relationship. The high stakes involved might have devoured a less committed pair—but not Elizabeth and Philip. They shared a common purpose, one higher even than marriage, with roots much deeper than young love. Happy and glorious, for better or for worse, they were heavily invested in a God-given mission. Monarchy was the magic word.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Dunlop (The Bletchley Girls) delivers a charming double portrait of Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in the early years of their romance and marriage. While Elizabeth spent most of WWII on the "heavily fortified" grounds of Windsor Castle, Royal Naval officer Philip Mountbatten, cousin of Greek king George II, participated in the Allied landings at Sicily. Though Elizabeth found Philip's "rough charm" to be "a breath of fresh air blowing through the stuffy castle," other members of the royal court were dismayed by his jocular manner and German, Danish, and Greek heritage. By 1947, however, speculation that the two would wed reached a fever pitch, and Dunlop suggests that King George VI was happy that the royal family's four-month tour of southern Africa would slow things down. Meanwhile, Philip officially renounced his right of succession to the Greek throne and became a British citizen, paving the way for the couple's wedding in November 1947. Dunlop delves into Philip's moodiness, his propensity to befriend attractive women, and his irritation at the queen's difficulty in maintaining a work-life balance. Enriched by interviews with ordinary Britons of the royal couple's generation, it's a poignant and well-documented study of a couple whose "matter-of-fact style" and "extraordinary work ethic" were a balm for their nation. Royal watchers will be pleased. Photos.
