QUEEN OF COURAGE
A drawn King George VI stood in the rain at London Airport, his Queen by his side, to bid farewell to his eldest daughter and her husband as they flew on the first leg of aroyal tour to Australia and New Zealand.
It was as though he knew he would never see them again. That was January 31, 1952. Six days later, when the King died in his sleep, his wife, Elizabeth, faced the news with the same courage she had shown throughout the three months of the King's final illness.
Although she gave no sign in public, the Queen had been desperately worried — since the previous ''autumn, she had known that the King, only 57, was seriously ill. When
doctors broke the news that her husband had cancer and would not live long, the Queen’s reaction was characteristic.
She put aside her own grief and insisted: ‘ Neither the King nor Queen Mary are to be told.” From then on, she lived alone with sad secret until the King died. At the stopover in Kenya the 25-year-old Princess heard the news that she was Queen Elizabeth 11, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, as she was in future to be called, lost no time in coming to terms with the loneliness of widowhood. The day after George Vi’s death, she was playing, as usual with her grandchildren, declaring: “I have got to start somewhere, and it is better now than later.’’
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Press, 30 July 1980, Page 10
Word Count
243QUEEN OF COURAGE Press, 30 July 1980, Page 10
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