Queen Mother in ‘romantic’ link

Press, 26 September 1984, Page 6

Queen Mother in ‘romantic’ link

NZPA-AP London Lord Kenneth Clark, the art expert who made the television series “Civilisation,”

had a romantic friendship with the Queen Mother that provoked the jealousy of King George VI, says an

American biographer. Meryle Secrest, whose book “Kenneth Clark” has just been published, does not

suggest that Elizabeth, the mother of the present Queen, was anything more than flirtatious. However, she says that Lord Clark liked her very much. He might have been a little in love with her. Lord Clark, the son of a millionaire Scottish thread manufacturer, became Sir Kenneth Clark in 1933 and Lord Clark in 1969. He died in May, 1933, aged 79. The Queen Mother, widow of King George VI, was 84 in August She is a patron of British artists and was guided in her choice of buying paintings by Lord Clark, who was the Royal Art Adviser from 1934 to 1944.

The Queen and Lord Clark met often at Windsor Castle, where most of the Royal art collection is kept and at Buckingham Palace. The author, who knew Lord Clark well and whose

list of sources fills six pages of her book, is the first writer to detail the friend-

ship. She writes that when Lord Clark recalled his life to her he said that he and the Queen Mother saw as much of each other as they dared, saying that the King became unreasonably jealous and twice made scenes, once at Windsor Castle and again at Buckingham Palace.

Miss Secrest said Lord Clark might have assumed more than was warranted from the Queen Mother’s lively interest in art and what another called her mild flirtatiousness, in a ; very proper romantic oldfashioned sort of way. The writer asserts that the Queen Mother’s letters to . Lord Clark, all about paintings and written in an artless hand, have been burned, making the extent

of their friendship impossible to assess. It was not clear how she was sure of the content of the letters if they had been destroyed. A Buckingham Palace spokesman, Michael Shea, told the Associated Press: “I know nothing about it,” when asked if he was aware of the story in the book. “Civilisation,” in which Lord Clark discussed the history of the West through its greatest art works, was first shown on television in 1969. Americans have bought one million copies of his book based on the series.

Miss Secrest won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 198182. Her other books include a biography of Bernard Berenson, the Lithuanianborn, American connoisseur of the Renaissance, who lived in Italy and employed the young Kenneth Clark as an assistant