Book tells of 'bored, bullied' Queen
The Queen is bored by her work and bullied by her husband, according to a new biography which claims to have had unprecedented access to information from inside the royal household.
The controversial book, Elizabeth: Behind the Palace Doors, which is published on Thursday, will argue that the Queen is struggling in an unsatisfactory marriage as she grows increasingly unhappy in her work.
Buckingham Palace has condemned the book as fantasy but author Nicholas Davies is adamant that his information has come from a variety of sources close to the royal family - including a former personal secretary to the late Earl Mountbatten.
'I am very confident of my sources,' he told The Observer . 'My book will show what her life is really like. It is not a chocolate-box biography.'
Davies is no stranger to accusation and counter-accusation. He worked for the Mirror Group of newspapers as a foreign editor under Robert Maxwell until, in 1991, he was accused of working for Israel as a spy.
He decided to write this book on the Queen's life, he says, to show what a remarkable woman she must be to cope with marriage to Prince Philip. Davies and his publisher, Mainstream, believe the author has new evidence that Mountbatten felt Philip bullied the Queen, as well as their children.
'One of my sources is John Barratt,' said Davies. 'For 20 years he was the personal and private secretary to Earl Mountbatten, right up until his death. He was totally in Mountbatten's confidence and helped him write all his letters. He was also party to letters the earl received.
'The royal marriage was undeniably a love match at the start,' said Davies. 'But it has been very difficult since. It is just that the Queen is someone who has set her face against divorce.'
To back up his bleak picture, Davies gives a story told to him by Barratt. During a trip to a polo game in Cowdray Park, Philip drove at his customary breakneck pace. 'When the Queen commented on his speed,' said Davies, 'he replied, "If you speak once more you will get out and I will leave you here".' Mountbatten is said to have asked the Queen why she let the Prince treat her in that way. She replied: 'Well, you heard what he said and you know he would carry it out.'
But Davies's inside view of the working life of the Queen will soon have some competition. A second book, The Queen's Daily Life: An Artist's View , is due out in September.
Published by Ebury Press, the book is the result of a unique project in which the Palace agreed to allow a husband and wife team, Michael and Vivien Noakes, to travel with the Queen to all her engagements for a year. Michael Noakes, a portrait painter for whom the Queen and her family have sat, has made a series of paintings and sketches to illustrate the book, while his wife, a biographer, has written the text. Both strongly contradict the picture of the Queen's marriage put forward by Davies.
'Philip and the Queen are together an enormous amount of time and he obviously supports her continually,' said Vivien Noakes. 'They seem to have a way of complementing each other. She is surprisingly shy in certain situations whereas, when it comes to walking into a room full of new people, Philip will make sure there is laughter. This is why he sometimes makes gaffes, I think.'
The Noakeses found no evidence to support Davies's claim that the Queen is bored with her job. 'She appears not only to enjoy herself, but to involve herself. Either that or she is an extremely good actress.'
They also cite a walkabout in Lancashire as evidence that she still finds her work rewarding. 'Everyone was laughing and nobody can tell me she was not enjoying her job.'
Davies is not convinced. He suspects the public are being deceived. 'The Queen is in her mid-seventies and has done this job very well for a long time. But, from what I have been told, she has been visiting members of the aristocracy to find out what they think about the idea of abdication - although she would not consider it until after the death of her mother.'
Geoffrey Crawford, a Buckingham Palace spokesman, said he had no knowledge of Davies's sources and doubted his bona fides. 'These two books are chalk and cheese,' he said. 'I don't know where Mr Davies gets his information. The press team at the Palace have barely come across him and I don't think I have ever met him.'
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