The Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (1900 – 2002)
Queen Consort of King George VI from 1936 until his death in 1952. After her husband’s death, she was known as Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, in relation to her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. Before ascending the throne, from 1923 to 1936, she was known as the Duchess of York.
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was the fourth daughter and the ninth of ten children of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis, (later 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne), and his wife, Nina Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck. She spent much of her childhood at St Paul’s Walden and at Glamis Castle, the Earl’s ancestral home in Glamis, Angus, Scotland.
Elizabeth was the last Queen of Ireland and Empress of India. As Queen Consort, Elizabeth was famous for her role in providing moral support to the British public during World War II, so much so that Adolf Hitler described her as “the most dangerous woman in Europe.” In her later years, she was a consistently popular member of the British Royal Family, when other members of the family were suffering from low levels of public approval.