Biography mines life of savvy Brit matriarch’s 60 years on throne

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One of Queen Elizabeth II’s private secretaries explained the queen’s vitality: “She sleeps very well ... she’s got very good legs, and she can stand for a long time ... [she’s] as tough as a yak.” | Chris Furlong~AFP/Getty Images

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Sally Bedell Smith will discuss Elizabeth The Queen from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Jan. 24 at the Book Stall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm St., Winnetka. Purchase of the book is required for admission. If you have already purchased the book, bring the receipt.

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Updated: February 23, 2012 8:02AM

The British national anthem might be “God Save the Queen,” but according to Sally Bedell Smith’s new biography, Elizabeth the Queen, the petite monarch has done a heroic job of rescuing the royal institution herself.

Oh, and that annus horribilis back in 1992, when her kids were truly being royals pains? So last century.

Moreover, the 85-year-old great-grandmother has somehow made quaint Victorian values such as duty, tradition and sacrifice hip.

“When I heard people clapping at the end of ‘The King’s Speech,’ I felt really encouraged that my book would find an audience,” says Smith, 63, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and former New York Times reporter. “The more I learned about [the queen], the more I admired her. That doesn’t happen often.”

Smith’s previous biographical subjects include CBS’ ruthless titan William S. Paley; adventuress-turned-U.S. ambassador to France Pamela Harriman; Jack and Jackie Kennedy; Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Princess Diana.

In 2008, Smith’s publisher asked her to write a biography timed to Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee this year, marking 60 years on the throne.

“What’s extraordinary about Sally,” says Smith’s editor Kate Medina of Random House in an email, “is how she uses her incredible access to get inside the lives and minds of those we’ve previously admired only from a distance, so she brings the queen to life as never before, and as a remarkable human being — a girl who fell in love at 13 (with her future husband, Prince Philip), became a working mother, has done her job with grace in public, and playfulness in private, over 60 tumultuous years.”

On Feb. 6, 1952, the 25-year-old Elizabeth became queen after her father, King George VI, died of a blood clot in his sleep. Only one other British ruler, Queen Victoria, has hit a Diamond Jubilee.

Queen Elizabeth will follow her usual practice of marking Accession Day — Feb. 6 — “in quiet commemoration,” according to Smith. The Diamond Jubilee celebrations will begin in May, culminating in a four-day national celebration the first week in June. (The queen’s actual coronation was June 2, 1953.)

But while Queen Victoria was too frail to climb the steps to St. Paul’s Cathedral during her Diamond Jubilee, Elizabeth remains in motion. She continues to ride horses — without a helmet — and terrorizes visitors to her Scottish estate Balmoral with her high-speed driving. One of her private secretaries has explained the secret to the queen’s extraordinary vitality: “She sleeps very well, and secondly she’s got very good legs, and she can stand for a long time. ... The queen is as tough as a yak.”

In writing Elizabeth the Queen, Smith received assistance from Buckingham Palace but did not interview the queen. In 60 years, she has never granted a single interview.

Smith toured all the queen’s residences in England and Scotland. She was also allowed to travel with the queen and her husband on both domestic and international trips and witness what life as a royal entails. She spoke with more than 200 people — friends, relatives, staff, duchesses and dog handlers.

Why would the famously secretive palace help an American biographer?

“The palace thought I would write a serious and fair book,” says Smith.

Diana in Search of Herself, Smith’s controversial 1999 biography of Princess Diana, might have helped. It was among the very first to puncture the myth of the fairy-tale princess victimized by a cruel royal family. Smith theorized that Diana — emotionally damaged by her parents’ acrimonious divorce — might have struggled with “borderline personality disorder.” Its symptoms include self-injury, eating issues and severe mood swings.

“Diana was out to destroy [her husband, Prince] Charles and to prevent him from becoming king,” says Smith. The queen was terrified that “Charles would throw away his future” by abdicating the way her uncle, the Duke of Windsor, had in 1936.

Smith witnessed two polar-opposite moments in the queen’s reign. She was in London during the public grieving over Diana’s death in 1997. “The public response bewildered the queen — it didn’t seem British,” she says. The public’s anger at the queen’s apparent indifference to Diana’s death “put the monarchy in jeopardy,” says Smith.

While she liked the movie “The Queen” and interviewed its star, Helen Mirren, Smith feels that the queen’s advisers were unfairly presented as being far more out of touch than they were. The palace today is a master of social media. Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton was announced via Twitter. The queen enjoys an 80 percent approval rating in Britain.

Last year, Smith was in London to observe William’s wedding. “It was such an exuberant scene,” says the author. She believes that the queen’s enthusiastic embrace of her new granddaughter-in-law, a commoner, illustrated Elizabeth’s adaptability.

Surrounded by relatives behaving badly — her sister, Princess Margaret, ended up best known for her fondness for Famous Grouse whiskey, and her former daughter-in-law Fergie has had man and money woes — the queen herself seems flawless.

Pressed, Smith will say that the queen as a mother was “somewhat detached” with her two older children, Charles and Anne. “But she was a 25-year-old trying to prove herself in a world of men.”

According to Smith, the queen is deeply if quietly religious, attending Anglican services weekly. Her faith gives her an inner serenity, says the former archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. She also takes deeply the religious implications of being anointed to serve her people. Smith does not believe that the queen will abdicate for either Prince Charles or his son, Prince William. “Her duty is to serve until her death,” Smith says.

Gannett News Service