Read Online Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne by Christopher Andersen - Free Book Online

theater star Pat Kirkwood—was rumored to have lasted more than twenty-five years.)
    Elizabeth was well aware of her husband’s roving eye. Early on during the courtship, she was within earshot when one of Philip’s dancing partners—a particularly naive young aristocrat—proclaimed loudly that it was “terribly uncomfortable dancing with Philip. That torch [flashlight] he insists on carrying in his pocket keeps jabbing me in the stomach. I’ve heard the other girls complain about it, too.”
    Although her parents’ marriage had been a close and happy one (George VI described his wife to his elder daughter as “the most marvelous person in the world in my eyes”), Elizabeth knew this was the glaring exception. After all, it was her playboy Uncle David’s insistence on marrying the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson that resulted in his abdication and led to Elizabeth’s ultimately becoming queen. Infidelity remained par for the course in royal circles, and given her husband’s Viking good looks, it was scarcely realistic to think that he would remain entirely faithful.
    In any event, she was far too busy attending to the business of being a modern monarch—The Firm’s chairman and CEO. Elizabeth established her own daily schedule as soon as she returned to London from Africa as queen, and it would remain virtually unchanged for the remainder of her sixty-plus-year reign.
    Her first order of business each day was attending to the infamousdispatch boxes that required her attention whether she was in residence at Buckingham Palace, Windsor, Balmoral, Sandringham, or even aboard the royal yacht Britannia . Made by the discreet London-based leather goods company Barrow and Gale, the red boxes were the size of small suitcases and bore the royal insignia along with the words THE QUEEN embossed in gold. They could only be opened with the Queen’s key and three others in the possession of her private secretary and his two deputies. (All were actually refurbished boxes that had previously been used by the Queen’s father. In the fall of 2015, Elizabeth became emotional when she discovered that an anonymous Barrow and Gale craftsman had scrawled “God Bless and Keep Safe Their Majesties” inside one of the boxes made for George VI shortly after his brother’s abdication thrust him onto the throne in 1936.)
    The red boxes all contained paperwork directly pertaining to her schedule—from the opening of Parliament and state visits to hospital walkabouts and wreath-layings. More daunting were the ministerial boxes that arrived on her desk each morning from the Foreign Office. Each was chockablock with confidential cables, intelligence reports, cabinet minutes, documents requiring her signature, and dispatches that were meant to keep the monarch up to date on government affairs and conditions throughout Great Britain, the Commonwealth, and the world at large.
    By ten each morning, Elizabeth met with her private secretary—the first of her eight private secretaries as Queen was Sir Alan Lascelles—to briefly go over the day’s schedule. Although Her Majesty’s staff included more than 350 full-time members and around 250 part-time or honorary positions, fewer than a dozen could lay claim to having regular contact with her.
    Twenty minutes after being briefed by her private secretary,the Queen returned to the elaborately carved desk in her study, pen in hand, trying to get a head start on the day’s paperwork. One of George VI’s hobbies was needlework, and she sat on an eighteenth-century Chippendale chair with a seat cushion embroidered by her father. Her desk was cluttered with framed family photographs, boxes of stationery, and mementos—all of which staff members were instructed not to touch. There was also a large vase brimming with fresh-cut flowers brought in from the palace’s extensive gardens each day.
    There were overstuffed sofas, comfortable chairs, and along one wall a large Hepplewhite bookcase