The Queen Mother's century

Elizabeth Bowes Lyon's celebrated life began on August 4th 1900 and has reflected ten dramatic decades of spectacle and change.

Royal biographer Robert Lacey traces the Queen Mother's story through the milestones of our time - starting with her carefree childhood and using pictures to match her own history with that of the century. The future Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother became a public figure in 1923 with her engagement and marriage to "Bertie", the shy and stammering Prince Albert, Duke of York, and it was her triumph to help transform her bashful husband into the brave and inspiring figure of King George VI.

Through historic newspaper and magazine front pages (which record and recall the landmarks of our era), the epoch-making events of the century in which The Queen Mother played a part are chronicled, and her role as mother, grandmother and great-grandmother in a rapidly changing world is also traced.

She is a symbol of the best and bravest in Britain's recent past, but she is also regarded as a reminder of the enduring values to take in the next millennium - courage, civility, duty and grace.