page_title: Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother
section_title: Widowhood
hierarchical_section_title: Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother / Queen mother (1952–2002) / Widowhood
caption_attribution_description: English: The Queen Mother
context_page_description: Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the wife of King George VI, and the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. She was queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from her husband's accession in 1936 until his death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter. She was the last empress of India.
  Born into a family of British nobility, she came to prominence in 1923 when she married the Duke of York, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary. The couple and their daughters embodied traditional ideas of family and public service. She undertook a variety of public engagements and became known for her consistently cheerful countenance.
  In 1936, her husband unexpectedly became king when his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in order to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Elizabeth then became queen. She accompanied her husband on diplomatic tours to France and North America before the start of the Second World War. During the war, her seemingly indomitable spirit provided moral support to the British public.
context_section_description: Shortly after George VI's death, Elizabeth began to be styled as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother because the normal style for the widow of a king, "Queen Elizabeth", would have been too similar to the style of her elder daughter, now Queen Elizabeth II. Popularly, she became the "Queen Mother" or the "Queen Mum". She was devastated by her husband's death and retired to Scotland. However, after a meeting with the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, she broke her retirement and resumed her public duties. Eventually she became just as busy as queen mother as she had been as queen consort. In July 1953, she undertook her first overseas visit since the funeral when she visited the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland with Princess Margaret. She laid the foundation stone of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland – the current University of Zimbabwe. Upon her return to the region in 1957, Elizabeth was inaugurated as the College's President, and attended other events that were deliberately designed to be multi-racial. During her daughter's extensive tour of the Commonwealth over 1953–54, Elizabeth acted as a Counsellor of State and looked after her grandchildren, Charles and Anne. In February 1959, she visited Kenya and Uganda.
  Elizabeth oversaw the restoration of the remote Castle of Mey, on the north coast of Scotland, which she used to "get away from everything" for three weeks in August and ten days in October each year. She developed her interest in horse racing, particularly steeplechasing, which had been inspired by the amateur jockey Lord Mildmay in 1949. She owned the winners of approximately 500 races. Her distinctive colours of blue with buff stripes were carried by horses such as Special Cargo, the winner of the 1984 Whitbread Gold Cup, and Devon Loch, which spectacularly halted just short of the winning post at the 1956 Grand National and whose jockey Dick Francis later had a successful career as the writer of racing-themed detective stories. Peter Cazalet was her trainer for over 20 years. Although (contrary to rumour) she never placed bets, she did have the racing commentaries piped direct to her London residence, Clarence House, so she could follow the races. As an art collector, she purchased works by Claude Monet, Augustus John and Peter Carl Fabergé, among others.
  In February 1964, Elizabeth had an emergency appendectomy, which led to the postponement of a planned tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji until 1966. She recuperated during a Caribbean cruise aboard the royal yacht, Britannia. In December 1966, she underwent an operation to remove a tumour after she was diagnosed with colon cancer. Contrary to rumours, she did not have a colostomy. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984 and a lump was removed from her breast. Her bouts with cancer were never made public during her lifetime.
  In 1975, Elizabeth visited Iran at the invitation of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The British ambassador and his wife, Anthony and Sheila Parsons, noted how the Iranians were bemused by her habit of speaking to everyone regardless of status or importance, and hoped the Shah's entourage would learn from the visit to pay more attention to ordinary people. Between 1976 and 1984, she made annual summer visits to France, which were among 22 private trips to continental Europe between 1963 and 1992.
  In 1982, Elizabeth was rushed to hospital when a fish bone became stuck in her throat, and had an operation to remove it. Being a keen angler, she calmly joked afterwards, "The salmon have got their own back." Similar incidents occurred at Balmoral in August 1986, when she was hospitalised at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary overnight but no operation was needed, and May 1993, when she was admitted to the Infirmary for surgery under general anaesthetic.
  In 1987, Elizabeth was criticised when it emerged that two of her nieces, Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, had both been committed to a psychiatric hospital because they were severely handicapped. However, Burke's Peerage had listed the sisters as dead, apparently bec
caption: Elizabeth at Dover Castle, by Allan Warren
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