Queen Mary: Love and Hope

The Quest for Queen Mary
by James Pope-Hennessy, edited by Hugo Vickers
Zuleika, 2018, 321 pages, £30
_____________________________________

It is sixty-five years since that magnificent matriarch Queen Mary died, on March 24, 1953. She was eighty-five and had been at the centre of royal life all her life. She witnessed six monarchs at close quarters—Queen Victoria, her first cousin once removed; Edward VII, her second cousin and father-in-law; her husband, George V; her sons, Edward VIII and George VI; and her granddaughter, Elizabeth II. By 1953, as she faded, she insisted that Elizabeth’s coronation not be delayed by any mourning for her death—the staunchest, most steadfast monarchist since the Divine Right Stuarts sat on the British throne.

But what prompts this arcane interest? A few weeks ago a new publisher, Zuleika, produced The Quest for Queen Mary, a collection of notes, introduced and edited with precision and panache by the royal historian Hugo Vickers, and…