Counting One's Blessings by William Shawcross

Counting One's Blessings by William Shawcross

William Shawcross's official biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, published in September 2009, was a huge critical and commercial success.One of the great revelations of the book was Queen Elizabeth's insightful, witty private correspondence. Indeed, The Sunday Times described her letters as "wonderful . . . brimful of liveliness and irreverence, steeliness and sweetness."

Now, in Counting One's Blessings, Shawcross has put together a selection of her letters, drawing on the vast wealth of material in the Royal Archives and at Glamis Castle. Queen Elizabeth was a prolific correspondent, from her early childhood before World War I to the very end of her long life at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and her letters offer readers a vivid insight into the real person behind the public face.

William Shawcross is a successful author of many novels, including Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia; The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience; Rescue Us from Evil: Warlords, Peacekeepers, and an Endless Conflict; Allies, and The Queen Mother. He is the chairman of Article 19, a London-based charity and pressure organisation that protects Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a board member of the International Crisis Committee and a member of the High Commissioner for Refugees' Informal Advisory Group from 1995 to 2000.