Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was the wife of King George VI and the mother of Queen Elizabeth II. She was queen consort of the United Kingdom 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, another Queen Elizabeth. She was the lastEmpress of India.

Born into a family of British nobility as The Honourable Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, she became Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon when her fatherinherited the Scottish Earldom of Strathmore and Kinghorne in 1904. She came to prominence in 1923 when she married Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary. As Duchess of York, she – along with her husband and their two daughters Elizabeth and Margaret – embodied traditional ideas of family and public service. She undertook a variety of public engagements, and became known as the "Smiling Duchess" because of her consistent public expression.

In 1936, her husband unexpectedly became King when his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in order to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Queen Elizabeth accompanied her husband on diplomatic tours to France and North America before the start of World War II. During the war, her seemingly indomitable spirit provided moral support to the British public. In recognition of her role as an asset to British interests, Adolf Hitler described her as "the most dangerous woman in Europe". After the war, her husband's health deteriorated and she was widowed at the age of 51.

On the death of her mother-in-law Queen Mary in 1953, with her brother-in-law living abroad and her elder daughter, the Queen, aged 27, Elizabeth became the senior member of the British Royal Family and assumed a position as family matriarch. In her later years, she was a consistently popular member of the family, even when other members were suffering from low levels of public approval. She continued an active public life until just a few months before her death at the age of 101, seven weeks after the death of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret.

King George VI died peacefully in his sleep on 6 February 1952. Elizabeth began to be styled 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 the King'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. In July 1953, she undertook her first overseas visit since the funeral when she visited theFederation 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. On her return to the region in 1957, she 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.

The widowed queen oversaw the restoration of the remote Castle of Mey on the Caithness coast of Scotland, which she used to "get away from everything" for three weeks in August and ten days in October each year. Inspired by the amateur jockey Lord Mildmay, she developed an interest in horse racing, particularly steeplechasing, that continued for the rest of her life. 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 1984Whitbread 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. 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, she 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. In 1982, she was rushed to hospital when a fish bone 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." In 1984, she had a second operation for cancer, when a lump was removed from her breast, and a second gastric obstruction in 1986 cleared without the need for an operation, but she was hospitalised overnight.

In 1975, she visited Iran at the invitation of Shah 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. Four years later, the Shah was deposed. Between 1976 and 1984, she made annual summer visits to France, which were among 22 private trips to continental Europe between 1963 and 1992.

Before the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to her grandson Prince Charles, and after Diana's death, Queen Elizabeth – known for her personal and public charm – was by far the most popular member of the royal family. Her signature dress of large upturned hat with netting and dresses with draped panels of fabric became a distinctive personal style.

Centenarian

In her later years, the Queen Mother became known for her longevity. Her 90th birthday—4 August 1990—was celebrated by a parade on 27 June that involved many of the 300 organisations of which she was patron. In 1995, she attended events commemorating the end of the war fifty years before, and had two operations: one to remove a cataract in her left eye, and one to replace her right hip. In 1998, her left hip was replaced after it was broken when she slipped and fell during a visit to Sandringham stables. Her 100th birthday was celebrated in a number of ways: a parade that celebrated the highlights of her life included contributions from Norman Wisdom and John Mills; her image appeared on a special commemorative £20 note issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland; and she attended a lunch at the Guildhall, London, at which George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, accidentally attempted to drink her glass of wine. Her quick admonition of "That's mine!" caused widespread amusement. In November 2000, she broke her collarbone in a fall that kept her recuperating at home over Christmas and the New Year. On 1 August 2001, the Queen Mother had a blood transfusion for anaemia after suffering from mild heat exhaustion, though she was well enough to make her traditional appearance outside Clarence House on 4 August 2001 to celebrate her 101st birthday.

In December 2001, aged 101, the Queen Mother had a fall in which she fractured her pelvis. Even so, she insisted on standing for the National Anthem during the memorial service for her husband on 6 February the following year. Just three days later, her second daughter Princess Margaret died. On 13 February 2002, the Queen Mother fell and cut her arm atSandringham House. Despite this fall, she was still determined to attend Margaret's funeral at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, two days later on Friday of that week. The Queen and the rest of the royal family were greatly concerned about the journey the Queen Mother would face to get from Norfolk to Windsor. Nevertheless, she made the journey and insisted that she be shielded from the press, so that no photographs of her in a wheelchair could be taken.

On 30 March 2002, at 3:15 pm, the Queen Mother died in her sleep at the Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, with her surviving daughter,Queen Elizabeth II, at her bedside. She had been suffering from a cold for the last four months of her life. She was 101 years old, and at the time of her death was the longest-lived member of the royal family in British history. This record was broken on 24 July 2003, by her last surviving sister-in-law Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, who died aged 102 on 29 October 2004.

Elizabeth grew camellias in every one of her gardens, and as her body was taken from Windsor to lie in state at Westminster Hall, camellias from her own gardens were placed on top of the flag-draped coffin. More than 200,000 people over three days filed past as she lay in state in Westminster Hall at the Palace of Westminster. Members of the household cavalry and other branches of the armed forces stood guard at the four corners of the catafalque. At one point, her four grandsons Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Viscount Linley mounted the guard as a mark of respect known as the Vigil of the Princes—an honour only bestowed once before, at the lying in state ofKing George V.

On the day of her funeral, 9 April, the Governor General of Canada issued a proclamation asking Canadians to honour her memory that day. In Australia, the Governor-General read the lesson at a memorial service held in St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney. In London, more than a million people filled the area outside Westminster Abbey and along the 23-mile (37 km) route from central London to her final resting place beside her husband and younger daughter in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. At her request, after her funeral the wreath that had lain atop her coffin was placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, in a gesture that echoed her wedding-day tribute 79 years before.

Titles and styles Main article: List of titles and honours of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon

• 4 August 1900 – 16 February 1904: The Honourable Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
• 16 February 1904 – 26 April 1923: Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
• 26 April 1923 – 11 December 1936: Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York
• 11 December 1936 – 6 February 1952: Her Majesty The Queen
  • 11 December 1936 – 14 August 1947 (for British India): Her Imperial Majesty The Queen-Empress
• 6 February 1952 – 30 March 2002: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

Arms

Queen Elizabeth's coat of arms was the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom (in either the English or the Scottish version) impaled with the arms of her father, the Earl of Strathmore; the latter being: 1st and 4th quarters, Argent, a lion rampant Azure, armed and langued Gules, within a double tressure flory-counter-flory of the second (Lyon); 2nd and 3rd quarters, Ermine, three bows stringed paleways proper (Bowes). The shield is surmounted by the imperial crown, and supported by the crowned lion of England and a lion rampant per fess Or and Gules.