Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, has died at the age of 101. She was queen for fewer than 15 years, during a period which is now beginning to pass out of living memory. Yet her personal popularity continued through 50 years of widowhood, unimpaired by changing public reactions to her children and grandchildren, and their mostly broken marriages.
When she married the Duke of York (later King George VI) on April 23 1923, her impact on the crowds was comparable to that of Diana's 58 years later. She had been reluctant to marry royalty - "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to". But having accepted the life, she threw herself into it, and carried her husband through the trauma of the 1936 abdication, which brought him to the throne.
History will probably honour her best for her reply in 1940 - after Buckingham Palace had been bombed while the family was at home - to advice that she should follow other wealthy people in sending her daughters to Canada until the end of the war. She said: "The children will not leave unless I do. I shall not leave unless their father does; and the King will not leave the country in any circumstances."
Yet what those who saw her in later life on television, or in the flesh, may find it hardest and saddest to forget is her compulsive informality, her knack of giving the most pretentious function the air of a jumble sale, in the midst of which she would stand, beaming toothily and talking, nineteen to the dozen, with legs placed comfortably apart, and one hand in the air to emphasise a point.
Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was born at St Paul's Waldenbury, the Hertfordshire house of her parents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne. She was the ninth child, of 10, in an ancient and gregarious Scots family.
Elizabeth was taught by a governess, mainly in domestic science, painting, dancing, the piano and French and German (as queen, she broadcast in French to occupied France). She was carefree and notably easy in manner. But it was not an unshadowed upbringing. One brother, Fergus, was killed at Loos in 1915. Two others were wounded in the first world war, and one taken prisoner. Four of her brothers and sisters died before reaching adulthood.
According to one convincing theory, Queen Mary had singled Elizabeth out from youth as a potential bride for the younger prince, Albert, Duke of York, known as Bertie, and later George VI. The couple met as children; he was a close friend of her elder brothers, a visitor to a house which was a liberating contrast to his own home.
A friend called Prince Albert, in his mid-20s, "the least self-pleased person in the world". He had inherited his father's perfectionism; but he was introspective, highly strung and entirely overshadowed by his elder brother, Prince Edward. He was "greatly cut off" by a stammer which proved impervious to therapy.
In theory, he was the second most eligible bachelor in the country. In practice, his father had to warn him that Elizabeth might never accept him. When she did so at the third time of asking, when she was 22 and he 27, he cabled pathetically to his parents from Hertfordshire: "It's all right." She was to say later: "I felt it my duty to marry Bertie, and fell in love with him afterwards." He was the first prince of the royal blood since Richard II to become engaged to a commoner.
Elizabeth was unknown to press and public, but her popularity was established at speed. She was a great novelty - a member of the royal family who smiled in public. The wedding, on April 26 1923, was the first marriage of a king's son since 1382 to be held outside a royal chapel. It drew extraordinary crowds to Westminster Abbey.
Soon after the marriage, Albert embarked on further speech therapy, which meant long sessions of daily practice for them both. He ventured to take on more public speaking duties, with his wife always sitting nearby, her lips moving in time with his. His speech improved to the point where, in 1927, George V decided to risk sending the couple on their first major assignment, the opening of the Australian federal parliament.
Nevertheless, during the abdication crisis nine years later, serious consideration was given to passing on the throne to his younger brother, the Duke of Kent. According to one account, it was Elizabeth's popularity that tipped the scales.
On December 11 1936, Albert came to the throne, taking the name George VI, with Elizabeth as Queen Consort and last Empress of India. "I'm afraid there are going to be great changes in our lives, Crawfie," she told the children's nanny.
As early as May 1940, a 50-year-old working-class woman who kept diaries for Mass Observation, the forerunner of opinion polls, reported hearing "on every side pitying remarks about the worn and tired looks of the king. He looks far from being a strong man and it must be weary to be a king." In 1949, Elizabeth took over his public duties, asking "to be granted not a lighter load but a stronger back". He died of lung cancer on February 5 1952.
Mass Observation's collated accounts found an intensity of public regret probably not equalled since the death of Queen Victoria. Elizabeth said in her public message three days after the funeral:
"He loved you all, every one of you, most truly. Now I am left alone to do what I can to honour that pledge without him." The Times said that no monarch in history had owed more to his wife.
With her eldest daughter prematurely on the throne, Elizabeth was expected to fade into the future of a Clarence House dowager widow, like Queen Mary - a future of embroidery and the occasional unstressful public appearance. She did go through a period of depression and loneliness.
In 1954, however, she was asked to go alone to the US to receive an educational fund collected in honour of her husband. The visit was a success, with cab and truck drivers in New York and Washington shouting her name out in the street. Wartime gratitude had lasted. She was still in demand.
In 1982, the Queen Mother made 63 official visits in Britain, attended 29 receptions, presided over two Privy Council meetings, gave 15 audiences to diplomats and visited two overseas countries. An opinion poll found her still rated the best member of the royal family for public duties. And even by her 90th birthday, the tempo of her engagements had "slowed down not at all", according to the palace.
In January 1998, having already had two hip replacement operations, the Queen Mother broke a hip in a fall, but hobbled out of hospital on crutches 23 days later. Even this late in life, eating-in and dining-out on an Edwardian scale was still among her passions. In 1999, she reportedly had a £4m overdraft at Coutts bank, more than six times her £643,000 annual civil list income. Her staff included three chauffeurs, two pages, five housemaids and three secretaries - "Going it a bit," said the Sun.
She would have seen as her own most important message the advice she gave to students as chancellor of London University, and on innumerable other public platforms: "Do not, in today's tumult, lose sight of the ancient virtues of service, truth and vision." But what she taught best was herself. As her biographer Dorothy Laird said, she managed to bring private affections into public life.
· Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Windsor, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, born Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, August 4 1900; died March 30 2002