A letter from the Queen Mother which describes the dramatic moment Buckingham Palace was bombed during a Second World War air raid has been released to mark the publication of the royal’s official biography.
The note tells how Queen Elizabeth and King George VI heard a diving Nazi plane then seconds later the “scream” of a bomb which flew past them and landed in the palace’s internal courtyard on September 13 1940.
The royals had delayed heading down to the palace’s air raid shelter because the King had asked his wife to take an eyelash out of his eye.
The attack left three workmen injured and the Queen Mother described in her letter how she was shaken by the explosions.
The correspondence was penned for the royal’s mother-in-law, Queen Mary, and is featured in the Queen Mother’s official biography written by William Shawcross which is published later this week.
It was one of hundreds of letters from the royal archive used by the biographer to chronicle the life of the royal who died in her sleep at the age of 101, in 2001, with the Queen at her bedside.
The former monarch begins the letter, written on Windsor Castle headed notepaper, by telling her “darling Mama” how she went to see if her husband was making his way to the shelter after a “red” warning was announced at the palace.
But instead of rushing downstairs for cover, the King asked his wife to take an eyelash out of his eye and soon afterwards they heard the “unmistakable whirr-whirr of a German plane” before the bomb landed.
The Queen Mother wrote: “I saw a great column of smoke and earth thrown up into the air, and then we all ducked like lightening into the corridor. There was another tremendous explosion, and we and our two pages who were outside the door, remained for a moment or two in the corridor away from the staircase, in case of flying glass.
She added: “My knees trembled a little bit for a minute or two after the explosions.”
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