Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

traveled to England for the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Normandy invasion that set in motion the end of World War II in Europe. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had invited us to spend the night on the royal yacht HMS Britannia, and I was excited by the prospect of getting to know the royal family. I had met Prince Charles the previous year at a small dinner party hosted by the Gores. He was delightful, with a quick wit and a self-deprecating humor. When Bill and I boarded the Britannia, we were taken to the Queen, Prince Philip and the Queen Mother, who greeted us with an offer of a drink. When I introduced my trip director, Kelly Craighead, the Queen Mother surprised us all by asking Kelly if she’d like to stay on the yacht to dine with her and a few of the Queen’s young military aides. Kelly said she would be delighted but would have to see if she could be released from her duties. Kelly followed me to my cabin and asked what she should do. I told her she should absolutely stay.

Someone else could fill in for her at the formal dinner that night with the Queen and Prince Philip. She ran off to tell one of the military aides, only to return in a panic because she’d learned she was supposed to dress formally for dinner. Her black pantsuit wouldn’t do. I pulled out all my dressy clothes and helped Kelly piece together a suitable outfit for dining with the Queen Mother.

At the grand dinner, I sat between Prince Philip and Prime Minister John Major at a head table long enough to accommodate all the Kings, Queens, Prime Ministers and Presidents in attendance. From the raised platform, I looked across the large, crowded room. Over five hundred guests were assembled to commemorate the Anglo-American alliance that proved victorious on D-Day. Among them were former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose career I had followed with great interest; Churchill’s surviving daughter, Mary Soames; and his grandson, Pamela Harriman’s son, Winston. Major was easy to talk to. I enjoyed chatting about personalities in the crowd and listened as he described the terrible automobile accident he’d had while working in Nigeria as a young man. He’d been immobilized for months and went through a long, painful recovery.

Prince Philip, a polished conversationalist, carefully divided his time between me and the woman on his other side, Her Majesty Queen Paola of Belgium. Literally pausing in “midchop,” he turned his head from her to me and back again as he talked about sailing and the history of the Britannia.

The Queen, seated next to Bill, wore a sparkling diamond tiara that caught the light as she nodded and laughed at Bill’s stories. She reminded me of my own mother in her appearance, politeness and reserve. I have great admiration and sympathy for the way she has discharged the duties she assumed as a young woman upon her father’s death. Holding a demanding, high-profile role for decades through difficult and fast-changing times was hard for me to imagine in light of my more limited experience. When Chelsea was nine, Bill and I took her with us on a short vacation to London. All she wanted to do was to meet the Queen and Princess Diana, which in those days we couldn’t arrange. I took her, however, to an exhibit documenting the history of all of England’s Kings and Queens. She studied the display carefully, spending nearly one hour reading the description of each monarch and then going back through again. When she finished, she said, “Mommy, I think being a King or Queen is a very hard job.”

The morning after our grand dinner, I met Princess Diana for the first time at the Drumhead Service, a traditional religious ceremony for “the Forces Committed,” the point at which troops cannot be pulled back from battle. The ceremony was held on the grounds of a Royal Navy base, on a field surrounded by gardens that extended along an oceanfront esplanade. Among the veterans and spectators was Diana, estranged, though not yet divorced, from Prince Charles. She attended the ceremony alone. I watched as she greeted the crowd of supporters, who clearly doted on her. She had a presence that was captivating. Uncommonly beautiful, she used her eyes to draw people in, dropping her head forward to greet you while lifting her eyes upward. She radiated life and a sense of vulnerability that I found heartbreaking. Although there was little time to talk during this visit, I came to know and like her. Diana was a woman torn between competing needs and interests, but she genuinely wanted to make a contribution, to have her life count for something. She became an effective advocate for AIDS awareness and land mine eradication.

She was also a devoted mother, and whenever we met, we discussed the challenge of raising children in the public spotlight.

Later that afternoon, we boarded the Britannia and sailed out into the English Channel, where we joined a long line of ships, including the Jeremiah O’Brien, one of the ships used by the U.S. government to ferry supplies to England during the war. We transferred to the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier anchored off the French coast.

This was my first visit to a carrier, a floating city with a population of six thousand sailors and Marines. While Bill worked on the speech he would deliver the next day, I took a tour that included the flight deck, one of the most dangerous workstations in the Armed Forces. Imagine the courage and training it requires to take off and land a fighter jet on that bobbing patch of American real estate in the middle of the ocean. From the captain’s bridge high above the deck, I looked out over the enormous carrier and felt the power it represented. I ate dinner in the cafeteria-size galley with some of the crew members, most of whom