The Queen Mother's Letters: review The role played by the Duchess of York in helping the Duke overcome his stammer is well known, thanks to The King's Speech. She never faltered in her role of supportive wife, and remained at his side during the war, writing to her sister in 1941: "I am still just as frightened of bombs going off as I was at the beginning. I turn bright red and my heart hammers, in fact I'm a beastly coward but I do believe that a lot of people are, so I don't mind... Tinkety tonk old fruit, and down with the Nazis. This accurate sense of herself as essentially similar to so many others was one of Queen Elizabeth's many strengths. Her secure childhood, surrounded by older brothers and sisters (she was one of 10) with an adoring mother, was succeeded by a girlhood, shadowed but not shattered by the Great War, that left her serenely confident of her tastes and attributes. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon had little formal education but she became a reader, going to bed with Shakespeare during the war. She enjoyed correspondence with Ted Hughes, whose looks as well as verse she revered. She gave her passion for horses to one daughter, and her interest in the arts to another. For all the affection in which he was held, George VI seems not to have got much of a look-in. There is no room, in this volume, for the shadowy side of history. The championing of Chamberlain, the alcoholism and intermittent instability of the Bowes-Lyons, the leaks as the marriages of her grandchildren unravelled - none of these surface. There are a couple of loving letters to Princess Margaret in 1955, warmly commiserating with her daughter's "agony of mind" about Peter Townsend but nothing of later troubles. The overwhelming impression, perhaps fortified by the blandness of William Shawcross's editorial policy, is of someone who never went anywhere difficult. Always loving, never angry. Always grateful, never querulous. Is it a true picture? Impossible to say. Daughter of Empire by Pamela Hicks offers a glance at Court life from the Mountbatten perspective. On the Commonwealth Tour of 1953, Prince Philip's deck hockey "minus rules" causes "four sprained ankles, four crushed fingers and countless minor injuries." In Tonga the men of the party take to their grass skirts more enthusiastically than the women. By the time they reach Australia the Prince complains to his cousin about waking very cold with his right arm outside the bedclothes, having been waving to the crowds in his sleep. Lady Pamela's portrait of her upbringing by two remarkable parents is affectionate and spirited. The warmth in her descriptions of Gandhi, Nehru and many other Indians is touching, and her adherence to the official line about a voluntary transfer of power to a country "intent on self-destruction" is chilling in about equal measure. One player never mentioned is Alastair Campbell's homonymous precursor, Alan Campbell-Johnson, the first (and last) press attaché to a viceroy. Neither of these books spills any beans; both offer interesting glimpses of mid-20th-century royalty, brought up in the horror of one war and muddling its way towards another. After the hiccup of the abdication, its success was fuelled by a powerful cocktail of relentless attention to duty, seemingly effortless panache and expert public relations. The fascination of the mask was that it so seldom slipped. On one side of a stone plinth in the garden at Broadlands, Lady Pamela's Jewish grandfather had erected the inscription "Lest We Forget. The Great War 1914-1918. On the other side her father was "sorely tempted to have carved "As We Forgot. Second World War 1939-1945"." Of course he didn't. Counting One's Blessings by William Shawcross 524pp, Macmillan, t £17.99 (PLUS £1.35 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £25, ebook £14.32) **** Daughter of Empire by Pamela Hicks 262pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, t £13.99 (PLUS £1.35 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £20, ebook £20) ****