Queen Mary, the widow of George V, and grandmother of the Queen, died at Marlborough House on 24 March 1953, a few months before the Coronation. She was 85 years old. Unusually for a Queen consort, an official biography was commisoned. The task was entrusted to James Pope-Hennessy. He embarked on his 3 year quest for Queen Mary in 1955. It was to take him to many royal courts and to the lunch and tea tables of retired courtiers and Lasies-in-waiting. He had access to a great number of private documents. He was shown royal residences both in England and Europe. Part of the time he lived at a guesthouse in Bodensee where the cost of living was cheaper and he was able to write quietly. As he went along, he kept notes about who he met and what he saw. Pop-Hennessy had not intended the notes of his royal interviews to be published for 50 years. He described them as follows: To supplement the manuscript and printed sources I kept private and confidential file recording in con siderable detail the conversations I had both with Queen Mary's immediate descendants and with the surviving members of the Court of King George V and Queen Mary. None of these interviews have been published, nor could they be until a lapse of 50 years. They are strictly confidential and form, I believe, a not uninteresting study of royal psychology as it was and as it largely remains today. In this book Hugo Vickers tells the story of the book and places these figures in context. Large paperback edition, 298 pages with illustrations, in English.