What happens is people look around and they see that their country is in ruins, figuratively and literally.
Britain was more or less bankrupt.
The immediate years that followed were just so grim, and its something we dont often talk about.
Credit: Natalie Brown/Tangerine Photo; William Morrow Paperbacks
A lot of popular history skates from 1945 straight into the 1950s.
There was this long period of people effectively being on their knees.
If youre writing highbrow literary fiction, then obviously, the more depressing the better.
I need something beyond that.
Some kind of light at the end of the tunnel….
I went straight from 1947 to Whats the counterbalance?
Its invariably the gown that the bride wears.
I thought, Who made it?
Because that was a question I remember having whenWilliam and Kate got married.
Now, I think thats in deference to privacy issues, but I did want to know their stories.
What is it like to work on this wedding gown?
How did they make it?
What set [the Queens gown] apart was the embroidery.
And what was it like to work in those work rooms, under that pressure?
What was that like?
Thats what I wanted to know.
What surprised me was that broadly speaking, most people really got behind it and embraced the notion.
The royal family had stayed in Britain even as it was being bombed.
They had stayed and done their bit.
Just the idea of her having some kind of austerity wedding, people really rebelled against that.
Immediately after the announcement of the engagement, people agitated for her to have a decent wedding.
Nobody wanted to see the princess go down the aisle in her ATS uniform.
They wanted her to have a beautiful gown, and not to scrimp on that.
Ann loves the royal family, while Miriam is more skeptical.
Very few of us can remember what its like to be alive before she was the Queen.
The thought of the world without the Queen is very hard for me to wrap my head around.
The Queen is this real point of reference in a world that changes.
I find it comforting to know shes out there.
That aside, it is very comforting to have someone like the Queen at the helm.
What I tried to balance in the book was these differing points of view that are both legitimate.
But its also fair, if youre like Miriam, to be really skeptical.
Like, who are these people?
Sitting in their palace, eating off their gold plates.
Why should I care?
There were points where I felt like I could hardly breathe.
She wad so forthcoming.
She had pictures and this precious scrapbook.
She had scraps of the fabric from the wedding dress and the gown and the veil.
She has the row of practice buttonholes that she made.
Buttonholes you cant move or change once you put them in; they have to be exactly right.
Im not sure how they wouldve fixed that.
I remember asking her, You mustve been so nervous.
She said, No I wasnt.
Because they were used to [working] quickly.
They were always getting in rush orders for famous actresses.
But also fix things that I got wrong.
As soon as Id done that, the book came to life.
In choosing that veil and incorporating every nation in the Commonwealth, she made a very powerful statement.
Its a statement about the importance of craft.
Nothing in her gown or veil was done quickly or sloppily.
Nobody was stuffing it through the sewing machine.
And they dont get recognized for it….
These women were artists.
Just because we dont apply that term to them doesnt mean they arent artists.
These gowns to me are works of art and should be treated as the precious things they are.
The lives of women are largely missing from the historical record.
If people dont see it, I dont think theyre looking hard enough, because its there.
Womens stories are important and matter.
Just because they havent been told doesnt mean theyre not worth telling.
