The Gown(111)
In the course of researching The Gown, I relied upon the collections of a number of libraries, archives, and museums. I would specifically like to acknowledge the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, the British Newspaper Archive, the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex, the Museum of London, the National Archives (UK), the National Art Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Toronto Public Library.
To my literary agent, Kevan Lyon, and her colleagues at the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, in particular Patricia Nelson, I once again extend my heartfelt thanks. I would also like to thank my personal publicist, Kathleen Carter, for her inspired and creative support.
I am profoundly grateful to my editor, Tessa Woodward, for understanding what I wanted to do with this book long before I had figured it out, and for guiding me with such sensitivity and certainty. I am so fortunate to have her (and her keen appreciation of all things royal) at my side.
I am also very grateful to Elle Keck in editorial, as well as my HarperCollins publicists Camille Collins, Jessica Lyons, Melissa Nowakowski, and Irina Pintea for supporting me so ably.
I want to thank the amazing team at William Morrow, in particular Samantha Hagerbaumer, Jennifer Hart, Martin Karlow, Julia Meltzer, Carla Parker, Shelby Peak, Alison Smith, Diahann Sturge, Serena Wang, Molly Waxman, and Amelia Wood. Thanks to the producers at HarperAudio for once again creating a beautiful audiobook. I’m also very grateful to the incredible sales staff in the U.S., Canada, and the international division, as well as the wonderful people at HarperCollins Canada, among them Leo Macdonald, Sandra Leff, Cory Beatty, Colleen Simpson, Shannon Parsons, Suman Seewat, and Kaitlyn Vincent.
Closer to home, I’d like to thank my friends for their love and support: Amutha, Ana, Clara, Denise, Erin, Jane D, Jane E, Jen, Kelly F, Kelly W, Liz, Margie, Mary, Mary Ellen, Michela, and Rena. I would not have survived the race to the finish without the counsel and group texts from my band of sisters, aka the Coven: Karma Brown, Kerry Clare, Chantel Guertin, Kate Hilton, Elizabeth Renzetti, Marissa Stapley, and Kathleen Tucker. My sincere thanks as well to fellow authors and friends Janie Chang, Megan Crane, Karen Lord, and Kate Quinn for their sage advice and unflagging support.
My loving thanks to all my family, in particular my sister Kate and my children, Matthew and Daniela, for all they did to support and encourage me when I was buried in the world of The Gown. Most of all I want to thank my husband, Claudio, whose loving and steadfast heart is the inspiration for all of my heroes. (Now just go out and get that Wilfred Owen tattoo, okay?)
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
* * *
Meet Jennifer Robson
About the Book
* * *
Closed Doors and Open Windows
An Interview with Betty Foster
Grand-Mère’s Friday-Night Chicken
Reading Group Guide
Read On . . .
* * *
Suggestions for Further Reading
About the Author
Meet Jennifer Robson
JENNIFER ROBSON is the USA Today and #1 Globe & Mail (Toronto) bestselling author of five novels, among them Somewhere in France and Goodnight from London. She holds a doctorate in British economic and social history from Saint Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and children.
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About the Book
Closed Doors and Open Windows
I wish I could say that the premise for The Gown came upon me in true “eureka!” fashion, but the reality is a little more prosaic. It was the summer of 2016, I was having lunch with my editor and literary agent, and we were brainstorming ideas for my next book. After agreeing that I ought to write something set in Britain after World War II, we’d begun to flounder. I’d floated a few suggestions, none of them terribly compelling, and was starting to feel a bit desperate. So I posed the question: What felt important to the people who lived through that time? What was significant and memorable then? And that’s when I remembered one event, late in 1947, that had transfixed the entire world: the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten.
Nothing could have stood in greater contrast to those draining, dispiriting, and miserable postwar years than the glittering and bejeweled spectacle of a royal wedding. The great celebrations of VE Day and VJ Day were over and the hard work of rebuilding the world had begun, but Britain’s economy remained in a calamitous state after years of ruinously expensive warfare. Not only did austerity measures such as rationing remain in place, but in a number of respects they also became even more stringent. For many people, life seemed to be getting worse, not better.
That is the world I set out to explore when I began work on The Gown. What would it have been like to live through those lean, hard years? And what did the royal wedding mean to the people of the time—was it indeed “a flash of color on the hard road [they had] to travel,” as Winston Churchill famously said? Or was it a bitter and unwelcome reminder of how little they had and how much they had lost?
From the start, I didn’t want to tell my story from the point of view of Princess Elizabeth or anyone in her inner circle. Not because I feel the princess—Queen Elizabeth II as we now know her—is in any way uninteresting, but rather because I believe her true character is a mystery to anyone beyond her close family and friends. The queen has never given an interview and never will, her thoughts and opinions on most subjects are largely opaque, and the woman we think we know is, I believe, largely a projection of our individual feelings and beliefs. Here I want to be clear: I am fascinated by the queen and her family, but no amount of research will ever allow me to know them; and if I cannot truly know and understand them, I feel it is better to remain at a distance.