New Issue of White House History Quarterly, “Queen Elizabeth II: The Royal Visits” Available on Pre-Order Today

Feb 07, 2022 Washington, D.C. —

The White House Historical Association (WHHA) today released the 64th issue of its award-winning magazine, White House History Quarterly. Queen Elizabeth II visited the United States as princess and queen, officially and privately, eight times, from 1951 to 2010, never failing to make front page news. She has met more U.S. presidents than any other head of state, thirteen of the fourteen who have served during her reign. Through a continuum of official visits and less formal excursions that took her across America, she would witness seventy years of White House history and experience firsthand the White House traditions that would begin and end, evolve and endure over seventy years.

During her annual Christmas Message in 2021, Queen Elizabeth II drew attention to the 2022 celebration of her seventy-year reign, noting, “February…will see the start of my Platinum Jubilee year, which I hope will be an opportunity for people everywhere to enjoy a sense of togetherness." This unprecedented occasion provides a fitting time for White House History Quarterly to focus on White House history through the extraordinary experience of Queen Elizabeth II.

Included in this issue:

• Marcia Anderson, the Association's Chief Publishing Officer and Editor of the Quarterly opens the issue with her foreword and photo essay noting, "Friendship is a recurring theme in the words the queen spoke on every visit and a motivation for the extent of her travels." The images featured show the queen visiting sites as diverse as grocery stores, national monuments, and children's hospitals.
• Curator Candace Shireman provides a behind the scenes look at the queen’s four stays at Blair House, The President’s Guest House, where each moment of every visit is planned months, sometimes years, in advance and is executed with a devotion to perfection.
• Curator Sally Goodsir of the Queen's Royal Collection Trust shares a glimpse at the official gifts exchanged by the queen with U.S. presidents, from the overmantel glass she presented to President Truman and now displayed in the Queens' Bedroom at the White House, to the Tiffany box presented to the queen by President Joe Biden in 2021.
• Historian Alan Capps looks back to 1976 and 2007 when Queen Elizabeth II joined America in celebrating the bicentennial of its independence and the four-hundredth anniversary of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
• Culinary Historian Alexander Prud’homme gives a behind-the-scenes look at the White House kitchen during the 1976 bicentennial State Visit. Prud’homme’s great aunt, Julia Child, reported from the White House Kitchen for PBS as Chef Henry Haller prepared a five-course white-tie State Dinner.
• Colleen Shogan, the White House Historical Association’s Senior Vice President and Director of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History, looks at the traditional practice of toasting with wine and the rhetoric of diplomacy during the queen’s reign.
• As both guest and host, Queen Elizabeth II has shared wine, a universal symbol of hospitality, with many presidents of the United States. In his article, Frederick J. Ryan, Publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, and author of Wine and the White House, details the selection of each vintage.
• Historian Sarah Thomson concludes the issue by recounting the arduous journey Queen Elizabeth II made by four-wheel drive, up a treacherous mountain-top road during a torrential downpour to reach the Rancho del Cielo, President Ronald Reagan’s private California home and the "Presidential Site Feature" of this issue of the Quarterly.

This 120-page issue of White House History Quarterly retails for $9.95. To subscribe or purchase a single issue, visit shop.whitehousehistory.org.

To request an advance copy of White House History Quarterly #64, or to interview the individuals listed above, please contact press@whha.org.

Read more about Queen Elizabeth II and her visits to the White House.

About White House History Quarterly

White House History Quarterly, published by the White House Historical Association since 1983, is now in its sixty fourth issue. The Quarterly strives to present the broadest view of this personal American subject—the White House—featuring memoir, biography, history, and cultural context as it opens the doors of “America’s House” to America. Issues are thematic, shaped to tell a story from a particular angle, and the themes—from music, theater, fashion, art, entertaining, flowers and gardens, kitchens and cooking, presidential journeys and travel, memoir, and presidential kin and presidential sites—suggest the broad scope of the content. With editorial offices in Washington, D.C., at the Association's row house facing Lafayette Park across from the White House, White House History Quarterly is published four times each year. One, two, or three-year subscriptions, single copies, and bound collections of back issues are available.