Queen talks of WWII bombing in letter

LONDON: Britain's late queen Elizabeth the queen mother revealed in a letter published yesterday how she and her husband king George VI came close to being killed during World War II in a German bombing raid.

Written only hours after the incident, the letter tells how the royal couple leapt when they heard the "unmistakable whirr-whirr of a German plane" and then the "scream of a bomb" 69 years ago.

The bomb exploded in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and three servants were injured in the attack, the queen wrote to her mother-in-law.