The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorating her life and reign 1926 – 2022

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Since then, he has produced biographies of Meghan Markle, Wallis Simpson and celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie and the Beckhams. The former governess of Elizabeth and her sister Margaret, who started working for their family in the 1930s well before the abdication that propelled their father, George VI, to the throne, takes the reader back to their childhood and training for public duty in a controversial 1953 book that shattered the author’s relationship with the royal family – they never spoke to her again – and cost her her home in the grounds of Kensington palace. The long years that the late Queen Elizabeth II reigned – the longest in British history – and the varied and various events of her family and public life have ensured that she is probably the most written about monarch ever.

Elizabeth by Gyles Brandreth | Waterstones Elizabeth by Gyles Brandreth | Waterstones

Irving rates Elizabeth’s greatest achievement as having preserved the meaning of the monarchy during her reign. Updated in 2012 by Pimlott’s friend and colleague Peter Hennessy, it focuses on the Queen’s career as a constitutional monarch, her interventions in politics and the impact her leadership had on monarchy, government and diplomacy. It was immediately acclaimed on publication and in his foreword to a 2012 Diamond Jubilee edition, historian Peter Hennessy said it was the “product of what happened when a leading political biographer and a top-flight historian of the 20th century . From her childhood in the 1920s to the era of Harry and Meghan in the 2020s, from her war years at Windsor Castle to her death at Balmoral, this is both a record of a tumultuous century of royal history and a truly intimate portrait of a remarkable woman.The former newspaperman’s biography of the Queen is predicated on the notion that she saved the House of Windsor and therefore monarchy has survived. From young princess to internationally revered head of state, Queen Elizabeth has always fascinated and intrigued. And another said: “Smith often pulls her punches; the Queen’s passion for her dogs and horses gets more ink than daughters-in-law Camilla (the future Queen Consort) and Sophie, and the monarch remains distant, her thoughts and feelings ultimately unknowable. His book has much about the dealings of the family with the media and, of course, their various scandals. Queen Elizabeth “delicately planted” the idea of appealing to Leo Varadkar, the Irish leader, to help break the deadlock in negotiations and avoid a no-deal Brexit.

Times Books | Queen Elizabeth II – Collins

He has written several other biographies and histories, including acclaimed two accounts of Saudi Arabia, The Kingdom and Inside the Kingdom. Published to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, this is really a collection of observational writings from an array of people such as Margaret Thatcher, Sebastian Coe, Cecil Beaton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Cliff Richard, Nicola Sturgeon and Margaret Whitlam about their personal encounters with or views of the Queen. And there was to be tension between the two, just as there was to be between the Queen’s grandsons, William and Harry.Of course, Crawfie wasn’t the last royal employee to reveal the secrets of the family, but what she wrote now seems mild. People may well open up more about her life and personality, but there are bound to be more assessments of her remarkable reign. Did Philip ever mutter, “I wish that jersey-wearer with alarmingly clean teeth would stop trying to trick me into saying things”? They were eventually married in 1947, only two years after the end of the Second World War and remained so until his death in 2021.

Elizabeth - Penguin Books UK Elizabeth - Penguin Books UK

If compromise is marriage’s essential ingredient, it has been especially vital to the Queen and Prince Philip. His account of the Windsor sisters, whose closeness was real and deep, comes to life with the changes brought about in their relationship by their father’s ascension to the throne and when Elizabeth became Queen on his death: “Now there was a distance between them, calibrated and barely acknowledged, but a distance nonetheless.Tina Brown has form detailing the trials and tribulations of the royal family thanks to her book The Diana Chronicles, which was published 25 years ago. With Susie Dent, the lexicographer from Countdown, he co-hosts the award-winning podcast, Something Rhymes with Purple. Of course, no one knows the truth of a marriage except the two people in it, so although this book promises the full story, naturally we don’t get it. As he told Vanity Fair: “If you’re a biographer of the Queen, when you come to the end of the work of the biography, you ask yourself seriously and honestly, how much more do you understand of this person now than you did when you started the book? Dennison describes her as a “cautious innovator”, “a still point in the vortex of change”, someone who has outlived “national habits of deference and ignored the culture of celebrity, evanescent and meretricious”.

Queen Elizabeth II — a celebration: The Times special

Pimlott was a political scientist and historian who had dabbled with a political career, written lives of British Labour figures, and in 1996 this whopper, to which he added five chapters for the Golden Jubilee in 2002. For many years, this book has been regarded as one of the best and most perceptive of biographies of the monarch. It reveals, for example, the tension provoked by her decision not to take her husband’s surname (Mountbatten) and her feelings about the collapse of Charles and Diana’s relationship. Of course, he can’t ignore the massive changes she has weathered during her reign, and brings it bang up to date with discussion about the rift between the Sussexes and the rest of the royal family.

Lacey is the historical consultant to The Crown and although the Netflix series has been criticised for its many inaccuracies, which he can’t really be blamed for, his books seem to be a different matter. Robert Hardman rejects the idea that Elizabeth II is a monarch “harassed by one reverse after another” and claims in this most recently published, full biography of the Queen that the “declinist narrative” overlooks one key fact: the monarch “genuinely likes being the Queen”. So, it’s as much a history of British political life, society and international relations as it is about the woman who “had presided over a quiet revolution in the nation’s international standing, economy, and values” and “was strong, but passive.