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

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Hardman has an easy style as befits a long-time journalist and former royal correspondent, author of three previous books about the Queen and a documentary filmmaker with a number of television documentaries on the royals.

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

That led to a summit that marked a turning point in the talks between Britain and the EU, resulting in a compromise deal over Northern Ireland and the eventual ratification of the withdrawal agreement. 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. 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. When his book was published at the beginning of 2021, he told Channel Nine that Charles was “entirely unsuitable” to ascend the throne.But if you want to read an intimate account of the childhood of the devoted sisters, this could be the place to start.

Elizabeth - Penguin Books UK Elizabeth - Penguin Books UK

But all we learn is that she is often a remote figure, using her workload to avoid tricky family dynamics, a tactic known as ‘ostrich mode’.

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. If compromise is marriage’s essential ingredient, it has been especially vital to the Queen and Prince Philip.

Queen Elizabeth II — 12 books to understand her life and reign Queen Elizabeth II — 12 books to understand her life and reign

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. According to Britain’s Financial Times, “the real target of The Palace Papers is the Queen: Brown seeks ‘above all’ to give readers a better understanding of the monarch. Seward’s take is this: “She has always appreciated how difficult it is for someone so obsessed with his masculine image as her husband to have a wife who always takes precedence over him. 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.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? 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. When the book was published, it was described as “ludicrously lubricious” in Britain’s Observer newspaper and in his review Oxford-based Australian academic Peter Conrad said Brandreth’s “entire biography of the pair can best be read as the product of a sweatily over-heated imagination. Some are more recent, including a couple from this year, while others were first published years ago.