Lilibet
An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
In Lilibet, master biographer Carolly Erickson turns her skill at writing un-put-downable narrative to telling the remarkable story of Elizabeth II, Queen of England.
With her customary psychological insight, historian Erickson traces the queen's gilded but often thorny path from her overprotected girlhood to her ascension to the throne at twenty-five to her personal and national difficulties as queen.
Lilibet shows us an Elizabeth we thought we knew-but shows her in a different light: as a small, shy woman with a sly and at times raucous sense of humor, a woman who appears stiff in public, but in private enjoys watching wrestling on TV. A woman most at home among her horses and dogs. And a woman long annealed to heartbreak and sorrow, who has presided over the decline of Great Britain and the decline in prestige of her own Windsor dynasty.
Far from being a light, gossipy treatment of a celebrity, Lilibet tells the queen's story from her point of view, letting the reader relive Elizabeth's long and eventful life with all its splendid ceremonies, momentous responsibilities and family clashes. Through it all we glimpse, as never before, the strong and appealing sovereign who has ruled over her people for half a century and more, a ruler of immense wealth, international esteem and high character whose daily life is grounded in the bedrock of common sense.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Erickson, having written 10 biographies of long-dead European monarchs, now tackles a breathing royal. Hats off to her: she's done an admirable job. With a novelist's sense of pacing and a historian's love of fact collecting, she's put together a biography that is both entertaining and substantial, if unrevealing. The last isn't exactly her fault. As Erickson shows, the unflappable Elizabeth was raised to be reserved and in total control of her emotions. It makes her a fine leader, but a less-than-colorful biography subject. Yet even while covering familiar ground, Erickson freshens things up with perfectly placed bits of trivia. Who'd have imagined, for example, that the queen watches televised wrestling matches? It is telling that the most memorable section of the book isn't about Elizabeth but about Michael Fagan, the mentally disturbed intruder who broke into her Buckingham Palace bedroom early one morning 20 years ago, hoping to pour out his heart to his sovereign. Poor man as Erickson and biographers before her have made painfully clear, Elizabeth II is apparently a woman who lacks the will to hear the problems of her own children: the royal family, Erickson writes, was "emotionally distant, the relationships between them full of strain and unspoken grievances and festering disappointments as well as costive affection." It's a sad portrait, in the end, one not only of emotional absence, of a disappointing heir and public humiliation by family and palace affairs, but of loss of royal significance: being a realist, according to Erickson, the queen recognized that her political and moral influence have greatly declined over the years. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
