A Voyage Around the Queen

From one of the funniest writers of our time, the award winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of One Two Three Four and Ma'am Darling turns his attention to Queen Elizabeth II in an unforgettable and fascinating biography.

Virginia Woolf compared her to a caterpillar; Anne Frank kept pictures of her on the wall; Jimi Hendrix played her tune; Haile Selassie gave her a gold tiara; Dirk Bogarde watched Death in Venice with her; Andy Warhol envied her fame; Donald Trump offended her; E.M. Forster confessed he would have married her, if only she had been a boy.

Queen Elizabeth II was famous for longer than anyone who ever lived. When people spoke of her, they spoke of themselves; when they dreamed of her, they dreamed of themselves. She mirrored their hopes and anxieties. To the optimist, she seemed an optimist; to the pessimist, a pessimist; to the awestruck, charismatic; and to the cynical, humdrum. Though by nature reserved and unassuming, her presence could fill presidents and rock gods with terror. For close to a century, she inhabited the psyche of a nation.

Combining biography, essays, cultural history, travelogue and satire, the best-selling author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of this most public and private of sovereigns.

Reviews

Praise for Craig Brown:

'In my wilder moments, I wonder if he hasn’t reinvented the biographical form' Rachel Cooke, Observer

‘The most screamingly funny living writer’ Barry Humphries, Mail on Sunday

‘The greatest satirist since Max Beerbohm’ Elaine Showalter Guardian

‘Craig Brown's humour will outlive his victims. His journalism is one of the few compensations for being British now’ David Sexton, Sunday Telegraph

‘A genius … in every instance, the skill of the parodist dwarfs any achievement attributable to his subject’ Auberon Waugh, Daily Telegraph

‘He is the comic writer the rest of us admire from afar, and envy beyond the bounds of reason. How does he do it?’ Markus Berkmann, Spectator

‘Britain’s wittiest satirist’ The Times

‘[Craig Brown] has an acutely attuned comic ear, an unmatched eye for spotting the absurdities of human behaviour and a bloodhound-grade nose for sniffing out phoniness and pretension’ Mail On Sunday

About the author

Craig Brown has been writing the parodic celebrity diary for Private Eye since 1989. He has written for a wide variety of publications, including the Daily Mail, the New York Review of Books, the New Statesman, the Guardian and the Spectator. His books include the New York Times bestseller One on One; One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction; and Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, which won the James Tait Black Award and The South Bank Show Sky Arts Award and was Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US.