Q
A Voyage Around the Queen
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3.9 • 13 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
With equal measures of wit and wisdom, the author of 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret draws a deeply original, hilarious, and telling portrait of the Queen herself.
She was the most famous person on earth; she first appeared on the cover of Time magazine at the age of three. When she died, few people were old enough to recall a time when she was not alive.
Her likeness has been reproduced—in photographs, on stamps, on the notes and coins of thirty different currencies—more than any since Jesus. It is probable that, over the course of her ninety-six years, she was introduced to a greater number of different people than anyone else who has ever lived—likely well over half a million. Yet this most closely observed of all women rarely left any real impression on those she encountered beyond vague notions of her "radiance" and "sense of duty." A high proportion of those she met can remember what they said to her, but not a word of what she said to them.
Up until now, the curious tactic employed by biographers of the Queen has been to ignore what is interesting and to concentrate on what is not. Craig Brown, the author of 150 Glimpses of the Beatles and Hello Goodbye Hello, rejects this formula, bringing his kaleidoscopic approach to the most famous—and most guarded— woman on earth, examining the Queen through a succession of interlocking prisms. With Q, this fantastically funny, marvelously insightful journalist gives us an unforgettable portrait of the omnipresent, elusive Queen Elizabeth II.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Critic and satirist Brown (150 Glimpses of the Beatles) depicts Queen Elizabeth (1926–2022) as "a human looking-glass" in this clever and stylish portrait. Conveying the queen's impact as "otherworldly," Brown suggests that "like the Mona Lisa" her gaze connected with everyone in the room, reflecting back the observers' own inclinations ("To the optimist she seemed an optimist; to the pessimist, a pessimist. To the insider she appeared intimate, to the outsider, distant; to the cynic, prosaic, and the awestruck, charismatic"). In keeping with Brown's previous studies of Princess Margaret and the Beatles, among others, this is less a biography than an archaeology of Elizabeth's public persona. The narrative is comprised of vignettes about and observations made by a host of famous writers (from Virginia Woolf to Hilary Mantel) and other notables that reveal the feelings of intimidation and wrong-footedness that overcame them when they encountered the monarch, as they projected onto her their fears, hopes, and insecurities. This applies even to skeptics; for example, Mantel, a critic of the monarchy, wrote that during a reception for authors, the queen's face "expressed... hurt and bewilderment" at Mantel's predatory gaze, which Brown interprets as a touch of guilty self-psychologizing on Mantel's part. The result is a sweeping, sharp-eyed cultural history of the monarchy as presided over by its most iconic modern royal.
