Join us for an evening of conversation with Britain's eminent writer and satirist Craig Brown to celebrate the paperback launch of his brilliant biography of the late Elizabeth II, A Voyage Around the Queen.
Bringing the same structural brilliance to a biography of Queen Elizabeth II as he did to her sister in Ma'am Darling and The Beatles in One Two Three Four, Craig Brown once again succeeds in finding revelatory angles and information about one of the most documented individuals of the last century.
Queen Elizabeth II was famous for longer than anyone who has 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.'Brown understands the simple paradox: that the only way to write insightfully about the Queen is to write entirely around the Queen … Brilliantly funny [and] perceptive' FINANCIAL TIMES‘Brown sees, correctly, that comedy is a part of all that is serious, and by laughing at things we have a better understanding of their nature … Most of all in this magnificent book we have a sense of the monarch being looked at freshly, without any prejudice or point to prove, and with a real understanding of human complexity … It is hard to think that a more thoughtful book on its subject will be published for many years’ PHILIP HENSHER, SPECTATOR
