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

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Irving rates Elizabeth’s greatest achievement as having preserved the meaning of the monarchy during her reign. Bedell Smith, a former contribtuing editor to Vanity Fair, told the magazine that “one thing I tried to do was to show how isolated she was in her position as Queen and wife and mother.

Times Books | Queen Elizabeth II – Collins

this book is as if I had been let loose with my microphone and wandered about among people I met at random, asking ‘What do you remember of the Queen?Since then, he has produced biographies of Meghan Markle, Wallis Simpson and celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie and the Beckhams. For many years, this book has been regarded as one of the best and most perceptive of biographies of the monarch. Queen Elizabeth “delicately planted” the idea of appealing to Leo Varadkar, the Irish leader, to help break the deadlock in negotiations and avoid a no-deal Brexit. 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. One of the most recent extensive biographies, published in June last year, says the “royal rhetoric in Elizabeth’s lifetime has celebrated the idea of a reigning family of ordinary people in extraordinary positions”.

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

It’s the kind of imagination a snob possesses, elated by a dizzy dream of high society and of his own exclusive access to it. This account of the 70-year marriage that ended only with Philip’s death in 2021 is written by British broadcaster and former Conservative politician Gyles Brandreth, whose writings include a life of John Gielgud, books about words, and an account of Prince Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Gyles presents Great Canal Journeys on Channel 4 with Dame Sheila Hancock and regularly appears on Celebrity Gogglebox with Dame Maureen Lipman. I wonder what she and Philip really made of Gyles Brandreth, the irrepressible broadcaster, author, after-dinner speaker and former MP who, through sheer force of his charm, wit and willpower, managed to attain the status of (almost) their friend. Drawn from seven decades of detailed and fascinating reporting by The Times, discover insights and memories of the extraordinary period of social change that was our nation's second Elizabethan age.

If compromise is marriage’s essential ingredient, it has been especially vital to the Queen and Prince Philip. 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? But if you want to read an intimate account of the childhood of the devoted sisters, this could be the place to start. Did Philip ever mutter, “I wish that jersey-wearer with alarmingly clean teeth would stop trying to trick me into saying things”? It was immediately acclaimed on publication and in his foreword to a 2012 Diamond Jubilee edition, historian Peter Hennessy said it was the “product of what happened when a leading political biographer and a top-flight historian of the 20th century .