The Real Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II PDF
Preview The Real Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II
For my mother, Anne Valerie Marr, sometimes mistaken for … Contents Title Page Dedication Preface to the U.S. edition Prologue: What the Queen Does PART ONE Dynasty Is Destiny: How the British Monarchy Remade Itself PART TWO Lilibet Interlude: The Queen in the World PART THREE The Queen at Work Interlude: Britannia and the Waves PART FOUR Off with Her Head! The Queen in the Sixties Interlude: Money PART FIVE Into the Maelstrom Epilogue: The Future Notes Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Index About the Author Also by Andrew Marr Copyright Preface to the U.S. Edition Why should Americans be interested in Queen Elizabeth II, monarch of the United Kingdom and fifteen other countries, from Canada and Australia to tiny Tuvalu? It is a good question. She is a kind of anti-celebrity, a woman happiest in scarf, old coat and rubber boots, out with her dogs or horses. Though enormously wealthy, she eats frugally, keeping her breakfast cereals in plastic boxes and switching off unnecessary lights as she passes through rooms. She has a wonderful smile when she chooses to use it, but otherwise her face falls naturally into a rubbery solemnity she herself has likened to Miss Piggy. Her formal power is very small, and almost entirely irrelevant to the lives of those who are not her subjects. Her son Charles—who as he approaches his own old age looks increasingly like his Hanoverian ancestor George III, the King who lost the American colonies—is hardly a celebrity either. The last time Americans became fixated by his story was when he separated from his far more media-friendly wife Diana, who was later killed in a Paris road accident. Now, with Kate Middleton, the middle-class woman whose wedding to Prince William, the Queen’s grandson, was watched by a third of the world’s television audience, the House of Windsor may have a new star. But the Queen herself has never played to the cameras and lives a life about as out of step as it’s possible to be from the glossy, brash, fast- moving world of comtemporary culture. This is exactly why she ought to fascinate anyone interested in American politics and history, as well as those simply curious about modern royalty. And since the Queen has no equivalent in the United States, her story presents a series of striking contrasts. The first, most obvious one is that she has been head of state for so very long. In 2012 she celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, marking the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the British throne. Before our eyes, she has grown from the willowy, dark-haired young mother of the 1950s into the shrewd great-grandmother of today. Now, at eighty-five, she is the second- longest-reigning monarch in British history. Only her great predecessor Queen Victoria spent more time in London’s palaces. That means she has known,
The list of books you might like
