Review by Booklist Review
Irving, who started as a journalist in the 1950s when Queen Elizabeth II began her long reign, has witnessed and reported on major events, scandals, triumphs, and tragedy in the royal family. Throughout this well-researched and personal chronicle, Irving reveals how very intertwined the media and the royals have been and how Queen Elizabeth has endeavored to preserve the sanctity of the House of Windsor in a changing world. Since the marriage of Diana Spencer to Prince Charles, global obsession with British aristocracy has been rampant and profitable for media outlets. The queen has tried to keep the struggles of the Windsors past and present carefully concealed in hopes of ensuring a pristine and positive image. In investigations opposite in tone and purpose to the tabloid perspective, Irving does an excellent job of providing a respectful and unbiased approach to many aspects of the lives of the queen and her family while also illuminating the knotty relationships among the Windsors, the press, and the public, leaving readers enlightened and in awe over Britain's resilient and gracious monarch.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Irving (Pox Britannica) delivers a clear-eyed portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Covering Elizabeth's life from her father King George VI's 1937 coronation, when she was 11, to her grandson Prince Harry's wedding in 2018, Irving portrays the queen as the daughter, wife, and matriarch of a "patently dysfunctional" royal family. He details scandals over the Duke of Windsor's "flirtation with fascism" in the 1930s and the 1979 public unmasking of retired royal family art curator Anthony Blunt as a Soviet mole, a matter the Windsors had kept secret since his confession in 1964. Irving also examines Elizabeth's relationships with her sister, Princess Margaret, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the "media feeding frenzy" that proved to be the undoing of her daughter-in-law, Princess Diana. According to Irving, Elizabeth chided journalists to "allow to enjoy her private life," but these words fell on deaf ears as "past customs... vanished overnight." Diana's death jolted Elizabeth, Irving writes, yet she "was never really able to concede the need for change." He reserves his harshest judgment, however, for the monarchy itself: "an institution that seems to be unaware of its wanton profligacy." Irving puts his mark on a familiar story with his confident assessments and insider perspective on the British press. Royal watchers will delight in this richly detailed appraisal of the world's oldest reigning monarch. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
English journalist Irving (Scandal '63: A Study of the Profumo Affair) brings insider experience to this look at the reign of Elizabeth II (b. 1926), exploring the House of Windsor's relationship to the press through decades of national change and private scandal. A Fleet Street veteran, Irving recounts with firsthand knowledge the evolution of the British press from complicity in guarding the royal family's secrets to viewing the royals as a commodity to be exploited, a change the monarchy was ill-prepared to handle. The Queen remains an enigma to Irving, displaying none of the vulnerability that the more media-savvy Princess Diana used to win hearts and sympathy: a strategy that Irving contends may have protected her own reign but doomed the monarchy to irrelevance. Though Irving credits the Queen for the House of Windsor's endurance, she is conspicuously absent for most of the narrative. Instead, Irving reveals a tone-deaf, reactionary monarchy consistently out of step with more dynamic figures including prime ministers such as Winston Churchill, other royals such as Princess Margaret, and the British public itself. VERDICT A gossipy, yet critical look at the monarchy by a skillful writer who knows his subject well. Fans of The Crown will especially enjoy.--Sara Shreve, Newton, KS
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A candid look at how the media has portrayed the monarchy. Despite the book's title, Elizabeth II remains "a benign enigma" throughout this gossipy romp through a history of the British monarchy. Founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler and former managing editor of the Sunday Times, Irving is more revealing about the dramatic changes in British journalism throughout the 20th century, from the media's unspoken control of the monarchy's public image--the Sunday Times once sounded like "the membership committee of an Edwardian gentlemen's club"--to the voracious exploitation of their every move, which intensified when they discovered Princess Diana's enormous market value. Drawing on his own experience as an editor, reporter, and confidant of high-placed sources, Irving describes this transformation in sharp detail, homing in on the foibles, rivalries, and loyalties of editors and publishing moguls as well as the royal family's efforts to block access to information, such as their connections to Nazis and the machinations of their wily uncle Mountbatten. Hewing closely to the narrative presented in the BBC series The Crown, Irving reprises major events, scandals, and family tensions among the Windsors; though he is an entertaining storyteller, he offers no special insight into the character of the "safely conservative and stolid" Elizabeth. A contributor to the BBC documentary Margaret: The Rebel Princess, Irving creates a more animated portrait of the younger sister, whose "rebellious effervescence" he admires. The author does not like the royals much: He deems Philip "a loose cannon" prone to public remarks that reveal "colonial bigotry," and he calls Mountbatten a "vainglorious self-promoter." He seems sympathetic to Elizabeth's plight of having been taught to subjugate personality to duty but concedes that "it was impossible to tell if this was also the private woman--the whole or a part of her." Decent modern British history, with cameos by the queen. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
