Book Review: "A Voyage Around the Queen" by Craig Brown

I've read a few books by Craig Brown before such as One, Two, Three Four which is his book about the Beatles and Ma'am Darling which is his book about Princess Margaret. It seems like the book A Voyage Around the Queen has been more anticipated than both of them put together even though I was personally losing it waiting for Ma'am Darling to come out before it did. This book is not just any book about Queen Elizabeth II, it is a book about everything around her. It isn't a story of her life, but rather a story of her changing surroundings and how she changed with them. It is practically a story about everyone, everything and all of it. Here's what I mean...

The book goes back and forth in time, analysing the way in which the Royal Family got ready to create a new Queen for the throne. Her childhood is held side-by-side to her final years and she is compared as a model for consistency as a person, if not just as a monarch. Therefore, what the reader gets is a portrait of the Queen made up by the memories of her childhood from each angle. One of these is a woman who was outcasted for writing a book about the two young princesses: Elizabeth and Margaret. This shows us how quickly a beloved figure in the household of royalty can become a pariah not only in the community where they work, but the whole of society altogether.

The book then covers different angles of the coronation, looking at the way in which lots of different people turned up from every walk of life (and some, who were not invited to it due to the fact they themselves had once upon a time abdicated). It goes through not only the way in which the royals to the everyday person was somewhat there or watching it, it goes through the people who had very particular jobs to do. One of these included the person who was meant to sketch the coronation, seated slightly hungover in a strange place in the audience of the abbey. This I thought was a lovely way of looking at the celebration because you got to, like a film, see small vignettes and snippets of each angle of the day (and the night eventually).

One part I really enjoyed was where the book talks about how the Queen would pronounce things and how her accent changed from the 1950s to later on in her reign. This is analysed through the course of her Christmas addresses. It goes through the idea that some think these Christmas speeches would soon be a thing of the past - but, as of yet it still goes on just with the new monarch now. The Queen's accent and the way things are pronounced is very interesting - but maybe that is just the English nerd in me who likes to see people doing research on the strangest English-based things. I would imagine that it would be better if someone were reciting it by audiobook rather than just written down but it was still very interesting.

Another part I enjoyed was not actually one part of the book, but rather a running theme beneath. As we go through the Queen's life, we see her being compared to her father and grandfather: King George VI and King George V respectably. Both men had short tempers and were, as it seems in the book, perfectly dull. Whereas, Queen Elizabeth II had a soft disposition and was patient - looking at how she changed the image of the monarchy through her presence. However, she was also meticulously organised just like her father was with everything in its proper place.

All in all, I thought this book was a lovely series of portraits of different times in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II - this is not a normal biography to say the least. Enjoyable to read and often sad, funny and sometimes even confounding, it has a great personality and reflects a time in history that is common to all of us yet, is not common for us to know about. It lets us in to special times in the Queen's life in which many people who have written about her, met her, seen her or even watched her on television are consulted for opinions and anecdotes.