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Title: Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain's Queen by Sarah Bradford ISBN: 1-57322-600-9 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: May, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.18 (11 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting and worth a read
Comment: This is a very well put together book, well researched and easy to read. I just found much of it very irritating. I think it was possibily because the author was trying extremely hard not to be contraversial or mean about the Queen. I would have liked a more indepth review of the mind of the woman who has led such an amazing life (and ruined her children's lives by refusing to live in the real world). The author is critical of QE2 in that she does put duty before family, but this was not explored deeply enough. I am no major royal supporter, interested in the history more than anything and this book is a great record of QE2's life but I felt that this book was too "naice", not gutsy enough and basically portrayed QE2 as a shallow, cold, personality challenged, protocol obsessive woman. While some of the above comments probably suit her, there must be more to her
Rating: 5
Summary: A Balanced Biograhy
Comment: I found this book very enjoyable and informative. I have read many other biographies of Queen Elizabeth II, but there were some
new details presented here. Nothing shocking or in bad taste.
The author has written fairly about a woman whose life we cannot imagine. You wonder how she has managed to cope these years.
I came away with the belief that the powers that are behind the throne, the men in grey, should be eliminated or at least brought into this century. However, tradition is what keeps Elizabeth going and where would she be without it?
Rating: 4
Summary: Only one minor quibble
Comment: There is little in Ms Bradford's account to contradict Eleanor Roosevelt's view of the Royal Family of the 1950s that they were nice people but vastly detached from real life; possibly Mrs Roosevelt would have been less kindly disposed to the irresponsible younger royals of more recent years. It is a considerable feat to render people interesting whose importance derives wholly from their station, and Ms Bradford succeeds admirably in explaining the mystery of why eminent people who are substantial in their own right report so favourably on encounters with the Queen and Prince Philip while being unable because of the convention of not reporting private conversations to say just why. Ms Bradford is entertainingly forthcoming while properly diplomatic on the deficiencies of the lesser royals who are of any importance -- Prince Charles and Lord Mountbatten, for example -- and fills out the hagiography surrounding the Queen Mother with illuminating detail on her amusing inconsistencies. The one quibble I have is with the discussion of various constitutional niceties. Conceivably Ms Bradford's sources in the British and Commonwealth bureaus are as vague as the observations Ms Bradford makes on such matters as the status of Papua and New Guinea prior to their Independence in 1975 (Papua was indeed a British possession, albeit administered by Australia; New Guinea was an Australian UN Trust Territory) or Canada and Australia's respective evolving sovereignty. But these are indeed quibbles and detract only slightly from the overall excellence of the biography. Ms Bradford is a gifted writer and scholar of compelling and persuasive authority and has a mellifluous prose style. One wishes she might now turn her hand to subjects of more weight than the Queen, King George VI and Jackie Kennedy.
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Title: A Royal Duty by Paul Burrell ISBN: 0399151729 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 25 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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