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

James owen , the times.

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Published October 27, 2022

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Queen of Our Times

The life of queen elizabeth ii: commemorative edition, 1926-2022.

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About The Book

The definitive portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by a renowned royal biographer in an updated Commemorative Edition following Her Majesty's passing, 1926-2022. As seen on Good Morning America, CNN, CBS, the BBC, and more. Shy but with a steely self-confidence; inscrutable despite ten decades in the public eye; unflappable; devout; indulgent; outwardly reserved, inwardly passionate; unsentimental; inquisitive; young at heart. Even with her recent passing at age ninety-six, she remains a twenty-first-century global phenomenon commanding unrivaled respect and affection. Sealed off during the greatest peacetime emergency of modern times, she has stuck to her own maxim: “I have to be seen to be believed.” Robert Hardman, one of Britain’s most acclaimed royal biographers, now wraps up the full story of one of the undisputed greats in a thousand years of monarchy. Hardman distills Elizabeth’s complex life into a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal. It is a portrait of a world leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne at age twenty-five. With peerless access to members of the Royal Family, staff, friends, and royal records, Queen of Our Times brings fresh insights and scholarship to the modern royal story. There will be no more thorough, more readable, more original book on Elizabeth II as we celebrate a life and reign that, surely, will never be equaled.

About The Author

Robert Hardman is the author of Queen of Our Times ; Her Majesty ; and Queen of the World , all available from Pegasus Books. He is a leading author, commentator, and film-maker on royal life in Britain. Robert writes for the Daily Mail in London, where he lives.

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Raves and Reviews

“The essential authoritative biography of the Queen that everyone needs to read. Queen of Our Times is packed with new research, gripping details and telling anecdotes on every page, equally masterful on matters high and low, power and family. Hardman not only explains her; he defines her and her epoch.”

– Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs

“This is a beautifully crafted, deeply informed, and rounded portrait of the gold standard monarch and the age to which she has given her name. Robert Hardman’s Queen of Our Times has depth feel and insight in abundance.”

– Professor Peter Hennessy, winner of the Orwell Prize

“Rich in new material, wit, and original thought. With intimate and unrivalled access to those who really know the story, Queen of Our Times not only gives us the real Elizabeth II, but it also reminds us, often movingly, that we are living through one of history’s greatest reigns.”

– Andrew Roberts, New York Times bestselling author of The Last King of America

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Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II (Commemorative Edition, 1926-2022)

The definitive portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by a renowned royal biographer in an updated Commemorative Edition following Her Majesty's passing, 1926-2022.

As seen on Good Morning America, CNN, CBS, the BBC, and more. Shy but with a steely self-confidence; inscrutable despite ten decades in the public eye; unflappable; devout; indulgent; outwardly reserved, inwardly passionate; unsentimental; inquisitive; young at heart. Even with her recent passing at age ninety-six, she remains a twenty-first-century global phenomenon commanding unrivaled respect and affection. Sealed off during the greatest peacetime emergency of modern times, she has stuck to her own maxim: “I have to be seen to be believed.” Robert Hardman, one of Britain’s most acclaimed royal biographers, now wraps up the full story of one of the undisputed greats in a thousand years of monarchy. Hardman distills Elizabeth’s complex life into a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal. It is a portrait of a world leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne at age twenty-five. With peerless access to members of the Royal Family, staff, friends, and royal records, Queen of Our Times brings fresh insights and scholarship to the modern royal story. There will be no more thorough, more readable, more original book on Elizabeth II as we celebrate a life and reign that, surely, will never be equaled.

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The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorating her life and reign 1926-2022: Second edition

A celebration of the remarkable life and reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

This commemorative edition celebrates a life dedicated to public service, drawn from decades of detailed and fascinating reporting by The Times .

Includes reflections of a nation in mourning and reporting from The Times of the Queen’s state funeral. Discover insights and memories of the extraordinary period of social change that was our nation’s second Elizabethan age. Features the Queen’s obituary, as published in The Times, a collection of essays and articles written by leading royal historians, and full-colour images from The Times archives.

Praise for the first edition

'Wonderful book portraying the Queen's life and role. I gave this as a gift to my mother who was delighted with it. Worth buying as marvellous history of the Queen.'

5-star, Amazon review

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Yet Another Serving From the Royals Banquet

Rushed into print, Andrew Morton’s “The Queen: Her Life” is a thorough biography without much new to say.

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THE QUEEN: Her Life , by Andrew Morton

Ever since his early-1990s blockbuster “ Diana: Her True Story ,” about the Princess of Wales (which was expanded after her death ), Andrew Morton has been the best known and most accessible, if not the foremost, biographer of England’s royal family. He’s on a first-name basis with the lot of them, at least on the page.

Before “Diana,” Morton had written books on Andrew and Sarah. After “Diana,” he turned to William and Kate; to Wallis; to Meghan; to Diana and Diana and Diana again, like a whirling dervish of dish, and most recently to Elizabeth and Margaret . (A Monica Lewinsky book was in there, too.) He’s been upstairs and downstairs, chatted with courtiers and correspondents and, he hints, befriended some in the innermost circle who’d rather stay anonymous. He could have written a stand-alone biography of Elizabeth in his sleep — and now perhaps he has.

“The Queen: Her Life” was originally supposed to be published next spring, but then Her Majesty , in a final act of her famous grace, died in time for the holiday book-buying season — and, as it happens, the fifth season of the Netflix series “ The Crown ,” in which Morton, receiving the ultimate tribute to his trade, is played by the actor Andrew Steele.

I cannot fault his publisher for wanting to capitalize on this confluence of events. But even though the new biography was finished in August, according to publicity materials, it feels rushed and undernourished. That doesn’t seem entirely worthy of its sturdy subject, who was born in 1926, and, Morton writes in one of several flights of floridity, quickly put to sleep beneath “an imagined layette of magic and myth, a gossamer blanket where new threads were constantly interwoven into the patchwork of legend and reality.” Like Linus Van Pelt’s, this was “a blanket that would accompany her throughout her life.”

No matter what one thinks of the monarchy as it has changed and frayed, been interrogated and even ridiculed, the woman this baby would become, and her long-running leadership, deserves thoughtful analysis: more than a dash through the existing literature and a quick dip into Special Collections.

More on Britain

Even during a rote command performance, Morton can be droll and dry, noting that our heroine’s upbringing was “less Disney, more brothers Grimm” and that her gilded paternal bloodline included a dentist. I enjoyed learning the word “rumbustious,” and that the royals once amused themselves on a beach in a downright Kennedyesque fashion, flinging “small pellets of bird dung” at one another and then catapulting into the sea. Though tellingly, Elizabeth sat out the fun.

But all but the most uninformed readers are in for quite a bit of recapitulation, often of facts that are already canonical. Four times they’ll be told that Elizabeth’s father, King George, suffered from “gnashes,” or outbursts of temper, caused by frustration over his stammer. Thrice they will be reminded that Princess Margaret and her husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, were leading glamour symbols of the Swinging ’60s. Diana’s bulimia, which she revealed to Morton in ’92 and then again in a notorious interview with Martin Bashir (also depicted on the new season of “The Crown”) is revisited: fleetingly but repeatedly.

Elizabeth had a red box of government dispatches delivered almost daily; her chronicler’s red box is stuffed rather with cliché. Since Bob Dylan has his own book out right now, I might have allowed Morton one rueful observation, after John Lennon tells an audience of royals to “ just rattle your jewelry ,” that “the times really were a-changin’.” Reaching for that phrase again as Prince Edward is permitted to cohabit with his future wife Sophie Rhys-Jones in adjoining rooms at Buckingham Palace smacks of simple laziness. The phrase “wide of the mark” appears twice in three sentences. And did Morton really type that his subject would be “a hard act to follow”? Yes, yes he did.

“The Queen” isn’t terrible ; it’s just terribly serviceable, with names, dates and places cantering past like Elizabeth’s beloved horses over the course of 375 pages — which, if you do the math, is under four for each year of her life, like a special-edition Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The tense changes necessitated by her death could have used one more combing-over. “She has the kind of face that looks angry when she is trying not to smile,” Morton writes. We have a name for that here, my good man.

And some odd or unnecessary anachronisms and Americanizations leap out, like that Queen Mary, Elizabeth’s grandmother, sought a “therapist” for advice about her son Edward’s affair with Wallis Simpson; and that Elizabeth and Margaret’s nanny, Crawfie, took them for distracting excursions on London’s “subway.”

These might be minor traffic violations if “The Queen” weren’t overall such a clip job — deft and confident, but a clip job nonetheless. And often Morton is clipping … himself. The publication of “Diana: Her True Story” is treated with odd impersonality, cited and then consulted, along with a sequel, “Diana: In Pursuit of Love,” for chapters on the disintegrating marriages of the queen’s children, and her infamous “annus horribilis,” when Windsor Castle was severely damaged in a fire and Morton became part of the narrative. The author even appears in his own index. Maybe that’s living the dream.

If you know nothing whatsoever about Elizabeth Windsor, this is a perfectly satisfactory primer. But if you’re a buff of the royal soap opera, it will feel like standing at a party having to nod and grin politely while your husband, maybe after a few too many Pimm’s cups, tells one of his favorite tales, that you’ve heard a million times, too fast, to strangers.

IMAGES

Our Queen by Robert Hardman, Paperback, 9780099551157
Queen By Right (eBook)
Book of Queen
Sunday Times Magazine
Royal Splendor: 10 Books to Read About Queen Elizabeth II's Amazing 90 Years
DK Life Stories Queen Elizabeth II by DK

COMMENTS

The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorating her life and reign
Amazon.com: The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorating her life and reign 1926 – 2022 eBook : Owen, James, Times Books: Kindle Store.
The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Her 70 Year Reign
Published to commemorate The Queen's Platinum Jubilee this full color book is a detailed profile of Britain's longest serving monarch. The story of a life
The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorating her life and reign 1926
From young princess to internationally revered head of state, Queen Elizabeth has always fascinated and intrigued. This fully updated second edition
The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorating her life and reign 1926
Friends & Following. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! Community Reviews.
Queen of Our Times
Queen of Our Times by Robert Hardman - The definitive portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by a renowned royal biographer in an updated Commemorative Edition
The Times Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorating Her Life ...
A special gift book this Christmas From young princess to internationally revered head of state, Queen Elizabeth has always fascinated and intrigued.
The Life of Queen Elizabeth II: Commemorative Edition, 1926-2022
... Queen of Our Times brings fresh insights and scholarship to the modern royal story. There will be no more thorough, more readable, more original book on
The Life of Queen Elizabeth II (Commemorative Edition, 1926-2022)
Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II (Commemorative Edition, 1926-2022). by Robert Hardman. Details ... Publisher Pegasus Books
Queen Elizabeth II
Discover insights and memories of the extraordinary period of social change that was our nation's second Elizabethan age. Features the Queen's obituary, as
Book Review: 'The Queen: Her Life,' by Andrew Morton
Four times they'll be told that Elizabeth's father, King George, suffered from “gnashes,” or outbursts of temper, caused by frustration over his