This was a really interesting take on the typical memoir/biography genre. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book!

Yet another highly entertaining "biography" from Craig Brown. His earlier book, 99 Glimpses of Princess, was a laugh-out-loud masterpiece. While the subsequent book on the Beatles fell short of the very high standards of the Princess Margaret book, his new so-called bio of Queen Elizabeth shows he's back on track. Of course, with such a monumental and Sphinx-like character, Brown does his best to "voyage around" her story, with many colorful anecdotes and cultural observations. I don't envy all the reading he did on the British royalty to achieve this goal, but he's done a great job with this hugely readable latest effort.

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read and review this title.

This book is so far from my typical genre so it truly is hard for me to rate it. I requested it as we have a trip to London planned and I thought it would help get me in the mood. While I do not typically enjoy Memoirs, this one did keep me fascinated.

If you’re looking for a traditional, buttoned-up biography of Queen Elizabeth II, then Craig Brown’s "A Voyage Around the Queen" is probably not for you. But if you’re in the mood for a witty, offbeat ride through the life and legend of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch—peppered with humorous anecdotes, trivia, and just enough irreverence to make the royal handlers blush—strap in, because this book delivers.

Craig Brown, the same genius who gave us "99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret," approaches Elizabeth's life like a scrapbook enthusiast with a knack for storytelling. Instead of a chronological slog through state dinners and ribbon cuttings, Brown offers a portrait of the Queen through 112 vignettes that are equal parts insightful and absurd. It’s like someone invited you over to riff on royal history over tea and biscuits (or gin, if we’re being honest).

The book kicks off with a chapter dedicated to people’s "dreams" about the Queen. Yes, actual dreams. There’s something hilariously human about imagining Her Majesty popping up in someone’s subconscious to offer a cup of tea or a disapproving eyebrow. And from there, the book careens through topics as varied as the royal corgis (of course), Elizabeth’s famously awkward small talk, and even her interactions with unlikely figures like Idi Amin.

Brown doesn’t shy away from poking fun at the monarchy’s more peculiar traditions, but his tone is never mean-spirited. There’s an affectionate undercurrent here, even as he highlights moments that are downright ridiculous. One standout anecdote involves Paul McCartney writing an essay about her coronation as a schoolboy (spoiler: he won) and another speculating whether the Queen thought the world smelled of fresh paint, given that every room she entered had been freshly prepped for her arrival.

In over 600 pages, Brown captures the paradox of Elizabeth’s life: the woman who met more people than anyone else in history but remained an enigma to almost all of them. The Queen who wasn’t particularly interesting herself but presided over an institution and a nation that certainly were. If you love the royals, history, or just a good laugh, "A Voyage Around the Queen" is a gem. Think of it as the royal biography for the meme generation: clever, entertaining, and never taking itself too seriously. After all, how else do you sum up the life of a woman who had to smile politely while people told her what they did for a living for seventy years?

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

In this fascinating exploration of the late Queen Elizabeth II, Craig Brown brings the longest-reigning British sovereign to life in this detailed and unique biography. Exploring her through a series of different perspectives and prisms, Brown focuses on how people observed the queen and remembered her rather than focusing on the political and historical moments traditionally selected by biographers. In considering her legacy, images of her, and the memories people have of her, Brown’s focus on the tangible Queen, rather than the distant symbolic one, humanizes her and brings her closer to the people and outside her position as head of state. Following a similarly unique format and partnering well with his previous book, 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, Brown’s prose and compilation of anecdotes works very well, and jumping around from anecdote to anecdote is a fun and unique reading experience. In this exploration of Queen Elizabeth II, readers might see a pattern in people’s interactions with her and in how she has been represented over the last century around the world. Engaging, interesting, and an overall enjoyable read, people interested in royal history and unique biographies will definitely find Brown’s newest release to be a fun and compelling read.

Delighted to include this title in my thematic annual holiday gift books package for The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.

Ultimately, I decided not to continue with reading this book. I’m sure it is very well written, but the subject matter just isn’t of enough interest to me.

I am so thankful to FSG, Craig Brown, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

I found this book to be a chore to read. The writing style itself is fluid, but the content is lacking. Rather than being a deep exploration of Elizabeth II's life and legacy, the content is more a series of frivolous vignettes about less than admirable people and their glancing contact with British royalty.

Fascinating book. I have always been interested in the royal family. The queen was an amazing woman. This book was written well, with a lot of new things I had not read. I would recommend it to anyone.

As per all of Craig Brown's work, this is brilliant - funny, touching, respectful, and yet completely irreverent. Packed full of variety - there's not a dull page

I had previously read and enjoyed Craig Brown’s unconventional biographies of the Beatles and Princess Anne, but I think his latest, “Q: A Voyage Around the Queen,” is my favorite. As in his earlier books, Brown has amassed a huge collections of facts, trivia, and personal anecdotes about Queen Elizabeth II and presents them in a loosely chronological and wholly original look at the life of Great Britain’s longest serving monarch. This is not your grandmother’s royal biography—it’s more like a fan’s scrapbook, lovingly compiled over the years and filled with everything imaginable. Brown recounts the Queen’s interactions with politicians (the Idi Amin bits are priceless and the Margaret Thatcher section makes me hope Brown’s next book is about her) and with pop stars (a young Paul McCartney won an essay contest about her coronation). He peppers the book with fun statistics, such as the fact that “nine out of ten living human beings were born during the Queen’s reign” or that a new world record of “roughly half the people on the planet” watched her funeral, as well as with fresh and striking observations, as when he notes that “Some wondered if she thought the world smelled of fresh paint” because “everything she set eyes on was cleaner, brighter, newer, grander, cheerier, smarter than it had been a few days before.” Brown’s fondness for the Queen is
obvious, but Q isn’t a hagiography; there is a section, for example, about her less-than-admirable treatment of her long-time and loyal horse trainer. Overall, however, I finished the book with a new appreciation of Elizabeth and the hope that Brown will continue to produce these fun and fresh biographies.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review. An unmitigated pleasure!

Did we need another biography of the Queen? Probably not, but I was interested in this because it was billed as a fresh perspective on the subject. Which is a little hard to understand given that the book is essentially a compilation of things previously written about the queen.

If you don’t know much about Queen Elizabeth, this is a fine place to start. It’s thorough, moves well, and includes both the important history and some fun anecdotal content. If you’re already relatively informed on the subject, there probably isn’t much point to reading this.

I liked Brown’s style for the most part as well as his curation of subject matter, though he does have a tendency to insert himself into the narrative, which doesn’t add anything to the material and feels vaguely obnoxious.

As a royal aficionado, it's no surprise that I'd be interested in reading Q: A Voyage Around t he Queen. It's by Craig Brown, whose book about Princess Margaret I've also read.

It's accurately titled a voyage around the Queen because that's truly what it is: not a biography, but various anecdotes and stories with some peripheral (and sometimes, very peripheral) connection to the Queen. The structure is not chronological overall, but each chapter has its own theme: corgis, horses, poet laureates, even Idi Amin.

Even with the book's huge (700 page-ish) length, I was amazed at how few of the tidbits shared were new to me. I guess that's testament to the amount of royal-themed reading I've done. Here are some bits I found interesting:

* Elizabeth was precocious and dutiful/detail-oriented, even as a child. She lined up her books on shelves and kept her clothes and belongings "immaculately tidy." At age 5, she had some silver pieces in a miniature cottage, which she insisted to her nanny be wrapped in newspaper "to prevent it getting tarnished."

* Brown describes Elizabeth's life as "ninety-six years of concentrated self-control," which seems apt.

* Among Philip and Elizabeth's wedding gifts were 148 pairs of nylon stockings from Americans sensitive to Britain's post-WWII shortage.

* Elizabeth and Philip would have preferred for Charles to be born at their country house, but "felt that a possible heir to the throne should not first see the light in a rented house." Philip gave Charles a cricket bat for his first birthday, explaining "I want him to be a man's man." On being told that his grandfather was found dead by someone who had taken him tea, young Charles asked, "Who drank the tea?"

* "The Queen is a very private person; a loner. She longs to be in a room with nobody else. The dogs, the horses, her husband ... She has few friends and if she had to choose between the dogs, the horses and friends, there is no doubt which she would choose." (so says a daughter of the late Earl Mountbatten)

* "Perhaps, above all, the corgis were a distraction from the constraints of such a formal existence. 'She has used the dogs not just to put others at their ease, but to ease her own discomfort. If there is an awkward lull, she will turn her attention to one of the dogs to fill the silence, or bend down to give them tidbits from her plate at the table.'"

* Although she talked with more people than anyone who has ever lived, the Queen was never a natural conversationalist. Her typical questions were "How long have you been waiting?" "Where have you come from," and "What do you do?" "She is absolutely direct. less charming (than her mother) ... she was more like her father, who found it hard to think of anything to say to anyone at any time." "She has none of the warmth of her mother or son, but is not quite as rude as her husband." lol

* "'People revered the Crown, but they were not really interested in the Queen for the very simple reason that she is not really interesting.' Nevertheless, 'her uninterestingness is a positive asset.'"

* The author points out that the Queen must keep a pleasant expression on her face during engagements, often for hours on end, and how challenging this must be. Once, someone complained that she looked bored or upset. The Queen told an aide, "I've the kind of face that if I'm not smiling, I look cross. but I'm not cross. If you try to smile for two hours continuously it gives you a nervous tic."

* At Diana's funeral, the archbishop of Canterbury (head clergy of the Church of England) urged Diana's brother to preach on the "'Christian message of hope and life evermore in God.' (The brother) listens politely, but leaves (the archbishop) with the impression that he has already worked out what he wants to say.'" If you watched, you'll recall that his talk had no mention of Christianity in any form. I still remember the hopeless vibe of the service.

* More about Diana's death: an author quoted felt the mass mourning "testified to the struggle for self-expression of individuals who were spiritually and imaginatively deprived, who released their own suppressed sorrow in grieving for a woman they did not know." I wish I'd phrased it that well, but I felt very similarly.

The author seems fascinated by the phrase "camp" and the group "Sex Pistols," as both terms occur over and over. This book is organized in such a way that it appears he read dozens of royal books, and regurgitated his notes into a book. Parts were interesting to me as a royal fan, and I skimmed the rest.

I’m a fan of this type of all encompassing history. Looking at a well known person from different angles does a great service to seeing them as thoroughly as we can. This was a well done look at an extremely familiar figure that managed to give us something new

Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC of this title.

I've read a few other of Craig Brown's biographies in this style, and they're well-suited for the sort of figures he covers - individuals who have become the sort of omnipresent cultural figure where there's such a glut of content about them that manages to be surface-level. 99 "glimpses" was a great amount for Princess Margaret, 150 glimpses was far too many for the Beatles, but the 102 or so here manage to be just right for QEII. Between this and the Margaret book, I think Brown's a little too pro-Windsor to dig into anything particularly salacious, but the queen seems to have been kind of awkward to talk to and this captures the impact of that throughout.

This was a fascinating book. I thought the statement about knowing more about the history of the Royal Family better than his own was probably true for many people. I also found the Anne Frank reference touching. I was familiar with several of the stories told, but there were far more that were new to me in this 800+ page book. I found some chapters were more interesting than others, but I enjoyed learning so much more about the late Queen.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) copy of this book and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

This book offers a unique and insightful portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, moving beyond traditional biographies to explore her life through a kaleidoscopic lens. It examines her extraordinary public image, her countless encounters with people worldwide, and the enigmatic nature of her personality, revealing a fascinating and often surprising perspective on the world’s most famous woman.

This is a long book, yet it ended all too soon. It’s fun, quirky, and heartwarming, revealing truths about the queen but even more about ourselves. The audiobook narration added to the enjoyment of the text.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown is not quite as frivolous as the author’s book about Princess Margaret, Ma’am Darling, perhaps reflecting the serious responsibility of the role inherited by her sister in 1952. Undertaking a review of Queen Elizabeth II’s long and eventful life is an enormous task for a biographer, but I was confident that Brown would succeed following the similar scale of his 2020 book One Two Three Four about the Beatles. Over the course of 112 mostly short chapters, Brown focuses on a handful of key events such as the Coronation alongside other aspects of royal life. These include the corgis, the Royal Yacht and a quirky profile of Jeanette Charles, the Essex-based doppelganger who had a career late in life portraying the Queen in numerous films. Given that the Queen was one of the most famous people in the world, her sense of humour and her true views about her subjects remain somewhat mysterious. While many biographies about the Royal Family are either fawning or scathing, ‘A Voyage Around the Queen’ settles for a more balanced and pleasingly tongue-in-cheek view instead. Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

I agree with another reviewer. It was...interesting. I expected a book about the Queen, but the author went down a lot of rabbit holes. Her last days and beyond was new to me. Also fascinating how people remember what they said to her, but not what she said to them.