Remarkably entertaining and wonderfully gossipy- the only format truly suited to the oddity that is the wealth of information devoted to such a singular historical figure. Craig Brown brings both good humor and devoted interest to his research of the Windsors. This biography of Queen Elizabeth II is detailed, speculative and in a category unlike any other. One that both takes itself seriously and yet doesn’t.

I wish all celebrities bios were this good. I wish all historical biographies were this entertaining. A very good read.

No other woman lived a life as obsessively chronicled as Queen Elizabeth II, and author Craig Brown has written a fascinating book about how she was seen by the world, as well as how she looked at others. Not a conventional biography, Q: A Voyage Around the Queen takes a detailed look at a life lived in the spotlight (she was the subject of a biography when she was just four years old), as well as her bemused perspective on life's passing parade, how she appeared to common admirers and fellow dignitaries, and offers brief cameos from people whose paths crossed, such as Paul McCartney's boyhood crush on the young princess, and an actress whose resemblance to the Queen led to a successful career. Actress Harriet Walter (Tad Lasso, Succession) puts her very British voice to excellent use, delivering clever impersonations of famous figures, and giving lively personalities to the most minor characters. It's a witty, perceptive study of a woman loved by millions, but known by only a few.

This is an 18-hour long audiobook! Had I realized how long it was, I would not have requested it. I made it 45% listening up to 1.75 times speed. I was hoping for historical fiction but it’s a tedious series of people’s viewpoints surrounding the Queen. There are individual chapters on mundane topics like how people act when she’s at the theatre and tabloid headlines. The chapter about her corgies was my favorite. The individual topics have no common thread so it reads like a series of essays or insights on a common person. Only the most loyal royal enthusiast may enjoy this book.

I don't know if I could have learned more about Queen Elizabeth II if I had read a formal biography. It certainly couldn't have been as entertaining! Harriet Walter's narration simply blew me away. I never realized how comedic she could be. Q: A Voyage Around the Queen isn't a short audiobook, clocking in at 13 Hours, 51 Minutes, but it was over far too soon for my tastes. With a subject like the Queen, I know that Craig Brown could have extended this work to multiple volumes. As long as they were equal in quality to the original, I would certainly not object!

It's a unique approach to biography, one that I don't typically experience. I was familiar with a few anecdotes, having read both Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, and Me and Spare. In regards to Spare, I appreciated the context that Craig Brown was able to provide. "Recollections may vary," indeed. The rest was new to me. Craig Brown's breaking of the fourth wall, inserting his own personal narrative (complete with his own narration; I love it when an author narrates their own work) really brought home the value, the necessity of a work like Q: A Voyage Around the Queen. She was/is a reflection of us.

If I had one takeaway from Q: A Voyage Around the Queen, it was that the Queen and I could have been friends. She was a Taurus and I am a Virgo; our Earth energy would have perfectly blended. We could have sat quietly together in the same room, blissfully ignoring each other. So many of her droll comments had me in stitches! By the time we reached her death, I found myself choking up, too.

Q: A Voyage Around the Queen was amazing. Harriet Walter's narration was amazing. For being both creator and participant, Craig Brown is amazing. And Macmillan Audio, for allowing me to experience this NetGalley audiobook, you are amazing, too.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this arc!

WOW!!! What a great book!! This one had me hooked from page 1! This was a first for me from this author and I will not be my last! This one was a win for me! I loved getting a glimpse into the Queens life.

WOW, this was so good! As promised, this comprehensive portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and her family is more anecdotal than biographical. I found it to be extremely entertaining and enlightening and I learned sooo much about the British royal family. Everything from Her Majesty's childhood, to her coronation, to her death and legacy, is covered. For me, the wildest part of this book was the chapter about the Royal Knockout Tournament, a televised charity event in 1987 featuring several heirs to the throne. Bizarre!

Craig Brown writes with a style that is wonderfully tongue in cheek. I listened to the audiobook and both narrators, Brown and Harriet Walter, did an amazing job. I was actually sad about finishing this one even though it was almost 20 hours long!

Even if you think you know all there is to know about the royal family, you may learn something new from Q. Check it out.

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. Harriet Walter and Craig Brown provide the audiobook narration with the perfect plummy accents.

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

*Voyage Around The Queen* isn’t as cheeky as Brown’s *Ma’am Darling*, which makes sense—Princess Margaret’s regal-yet-rebellious persona was ripe for satire, unlike her dutiful sister, Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen, having kept her personality under wraps for her role, becomes a kind of enigma.

Though Brown skips primary research, he has devoured every book on the royal family, describing the experience as “wading through candy floss—pink, queasy, and undernourished.” Still, from this trivia, he crafts a complex portrait, revealing insights, like how her love for horse racing and unruly corgis hints at her need for disruption in a rigid life.

Brown’s keen observation of her voice's shift from posh to relatable reflects a broader trend in British public life. While the royal family turned into a soap opera, Brown shows how the Queen stayed aloof, surviving her destiny by "shielding herself in duty." Despite my skepticism of monarchy, this book is insightful, entertaining, and refreshingly non-dogmatic.

Thank you to #Netgalley for a free copy of this audio book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
My Interest

I read the author’s previous book, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, which disappointed because I was expecting something more conventional and because so many of the anecdotes related in the book were not new to me. Nonetheless, I requested this book on Netgalley and got it.

I now that I understand that this book is the author’s “thing”–he rounds up published or broadcasted or filmed stories about a person/group and publishes them as a book, I can give a better review of this one.
The Book and My Thoughts



“A new biography [is this a bio??] of Queen Elizabeth is particularly interested in the ways in which the late monarch, a familiar presence in the daily lives of so many for so long, also appeared unbidden in her subjects’ imaginative lives.”

The New Yorker on X

The stories related here cover all of the late Queen’s 96 years. They come mostly from the diaries, interviews, articles, memoirs, of writers, poets, artistis, politicians and the like, but some come from the memoirs of the Queen’s governess, from the memoirs of her distant cousin, Queen Marie of Romania and all sorts of other sources. Some have more to do with the person relating the story than with Her Majesty. As with the Margaret book, I’d read, seen, or heard many of the tales already, but a reader who does not collect on the royals would find a lot that is entertaining.



One of the stories new to me does not paint the Queen or the royal establishment in anything like a good light, but I believe it 100%. The queen’s racehorse trainer had the use of a property Her Majesty privately owned including a house. When he was gravely injured in a [fox] hunting accident he came back to work in a wheelchair but did the job. When he later had a heart attack, he was effectively fired and told to vacate the property. Lord Carnarveron (“Porchy”) did the dirty work, but it turns out it was his Godson who got the property to start his own training establishment. Then the injured man and his wife were asked to say good things to the press to cover it up! I laughed when the man led the Ruler of Dubai to victory with a horse descended from one the Queen bred and later sold to the Dubai royal. That was sweet justice to Porchy. I totally agree with the author though that no matter that it was Porchy who delivered the words NOTHING about the Queen’s blooodstock was done without her approval. It was H.M. who weilded the hatchet.

The funniest was the spoof of the Queen’s diary. (I’m a huge fan of spoof diaries and for a few years wrote one for my… friends of Camilla).

[punctuation may be off–I took these down from the audio book]

“Monday, a hectic week. After church Mr. Lucien Freud, who is a painter arrived to paint my portrait….I asked if he has been painting long, he tells me he has. ‘How interesting,’ I said, ‘a lovely hobby.’ I might have asked him if he would be most awfully kind and paint over the crack on the bathroom ceiling, but I forgot….. Frued, not a name you hear all that often….

“Tuesday in the evening Edward and his wife arrived, We all shake hands. She has fair hair. ‘Hello, Mummy, we were just passing so thought we’d drop by and say ‘hello,’ …’You remember Sophie, of course?’ ‘Of course,’ I say making her feel at home. ‘Have you come far?’ She says she hasn’t come all that far they live quite near Windsor….

“Wednesday, I receive my Prime Minister. He informs me of his plans…[for] modernizing the railway system…. ‘Railways are still very popular,’ I tell him, ‘they are particularly useful if people want to get from A to B and for one reason or another they don’t have their driver.’ ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head,’ he says. After 50 years as their monarch I have a wealth of knowledge and experience to offer….”



But by far, my favorite chapter concerend Prince Philip:

“Prince Philip was in many ways a tweedy, saloon bar philosopher….There was an element of Basil Fawlty [t.v. show Fawlty Towers with John Cleese] in him as there was of Sybil in the Queen–one of them ruffling feathers as the other attempted to smooth them….his instinctive iconoclasm could send him into crackpot journey….” Pretty funny!

I’d read Timothy Knatchbull’s book, so this was not new to me, but I was touched anew by the story of him arriving at Balmoral after the murder of his Grandfather, Lord Mountbatten and of his twin brother, Nicholas, to have the Queen “mother” him even though his older sister was unnerved and just wanted Her Majesty to go to bed. He relates how the Queen checked on him during the visit and even played Mummy long enough to send him to rest one day–something he badly needed. That was very sweet.

Now that I’m used to the author’s “thing” I enjoyed this collection more.




My Verdict
3.5

Q: A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown



I listened to the very long audio version of this book.

Wow, this was a very thorough and humorous look at Elizabeth II's very public life- from her birth onward. I hadn't realized how much fuss was made of her when she was born- I had assumed she would have been treated as a fairly minor royal, like Andrew and Fergie's kids, with just enough attention to require protection from adoring subjects but not enough to be hidden away. Her relationship with Margaret always interested me, and seeing them through the eyes of childhood friends etc was quite interesting. I know we've heard a lot about her later years, but I enjoyed how much attention was given to her early years.

This book is mammoth, but worth your time reading or listening to on audiobook (which I thoroughly enjoyed)

I received a free audiobook copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

What a wonderful chronicle of the queen’s life. The rich history that was written and lived by this amazing woman will be forever remembered. Anyone who is an Anglophile will want this in their collection. It also gives us history of our world during her reign.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. This cover is gorgeous and needs to be framed. This book also was great and very informative.

If you love all things royal, this is for you. Fun stories, snippets, anecdotes, quotes, dreams (lots of dreams) about the one and only Queen Elizabeth….if you were waiting for the book on the Queen where Rob Halford from Judas Priest weighs in, well, here’s your book (he was impressed, naturally)!

This book has it all, from long sections on the coronation and her death and funeral to lots of little impressions about the Royal Effect on people famous, infamous and humble (and it really is a thing.). When you keep in mind that “no one in human history lived a more chronicled life’ than the Queen;” we knew what she was doing from the moment she was born to the time of her death. She was photographed every week of her life, generally by hundreds or thousands of people. For NINETY-SIX YEARS. A singular life, for sure, regardless of how you feel about the monarchy, the royal family, etc.

I liked this book. I might have loved it, but it was SIX HUNDRED PAGES long. I read them all, but that was too, too many for most people, and probably not near enough for some. I guess it just depends on whom Brown was aiming toward here. But, a worthy effort, definitely more fun than another boring biography.

Oh, and the corgis? They are awful, and do not give a damn. Just as I suspected.

I just don't know how to describe this book. I'm not really familiar with other books by this author. Perhaps if you are, you may know what to expect.

I do not follow the royal family very closely. I'm a casual observer of them. I was often confused in listening to this book. If you aren't familiar with the history of the family you may be as well.

There isn't really a pattern that I could figure out as to how this book was written. It's not really in chronological order. It's more about topics.

The author has done so much research! It is definitely a comprehensive telling of the queen's life. So many references to other publications are made. I was amazed by the amount of research that it took to compile the information. It was impressive but some of it made me wonder why.

The narrator for this audiobook was fine.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

I'm so glad I took a chance on this one and requested the ARC. It was so much fun! It avoided literally everything that usually makes me avoid reading biographies: the tedious linear structure, the grandiloquence and navel-gazing that comes with writing about a much-lauded (or controversial) figure (and the author trying to "earn it"), and to be honest, the dull bits. Q: A Voyage Around the Queen is not a standard biography, so despite my having called it one, make sure your expectations are set properly. We don't get any primary sources from the Queen herself, we don't get much behind the scenes input of decisions of state or politics of any kind. What we DO get is a series of primary sources from everyone but Lilibet herself, and not necessarily the people you would expect.

This isn't so much a book about Queen Elizabeth II, but a book about how she affected the world around her throughout the 70+ years of her rule (and some before that as well). Here are two examples of what you will get with this book: 1) There is an entire chapter of people's dreams about the Queen, which Brown seems to have sourced from a multitude of places (my favorite was the writer Kingsley Amis's); and 2) There is a chapter devoted to the thwarted ambitions of a woman who desperately wanted to be one of the Queen's Ladies in Waiting (which I did not know was still a thing!!). We see her diaries as a young girl, and that she's still obsessing about it as an elderly woman. The chapter on the Coronation was a real treat, from the noble who attended out of spite while holding a 103+ degree fever, to a ten-year old Paul McCartney, who won an essay contest about the Queen's impending reign.

The best thing about this format is that he gets so many opinions and stories from so many different places that the reader can form their own picture and opinions of the Queen. I do not give a fig about the monarchy or the royal family, but this was a really good read. Will definitely be checking out more books from this author.

This book was an interesting compilation of anecdotes and history about Queen Elizabeth II and the people in her orbit. From birth to beyond death, this book touches on it all, with numerous references to the fact that the person that was truly QE2 is someone that few were ever privy to. Some of the stories touch on personal interactions, some touch on the facade of "Queen" that the world saw for over seven decades. This audiobook specifically was read by narrators who were delightful with the variety of relevant accents, and it made this very long audiobook engaging from start to finish.

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.

Not your typical biography.

This book delivered equal amounts sarcasm, humor, and a bit of respect about Queen Elizabeth. It contained stories about the Queen that I was unfamiliar with, as well as common ones, like Diana’s death. I listened to the audiobook and the narrators were excellent, especially the female narrator. She nailed Queen Elizabeth’s voice which added to the overall feel of the book.

My review is voluntary and all comments and opinions expressed are
my own.

A fascinating examination of the many, many aspects of the Queen's life, family, and personality over her prolific reign. As with most anthology books, I found myself drawn in by some chapters and wanting to skip others entirely. But I learned so much and had a lovely experience listening to this well-narrated audiobook!

For Anglophiles only- a compendium of comments and commentary involving the late Queen Elizabeth and those in her orbit. The audiobook is organized by main topics and key events such as having her portrait painted and handing out OBEs and the like. It also includes what others said about meeting her from newspaper reports or their biographies. By the end it painted a clear picture of a woman who accepted her role as a leader and cared for her subjects in the abstract, with little appetite for getting to know people as individuals.
In his introduction, the author, Craig Brown, makes the striking observation that many of her subjects know more about the Queen than about members of their own family. And while we may not remember where we were on a specific Tuesday nine years ago (for example), he can relatively easily obtain this information about HRH.
Some Royal family lore is debatable, and I enjoyed when the author contrasted the stories presented by the newspapers, biographers, and Netflix’ The Crown. He even suggests that Harry may have gotten some of his information (repeated in his bio, Spare) from watching The Crown!
The book is easily digestible and entertaining, with many famous people in cameos.
My thanks to the author, publisher, producer, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook for review purposes. Publication date is October 1st, 2024.