A voyage around the queen

Brown, Craig, 1957-2024

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Summary

The world revolved around Queen Elizabeth II. Everyone was caught up in her orbit. Andy Warhol envied her. Michelle Obama was overawed by her. Jackie Kennedy resented her. Haile Selassie gave her a gold tiara. Virginia Woolf compared her to a caterpillar. Dirk Bogarde watched Death in Venice with her. E. M. Forster might have married her, if only she had been a boy. Idi Amin confided in her. On the day of her death, Jeanette Winterson got dressed in black, in preparation for the official announcement. She became a human looking-glass: the light cast by fame bounced off her and back onto everyone else. She mirrored our hopes and anxieties. To the optimist, she seemed an optimist; to the outsider, distant. To the cynic she was prosaic, and to the awestruck, charismatic. When people spoke of The Queen, they spoke of themselves; when they dreamed of her, they dreamed of themselves. Though by nature reserved and unassuming, in her presence rock stars were transformed into awkward schoolboys, dictators would tremble and Nobel Prize winners would start to talk gibberish. In a kaleidoscopic series of chapters, A Voyage Around the Queen finds her painted by Rolf Harris and Lucian Freud, celebrated in verse by Ted Hughes and John Betjeman, serenaded by Jimi Hendrix and tussling over a teapot with Mrs Thatcher.