London Review of Books

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COLLECTION
The Queen and I
Writing about the queen, her family and the institution she inhabited, by William Empson, Gabriele Annan, Jonathan Meades, Andrew O’Hagan, Tom Nairn, Hilary Mantel, Tom Crewe, Linda Colley and Rosemary Hill.


The Queen and I
William Empson and John Haffenden, 26 November 1987
On 27 October 1954 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the University of Sheffield in order to inaugurate its Jubilee Session. No other reigning sovereign had visited the principal ...

Royal Anxiety
Gabriele Annan, 9 June 1994
My favourite recent book about the Queen is called The Queen’s Knickers by Nicholas Allan. It is a picture book for small children. The centre spread presents several rows of knickers for ...

Hatpin through the Brain: Closing Time for the Firm
Jonathan Meades, 9 June 2022
They recognise the swoon in a fawner’s eye, the brisk music of a colour sergeant’s bark. They are touched by the public’s fondness for plastic union flags in the drizzle. They believe that when it comes to Maundy alms, it’s the thought that counts. They appreciate the fealty of those maimed in the sovereign’s name who dutifully strive to give great forelock even if the stump can’t reach the hairline.

All hail, sage lady: ‘The Crown’
Andrew O’Hagan, 15 December 2016
Recently, when the actor Matt Smith was introduced to Prince William and the prince was told Smith would soon be playing his grandfather in an epic Netflix series, The Crown, William offered only one word. ‘Legend,’ he said, as if they were talking about Dolly Parton.

Ghosts in the Palace
Tom Nairn, 24 April 1997
The first British election ever without the Monarchy: is this not how it’s likely to be remembered? The Italian phrase for it is better than ours: perdere la bussola, the loss not merely of ...

Royal Bodies
Hilary Mantel, 21 February 2013
Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment.

Diary: The Queen and I
Tom Crewe, 1 August 2019
There was someone sitting in the nearest seat. It was the queen, separated from me by a few inches and a pane of glass. We locked eyes for a vital moment: if my dead grandfather had been unwrapping a pork pie in there I couldn’t have been more surprised. When we got to Cambridge I stood and looked down the platform to confirm I wasn’t mad and there she was, stepping off the train into the waiting boredom of dignitaries. She was public again, in walkabout mode. But I knew we had seen into each other’s souls.

Send them to Eton!
Linda Colley, 19 August 1993
The question is: what is the question? This summer has seen a bumper crop of books all ostensibly addressing the problems of the British monarchy. The blurbs have been in technicolour: ‘the ...

Puffed up, Slapped down: Charles and Camilla
Rosemary Hill, 7 September 2017
As he faced his 30th birthday he addressed the Cambridge Union in hair-raisingly ingenuous terms: ‘My great problem in life is that I do not really know what my role in life is.’ None of the journalists he complained about could have said anything more undermining.

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