The Queen: A Life in Brief by Robert Lacey (Harper
Perennial, May 2012)
Distilled from royal biographer Robert Lacey’s longer works
on Queen Elizabeth II, this short (six chapters) book, full of photographs of
the only monarch of England
most people have known in their lifetime, offers an overview of the woman who
was born not to rule England ,
but who has become probably the most recognized world leader of the twentieth
century. Born the first daughter to the
second son of King George V, Lilibet had no reason to ever think she would be
crowned queen, but after the death of her grandfather, abdication of her uncle
and the coronation of her father, George VI, an eleven year old Elizabeth
realized that she would be the next monarch to rule Great Britain, a task that
came sooner than she expected when her father died in February 1952, just five
years after Elizabeth’s marriage to Philip Mountbatten. Throughout the following fifty years the
world has watched as Elizabeth gave birth to four children, including the next
king of England, Charles, raised her family, watched as they married, had
families of their own, divorced and remarried, and suffered great losses,
changing the face of the traditional monarchy.
From the photos in the book, it is evident that while Queen Elizabeth
has a great love for her nation, she also has a fierce love for her family: a
grinning son (Andrew) greets his mother upon his return from the Falklands War
and a grieving daughter keeps both eyes on her mother’s casket as it is borne
out of Westminster Abby with all the pomp and circumstances befitting the Queen
Mother.
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