Craig Brown
Tuesday 15th October
Topping & Company Booksellers of St Andrews, 7 Greyfriars Garden, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9HG
6.50pm
7.30pm
Craig Brown on A Voyage Around the Queen
One of Britain's foremost satirists and author of the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time and Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret presents his fresh, funny, and fascinating take on the life of Queen Elizabeth II.
Virginia Woolf compared her to a caterpillar; Anne Frank kept pictures of her on the wall of her annex; Jimi Hendrix played her tune; Haile Selassie gave her a gold tiara; Dirk Bogarde watched Death in Venice with her; Andy Warhol envied her fame; Donald Trump offended her; E.M. Forster confessed he would have married her, if only she had been a boy.
Queen Elizabeth II was famous for longer than anyone who has ever lived. When people spoke of her, they spoke of themselves; when they dreamed of her, they dreamed of themselves. She mirrored their hopes and anxieties. To the optimist, she seemed an optimist; to the pessimist, a pessimist; to the awestruck, charismatic; and to the cynical, humdrum. Though by nature reserved and unassuming, her presence could fill presidents and rock gods with terror. For close to a century, she inhabited the psyche of a nation.
Combining biography, essays, cultural history, dream diaries, travelogue and satire, the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of this most public yet private of sovereigns.
Craig Brown has been writing the parodic celebrity diary for Private Eye since 1989. He has written for a wide variety of publications, including the Daily Mail, New York Review of Books, New Statesman, Guardian and Spectator. His books include the New York Times bestseller One on One; One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction; and Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, which won the James Tait Black Award and The South Bank Show Sky Arts Award and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US. He lives by the sea in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, with his wife Frances Welch; they have two children and two grandchildren.