10/26/2020
Journalist Irving (Pox Britannica ) delivers a clear-eyed portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Covering Elizabeth’s life from her father King George VI’s 1937 coronation, when she was 11, to her grandson Prince Harry’s wedding in 2018, Irving portrays the queen as the daughter, wife, and matriarch of a “patently dysfunctional” royal family. He details scandals over the Duke of Windsor’s “flirtation with fascism” in the 1930s and the 1979 public unmasking of retired royal family art curator Anthony Blunt as a Soviet mole, a matter the Windsors had kept secret since his confession in 1964. Irving also examines Elizabeth’s relationships with her sister, Princess Margaret, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the “media feeding frenzy” that proved to be the undoing of her daughter-in-law, Princess Diana. According to Irving, Elizabeth chided journalists to “allow to enjoy her private life,” but these words fell on deaf ears as “past customs... vanished overnight.” Diana’s death jolted Elizabeth, Irving writes, yet she “was never really able to concede the need for change.” He reserves his harshest judgment, however, for the monarchy itself: “an institution that seems to be unaware of its wanton profligacy.” Irving puts his mark on a familiar story with his confident assessments and insider perspective on the British press. Royal watchers will delight in this richly detailed appraisal of the world’s oldest reigning monarch. (Jan.)
"Irving does an excellent job of providing a respectful and unbiased approach to many aspects of the lives of the queen and her family while also illuminating the knotty relationships among the Windsors, the press, and the public, leaving readers enlightened and in awe over Britain's resilient and gracious monarch."
"Over the course of her lifetime, monarchy became increasingly rare and outdated, and the British Empire dissolved. To Irving, telling the story of the queen’s life means trying to figure out how she was able to ensure the monarchy’s survival despite decades of societal upheaval."
"In each incredibly readable chapter, Irving reexamines all the famous crises of Elizabeth’s reign, from the various scandals of Princess Margaret to the popularly sanctified figure of Diana Spencer."
The Christian Science Monitor
"Before William and Kate or Harry and Meghan—and even before anyone had heard of a 19-year-old named Diana Spencer—there was Clive Irving. Irving’s long career as a journalist covering the royal family includes serving as managing editor of The Sunday Times in London, consulting editor of Newsday in New York City, and as the founding editor of Conde Nast Traveler . His new book [The Last Queen] is a jaw-dropping biography of the Queen."
[An] irresistible history of the Windsor family. From the scandals they tried to hide (Nazi leanings) to the Queen’s perceived chilliness, particularly in mourning Diana, to the Harry and Meghan problem, Irving illuminates an antiquated system in the flux of change.”
Clive Irving’s immensely readable book brings real authority, context, and personal insight to our understanding of Queen Elizabeth. As a newspaperman in the center of the coverage for decades, he has a wonderful eye for the illuminating detail and a sense of history that pulls together the threads of social and political change, never losing sight of the remarkable woman at the center of his enquiring gaze. The Last Queen is as entertaining as it is essential, and I read it with gusto.
01/01/2021
English journalist Irving (Scandal '63: A Study of the Profumo Affair ) brings insider experience to this look at the reign of Elizabeth II (b. 1926), exploring the House of Windsor's relationship to the press through decades of national change and private scandal. A Fleet Street veteran, Irving recounts with firsthand knowledge the evolution of the British press from complicity in guarding the royal family's secrets to viewing the royals as a commodity to be exploited, a change the monarchy was ill-prepared to handle. The Queen remains an enigma to Irving, displaying none of the vulnerability that the more media-savvy Princess Diana used to win hearts and sympathy: a strategy that Irving contends may have protected her own reign but doomed the monarchy to irrelevance. Though Irving credits the Queen for the House of Windsor's endurance, she is conspicuously absent for most of the narrative. Instead, Irving reveals a tone-deaf, reactionary monarchy consistently out of step with more dynamic figures including prime ministers such as Winston Churchill, other royals such as Princess Margaret, and the British public itself. VERDICT A gossipy, yet critical look at the monarchy by a skillful writer who knows his subject well. Fans of The Crown will especially enjoy.—Sara Shreve, Newton, KS
The smooth-sounding Simon Vance employs an authoritative and engaging narration of Clive Irving’s gossipy yet highly articulate biography of Queen Elizabeth II. Irving argues that the Queen’s discomfort with significant social changes during her reign is the reason she likely believes she will be the final queen of the British monarchy. Vance applies a pleasing melding of a contemporary and a more traditional British accent. Loyalties, rivalries, and foibles of familiar and unfamiliar people are explored, and an overview of the larger history of the monarchy is included. Irving maintains that Elizabeth II is a benign enigma and, accordingly, she only occasionally becomes the focus of the text. Listeners who enjoy gossipy stories will likely enjoy an audio performance that raises the level of the work itself. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile
2020-10-03
Despite the book’s title, Elizabeth II remains “a benign enigma” throughout this gossipy romp through a history of the British monarchy. Founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler and former managing editor of the Sunday Times , Irving is more revealing about the dramatic changes in British journalism throughout the 20th century, from the media’s unspoken control of the monarchy’s public image—the Sunday Times once sounded like “the membership committee of an Edwardian gentlemen’s club”—to the voracious exploitation of their every move, which intensified when they discovered Princess Diana’s enormous market value. Drawing on his own experience as an editor, reporter, and confidant of high-placed sources, Irving describes this transformation in sharp detail, homing in on the foibles, rivalries, and loyalties of editors and publishing moguls as well as the royal family’s efforts to block access to information, such as their connections to Nazis and the machinations of their wily uncle Mountbatten. Hewing closely to the narrative presented in the BBC series The Crown , Irving reprises major events, scandals, and family tensions among the Windsors; though he is an entertaining storyteller, he offers no special insight into the character of the “safely conservative and stolid” Elizabeth. A contributor to the BBC documentary Margaret: The Rebel Princess , Irving creates a more animated portrait of the younger sister, whose “rebellious effervescence” he admires. The author does not like the royals much: He deems Philip “a loose cannon” prone to public remarks that reveal “colonial bigotry,” and he calls Mountbatten a “vainglorious self-promoter.” He seems sympathetic to Elizabeth’s plight of having been taught to subjugate personality to duty but concedes that “it was impossible to tell if this was also the private woman—the whole or a part of her.”
Decent modern British history, with cameos by the queen.
