Craig Brown’ latest book A Voyage Around the Queen not only became an immediate best-seller, but also gathered praise for being a unique, deep and thought-provoking portrayal of the late Queen Elizabeth and the monarchy. Craig is best known as a humourist for Private Eye and the Mail whose tools of the trade are usually sharp lines and throwaway wisecracks. Craig has written eighteen books including Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret and One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time where he wraps his satirist’s eyes around the iconic treasures of our age. 

In A Voyage Around the Queen, we learn how Dirk Bogarde watched Death in Venice with her; Andy Warhol envied her fame; Donald Trump offended her, and E.M. Forster confessed he would have married her, if only she had been a boy. “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,” Craig writes. On Princess Margaret, he says, “Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. John Fowles hoped to keep her as his sex-slave. Dudley Moore propositioned her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was in love with her.”