A Voyage Around the Queen

'Brown understands the simple paradox: that the only way to write insightfully about the Queen is to write entirely around the Queen ... Brilliantly funny [and] perceptive'FINANCIAL TIMES

'Brown sees, correctly, that comedy is a part of all that is serious, and by laughing at things we have a better understanding of their nature ... Most of all in this magnificent book we have a sense of the monarch being looked at freshly, without any prejudice or point to prove, and with a real understanding of human complexity ... It is hard to think that a more thoughtful book on its subject will be published for many years' PHILIP HENSHER, SPECTATOR

'This is a book about ourselves as a nation, reflected and refracted through our own relationships with one person, or our ideas of that person... Brown's method is worth describing because it amounts almost to a new kind of history... He is by turns affectionate and scornful, but always absorbed...Stuffed with trash, this is a deeply serious book' MATTHEW PARIS, LITERARY REVIEW

'A very unusual masterpiece ... teems with facts, humour and intelligence ... I enjoyed A Voyage Around the Queen so much that I wished it were longer than its 672 pages' CHRISTOPHER HOWSE, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

'Brown gives an astute account of the wellnigh unaccountable public life of an intensely private person ... In any case, he has performed the task with admirable zeal. The book is crammed with facts, statistics, anecdotes, and much of it is gloriously bizarre...' JOHN BANVILLE, GUARDIAN

Brown has given us a serious reflection on the nature of power and why institutions such as the monarchy, in the right hands, can provide a society with stability and a sense of continuity, especially in turbulent times' NEW STATESMAN

'Rich in vignettes, but also has a revelatory depth ... thought-provoking, perhaps even deep ... a vivid and remarkably telling study of our late head of state, and even more so of the people she reigned over for 70 years' STEPHEN SMITH, OBSERVER