THE LAST QUEEN

A candid look at how the media has portrayed the monarchy.

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.