A respectful and thoughtfully documented history of the British monarch but not the definitive biography one might hope for.
A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926) that highlights her many accomplishments.
As the longest-reigning monarch in British history, Elizabeth II is currently more beloved than ever. Recent acclaimed dramas such as the 2006 film The Queen and the hit Netflix series The Crown have further sparked our universal fascination, as each work has delved into Elizabeth’s more private life and aimed to reveal a woman with complex ambitions and passions. Daily Mail writer Hardman, who has written extensively on the British monarchy (Our Queen, 2011, etc.), approached this book alongside his current TV documentary. While not exactly serving as a companion book to the series, both vehicles assert a similar reverential approach to the material, choosing to elude the more personal dramas that have beset the royal family and focusing instead on the queen’s tireless work ethic and long-standing dedication to her role. Hardman examines the broader areas of accomplishment that have been particularly significant during her reign. “By any measure,” writes the author, “her life and reign comprise a vault of experience unrivaled by any world leader. It is one of the reasons that even those who are not royalists by inclination applaud her dedication to duty.” Rather than providing a linear account, Hardman looks at particular topics: the queen’s diplomatic accomplishments throughout the Commonwealth as well as Africa, Europe, and the U.S; her associations with various leaders, including her line of prime ministers and her close rapport with accomplished statesmen such as Nelson Mandela and the many American presidents who have come into power during her reign. “There can be few people in the USA, let alone the rest of the world, who have lived through the administrations of sixteen presidents—more than one-third of the total,” writes Hardman. The book is grounded in lucid historical detail and often highlighted by colorful anecdotes. However, as a full biography, the dense volume, while accessible, lacks an engrossing throughline to maintain lengthy reader engagement.
A respectful and thoughtfully documented history of the British monarch but not the definitive biography one might hope for.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-002-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
