Books newsletter<\/p>\n
News, reviews, author interviews and suggested reads from our literary editors.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tSign up with one click<\/p>\n
That makes her unpromising ground for biographers. Nevertheless, they persist in trying: after all, she was the Queen. And since her death in 2022, the possibility of posthumous revelations has encouraged some authors to go back for another try. Hugo Vickers and Robert Hardman have written about Elizabeth II<\/a> before. Now both have attempted to wring another book out of her.<\/p>\n In Hardman\u2019s case, this is his fourth go, although given that his previous effort, Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II<\/a>, came out in 2022 and could only briefly touch on her death, perhaps it\u2019s fairer to think of this as volume three and a half in his Queen cycle. In the preface he half apologises for the inevitable repetitions, writing that \u201ca good story deserves another airing\u201d.<\/p>\n Vickers, meanwhile, has written extensively on royal subjects, but this is his first biography proper of the Queen. That should make it the more compelling proposition here, and in one sense at least it\u2019s a perfect match between subject and writer. The Queen lived a determinedly undramatic life, and Vickers is the bore to end all bores.<\/p>\n The level of detail in Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History is unequalled. There is seemingly no fact too trivial for inclusion in its 600-plus pages. He lists the animals that Elizabeth and Margaret saw in a visit to London Zoo in 1936; he even notes that Lady Strathmore had a cold when the princesses visited Glamis that year. (Strangely, though, he doesn\u2019t mention the Nazi affiliations of Prince Philip\u2019s family.)<\/p>\n The effect is stultifying. Vickers is a world-class toady, given to absurd outbursts of bowing and scraping. In the introduction he claims that Elizabeth\u2019s reign will be unparalleled \u201ceven if we live for a thousand years\u201d. This is ridiculous enough, but it reads like unsentimental rationalism compared with the way he writes about her death.<\/p>\n \u201cI had invested so much of my life in following the Queen. When she died, it was as though the Last Post sounded,\u201d he writes in the epilogue. \u201cI found myself floundering in the dread dark of night, fearful of the abyss into which I would stare when Reveille came.\u201d This lurid, purple stuff makes you yearn for Prince Philip to pop back from the grave and tell Vickers to pull himself together.<\/p>\n Particularly telling is Vickers\u2019s attitude to Crawfie \u2014 Marion Crawford, the governess to Elizabeth and Margaret who was exiled from the palace after publishing an intimate (but complimentary) memoir in 1950. Vickers loyally explains that he considers her an unreliable witness, then quietly uses her book as a source without naming her in the text.<\/p>\n When it comes to royals who let the side down, Vickers has no trouble inveighing against Diana, or Meghan and Harry<\/a>. All incurred the Queen\u2019s displeasure, and all are portrayed unsympathetically here. He struggles, though, regarding Andrew. The problem is that the Queen did not think that Andrew did anything wrong, and that means Vickers must force himself to think the same \u2014 even if he makes himself ridiculous in the process.<\/p>\n So he tells us that Andrew believed that paparazzi photos published in the 1990s of his wife, Sarah, topless had been faked, \u201cquite possibly presaging [Andrew\u2019s] own fate many years later\u201d. This is a reference to the absurd suggestion<\/a> that the picture of Andrew with the trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre was forged. Vickers\u2019s desperation to let the Queen\u2019s favourite son off the hook is humiliatingly palpable.<\/p>\n Andrew is a headache for friendly biographers of the Queen and monarchists in general \u2014 not only because he demonstrates the poisonous effects of privilege, but also because the Queen\u2019s judgment clearly failed when it came to him. Allegations of criminality (which Andrew denies) aside, it is hard to reconcile the Queen\u2019s vaunted sense of duty with her indulgence of her most oafish and incompetent child.<\/p>\n Hardman, sensibly, attempts no exonerations on this point. His admiration for the Queen does not obscure her responsibility for her son\u2019s dissipation: \u201cOut of loyalty to [the Queen], the Andrew problem had been allowed to fester.\u201d One of his biggest scoops is a damning account of Andrew physically attacking one of his mother\u2019s aides with a \u201ckinetic blow\u201d after being told he couldn\u2019t use Buckingham Palace for an event on a specific day.<\/p>\n![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3c5d3614-8641-4e80-b400-c9dcd8469f87.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/cb174a74-5d54-4a4b-ab66-0292a9d353b2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8abcb447-703a-4658-83fe-a97423ec4c7c.jpg\")
Queen Elizabeth II with Meghan, who is portrayed unsympathetically by Hugo VickersMax Mumby\/Indigo\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8155ce5d-654b-4322-8e19-11e605f490bd.jpg\")
With Donald Trump during the 2019 state banquetDOMINIC LIPINSKI\/POOL\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n