The Queen

Book 38 of my 2023 Reading Challenge

read from April 16 - 24

The Queen: Her Life

by Andrew Morton

My Opinion

4 stars 

I'm rounding up to 4 stars because the material was well-researched and the author had enough sources to have some new information.  I would note that the author is obviously a fan of the Queen and monarchy in general so I enjoyed it because I am as well, but would probably take with a grain of salt and look at other writings if you're looking for a more thorough "warts and all" 

kind of read.

Although this book was technically written before the Queen's death in 2022, it was written so recently that it feels like it came pretty close to the end of her life.  The only difference might have been more definitive answers to the "what if" questions raised in the Epilogue, although it's probably still too soon to know what comes next anyway.  

Maybe it was a little rushed to print because there were some simple editing errors (both starting and ending a sentence with "following in the footsteps of her grandfather" and an event being listed as 1983 once and 1993 in every other reference are 2 examples I remember off the top of my head).

The author's bias shows when talking about the fracture between Harry and his family, and I also found it strange that he referenced the book Diana: Her True Story in a detached, third-person way as though he wasn't the author.  He was speculating about sources and motives as though he wasn't literally in the room.