It's only fair, after all the acres of trees that have been felled to accommodate the deeds and misdeeds of the current generation of young royals, that it should take 600plus paperback pages for the monarch to strike back. Elizabeth Windsor - stiff, starchy, prim, proper - is an unpromising subject to hold one's interest over such a long span, but Pimlott writes lucidly and with a certain quizzical charm, setting Her Majesty in a series of period tableaux from the industrial unrest which preceded her birth in April 1926 - "Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day," the miners were chanting in the collieries - to the litany of disasters that added up to the annus horribilis of 1992.
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