'I get enormously impressed when she walks into a room,' Princess Margaret once said of her sister. 'It's a kind of magic.' Prince William recalled, 'As I learned growing up, you don't mess with your grandmother. What she says goes.' In the year of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, royal biographer Ian Lloyd reveals the woman behind the legend over 70 themed chapters. Drawing on interviews with relatives, friends and courtiers, he explores her relationship with seven generations of the royal family, from the children of Queen Victoria to Elizabeth's own great-grandchildren. He also sheds light on some lesser-known aspects of her character, such as her frugality and her gift for mimicry. In addition, we see her encounters with A-listers, from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna, and her adept handling of several of the twentieth century's most difficult leaders. Above all, Lloyd examines how the Queen has stayed true to the promise she made to the nation at the age of 21, 'that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service'.

The definitive new biography of Her Majesty The Queen by one of Britain's leading royal authorities. With original insights from those who know her best, new interviews with world leaders and access to unseen papers, bestselling author Robert Hardman explores the full, astonishing life of our longest reigning monarch in this compellingly authoritative yet intimate biography. Elizabeth II was not born to be queen. Yet from her accession as a young mother of two in 1952 to the age of Covid-19, she has proved an astute and quietly determined figure, leading her family and her people through more than seventy years of unprecedented social change. She has faced constitutional crises, confronted threats against her life, rescued the Commonwealth, seen her prime ministers come and go, charmed world leaders, been criticised as well as feted by the media, and steered her family through a lifetime in the public eye. Queen of Our Times is a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal, spanning abdication, war, romance, danger and tragedy. It is a compelling portrait of a leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne aged twenty-five.

THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF PETER TOWNSEND, THE MAN CONSIDERED TO BE THE GREAT LOVE OF PRINCESS MARGARET'S LIFE, EQUERRY TO KING GEORGE VI AND HERO OF THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN. 'A Royal fairy tale' Sunday Telegraph 'One of the saddest love stories of modern times' The Scotsman 'One afternoon, at Windsor Castle, when everyone had gone to London for some ceremony, we talked, in the red drawing-room, for hours - about ourselves. It was then that we made the mutual discovery of how much we meant to one another. She listened, without uttering a word, as I told her, very quietly, of my feelings. Then she simply said: "That is exactly how I feel, too." It was, to us both, an immensely gladdening disclosure, but one which sorely troubled us.' The romance between Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend in the 1950s rocked the British Establishment, pulled at the heartstrings of a nation and brought sorrow to two intensely human individuals. In Time and Chance, Peter Townsend tells his side of the story in intensely personal terms, and places the episode within the whole context of his full and varied life, a story which includes great heroism in World War II as well as his part in one of the most publicised love stories of the twentieth century.