Read by Craig Brown

With equal measures of wit and wisdom, the author of "99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret" draws a deeply original, hilarious, and telling portrait of the Queen herself. She was the most famous person on earth; she first appeared on the cover of Time magazine at the age of three. When she died, few people were old enough to recall a time when she was not alive. Her likeness has been reproduced-in photographs, on stamps, on the notes and coins of thirty different currencies-more than any since Jesus. It is probable that, over the course of her ninety-six years, she was introduced to a greater number of different people than anyone else who has ever lived-likely well over half a million. Yet this most closely observed of all women rarely left any real impression on those she encountered beyond vague notions of her "radiance" and "sense of duty." A high proportion of those she met can remember what they said to her, but not a word of what she said to them. Up until now, the curious tactic employed by biographers of the Queen has been to ignore what is interesting and to concentrate on what is not

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