A perceptive history of the British monarchy under the management of the current Queen—just not the “intimate” one promised...
A title that sets an impossible standard, with predictable results.
The problem for any writer setting out to produce an intimate biography of Queen Elizabeth II is that the people who might supply the necessary anecdotes will never do so. The British monarch is on public view so much that an impenetrable institutional wall protects what remains of her private life, leaving the would-be biographer little to work with but carefully orchestrated public appearances and statements and rank speculation. Journalist Marr (The Making of Modern Britain, 2010, etc.) could not overcome these obstacles, which is just as well. Rather than serve up more warmed-over family soap opera, the author provides a comprehensive and lively history and analysis of the British monarchy as a political and social institution from the World War I to the present, more than half of which time has been taken up by Elizabeth’s reign. During this period the monarchy has had to adapt to Britain’s transition from ruler of a vast empire to head of the Commonwealth of Nations, and to the nation’s steady decline in global influence. Elizabeth has also had to guide the change in the social role of the royal family from the starchy and unrealistic model of conventional middle-class family values promoted at the time of her accession to one more accepting of human failings in the wake of her children’s divorces. Marr describes in thorough detail Elizabeth’s diligent exercise of her constitutional duties as sovereign through the crises of almost six decades, including her relationships with more than a dozen prime ministers. He also ably discusses her activities as head of state, her efforts to cope with her children’s marital problems and controversies surrounding the royal finances in the context of the ongoing debate about the sovereign’s proper role in a modern democratic society.
A perceptive history of the British monarchy under the management of the current Queen—just not the “intimate” one promised by the title.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9416-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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