"AN ABSORBING PAGE-TURNER THAT APPROACHESTHE ROYALS. AND THEIR, LEGENDARY ScANDALS. WITH DIGNITY AND ELAN, ILLUMINATING ELIZA. BETH IIIS REIGN IN WAYS THAT EVEN NoN--RoYAL WATCHERS CAN APPRECI- ATE."

              --The Record [Bergen County, N.J.]

For more than fifty years, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor-who became Elizabeth II, Queen of England on February 6, 1952-has been loved and loathed, revered and feared, applauded and criticized by her people. Still she endures as a captivating figure in the world’s most durable symbol of political authority: the British monarchy.

In Monarch, a meticulously detailed portrait of Elizabeth II as both a human being and an institution, bestselling author Robert Lacey brings the queen to life as never before: as baby "Lillibet" learning to wave to a crowd in the Royal Mews; as a child "ardently praying for a brother" so as to avoid her fate; as a young woman falling in love with and marrying her cousin Philip; and as the mother-in-law of the most complicated royal of all, Princess Diana.

Updated with new material to reflect the 2002 Golden Jubilee and the passing of the Queen Mum-and featuring dozens of photographs, a family tree of the Hanoverian-Windsor-Mountbatten families, and a map that charts the location of royal castles-Monarch is an engaging, critical, and celebratory account of Elizabeth’s half-century reign that no reader of popular history should be without.

  Map of Royal Residences 

  Royal Who’s Who 

  Prologue: "As your Queen, and as a grandmother"

PART ONE : "To LIVE IN THE HEARTS OF MY PEOPLE"

  1. The First Queen of Hearts  

  2. Jubilee  

  8. Performing Monarchy  

  4. House of Windsor  

PART TWO : MODEL FAMILY

  5. New Blood  

  6. Model Family  

  7. Abdication  

  8. A "Haze of Wonder"  

  9. Apprentice and Master  

  10. Mumps and Croquet  

  11. Princess in the Tower  

  12. "Weliare Monarchy"  

  13. "Utterly Oyster"  

PART THREE: QUEEN

  14. "A Vast Dumb Tenderness"  

  15. "MindhJl of the Church’s Teaching"  

  16. "Ersatz" Religion  

  17. New Family  

  18. Swinging Sixties  

  19. Money Matters  

 9.0. Silver Jubilee  

PART FOUR : "QUEEN OF PEOPLE’S HEARTS"

  21. Great White Queen 

  29.. Wild Oats  263

  23. "Whatever in love means"  

  24. Permission to Kiss 

  25. Elizabeth Rcgina  

  25. Royal Knock-Out  

  27. "An annus horribilis "  

  28. Safety Zone  

  29. "Bridge Procedures" 

  30. Clapping in the Abbey  

  31. "Bagshot for Eddie"  

  32. Sept6itlber Again  

  Postscript: Golden Iubilee 

  Family Tree  

  Acknowledgements  

  Notes  

  Sources and Select Bibliography  

  Illustration Credits  

  Index