Bennett makes what he can from the curious premiss of the Queen stumbling over the travelling library van in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and, out of politeness, borrowing a random book. Out of good manners she returns it a week later having read very little of it.
The queen is not a big reader, but again feels obliged to pick up a new title. This one is more to her taste, and she borrows another the next week, and a couple more the week after. So it develops. And it seems that the Queen’s new-found love of reading has consequences for those around her. Books are foisted on relatives, flunkeys, advisors, even the Prime Minister and visiting dignitaries.
It allows Bennett to have great fun airing (presumably) his opinions on books and writers while disparaging the great and the good for their literary shortcomings.
Using such an
exalted lead character is an interesting departure from his usual viewpoint
that delights in normality and the significance of the everyday experience. Or
maybe not, even the Queen has a routine of sorts, a private life of sorts, and
like everyone else, a desire once in a while to lose herself in a book.
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