The Uncommon Reader : Alan Bennett's classic story about the Queen

Author: Bennett, Alan

Fiction & related items

Published on 25 March 2021 by Profile Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 128 pages
111 x 178 x 11 | 102g

Alan Bennett's classic story about Queen Elizabeth IIWhat would happen if the Queen became a reader of taste and discernment rather than of Dick Francis? The answer is a perfect story.

The Uncommon Reader is none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely (JR Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton Burnett and the classics) and intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister and his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with much that she has to do. In short, her reading is subversive. The consequence is, of course, surprising, mildly shocking and very funny.