Summary
The Queen goes AWOL. No one can find her: where is she going and why ?In Emma Tennant's hilarious 'autobiography' of Queen Elizabeth, the monarch moves to the Caribbean island of St Lucia, where, after more than half a century on the throne, she can recall the years of her reign in peace and tranquillity.But the house is no more than a hole in the ground, her servants are gone and no one knows that 'Mrs Gloria Smith' is the Queen of England. The Queen quickly realizes she has a lot to learn about living life as a commoner.The story of the sovereign's new life in St Lucia is a funny and touching account of the friendship, sometimes contentious and on occasion baffling, between Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and a young St Lucian, Austin Ford. How the Queen reacts to her new life- and how she changes as a result- make The Autobiography of the Queen a hilarious and moving tale, in which her need for her subjects is a marked as their dependence on her staying on the throne."A quiet, quirky charm" - The Times
Emma Tennant was born in London, England on October 20, 1937. Before becoming an author and editor, she worked as a journalist for Queen magazine and Vogue. Her first novel, The Color of Rain, was written under the pseudonym of Catherine Aydy in 1963. The novels written under her own name included The Time of the Crack, The Last of the Country House Murders, Hotel de Dream, The Bad Sister, Alice Fell, Queen of Stones, Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde, Faustine, Pemberley, and An Unequal Marriage. She also wrote several memoirs including Strangers: A Family Romance, Girlitude: A Memoir of the 50s and 60s, Burnt Diaries, and Waiting for Princess Margaret. She founded and edited the literary journal Bananas and was the editor the Viking series Lives of Modern Women. She died from posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, on January 21, 2017 at the age of 79.
(Bowker Author Biography)
