Ma’am Darling

Craig Brown has been writing the parodic celebrity diary for Private Eye since 1989. He has written for a wide variety of publications, including the Daily Mail, New York Review of Books, New Statesman, Guardian and Spectator. His books include the New York Times bestseller One on One; One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction; and Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, which won the James Tait Black Award and The South Bank Show Sky Arts Award and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US. He lives by the sea in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, with his wife Frances Welch; they have two children and two grandchildren.

‘Ma’am Darling is fascinating. Brown has done something amazing with Ma’am Darling: in my wilder moments, I wonder if he hasn’t reinvented the biographical form’ Observer‘A biography teeming with the joyous, the ghastly and the clinically fascinating’ Hannah Bett, The Times‘Consistently hilarious and eye-opening’ Tim Adams, Observer‘Heaven’ India Knight, Sunday Times‘The only royal biography of the year worth handing the Queen’s head over for, Ma’am Darling is a modern and unconventional portrait of an old-fashioned princess as distilled and pickled through the genius of Craig Brown’ Helen Davies, Sunday Times‘Craig Brown has brilliantly drawn together the component parts of a complex woman’ The Oldie‘A playful, impish approach…Brown gives us lots of wonderful incidental detail…The deftly amused writing constantly tugs the corners of your mouth upwards’ Evening Standard‘A cross between biography and satire that perfectly displays Brown’s rare skills as journalist and parodist’, Mark Lawson, Guardian, Books of the Year‘Hugely entertaining … brilliantly written, with a wonderful sardonic edge but also a thoughtful, at times even moving tone’ Spectator‘If you want a book that will have you punching your pillow in helpless laughter, this is it. Moreover, he has invented an entirely new genre, of which it is a masterpiece … The list of the Princess's 'rumoured' lovers – up to and wickedly including Dusty Springfield – sparked my decision to buy this book as a Christmas present for everybody I know, and for those I don't.’ Country Life‘Hilarious’ Sunday Telegraph‘Brilliant’ Evening Standard‘Craig Brown achieves the impossible by finding a tone in which to write about monarchy. Not bitchy, not snide, not angry, but not fawning nor deferential either. Just funny.’ David Hare, Guardian