Queen of Our Times by Robert Hardman
I choose this book to read because Queen Elizabeth the Second was always a distant presence in my life. When I went to school, her portrait hung in classrooms, and even in the arena of the most popular hockey team in Toronto. Lands that are owned by the government aren't called 'government' lands in Canada, but 'crown' lands. She was on the money, and it was weird when her portrait was changed as she aged. By the time I was born, she had already been Queen for two decades and would go on to be queen for five more. I was a teenager when the debacle of Charles and Diana reached its tragic end. It is strange because the royal family is clearly like any other family, filled with kind and unkind people, saints and criminals, and yet- they have always seen alien to me. Queen Elizabeth was like an archetype of a grandmother to me. My own grandmother died very young, and I imagine that they would have had similar personalities. In this book, it is revealed th...