Do Let’s Have Another Drink: The Singular Wit and Double Measures of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

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This is not a collection of quips and quotes but a loving biography by someone who clearly admired her. Elizabeth supported her husband through his stammer that made it difficult for him to give public speeches. Altogether, you might as well read a magazine article for all you learn about the personality of the late Queen Mother.

The book rightly celebrates her sense of humour but also explores her enmities and feuds, including the truth about her behaviour towards Wallis Simpson, Nerissa Bowes-Lyon and Diana, Princess of Wales. He is the author of "Young and Damned and Fair," "The Ship of Dreams" (A Daily Telegraph Best History Book, 2019), "Do Let's Have Another Drink" (A Times Book of the Year, 2022) and "The Palace" (A Waterstones Best Book of 2023). The whimsical stories started coming once The Queen Mother was a widow, freed from the responsibilities and limitations her former role of Queen Consort demanded.This left it sort of unbalanced after the informative chapters of her youth and the middle heavy with war and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She was known for her wit, sense of humor, her ability to make people feel comfortable, but also able to quickly put someone in their place. For fans of The Crown and Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, a deliciously entertaining collection of 101 fascinating and funny anecdotes about Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother—one for each year of her life. Gareth Russell peels back the gilded curtain to explore the life of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, lovingly known as the Queen Mother, in his latest biography, “Do Let’s Have Another Drink: The Singular Wit and Double Measures of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. A biography written in a new format which makes it interesting and chatty, sees the lady from a more human and emotional view. this type of writing allows to have an overview of person’s life, detailed just enough to understand the character and be personalized, rather than dive in into 600+pages biography. The Queen Mother, who died in 2002 at the age of 101, led a fascinating life where she encountered many of the well-known people of the day. I'm not a royal biography reader but I did enjoy Craig Brown's entertaining Ma'am Darling about Princess Margaret so I hoped that this would be a less obsequious and fun look at the Queen Mother's life or as a blurb stated,a biography without the boring bits.For example, the book skips over her 1923 wedding entirely; at the very least, Russell should have noted that the tradition of royal brides leaving their bouquets on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier began with the Queen Mum. Her own very privileged upbringing meant she wasn't that awed by the luxury of the royal lifestyle, and she knew it would be a near total loss of freedom for her. Cecil Beaton, the photographer, once described Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother as a marshmallow made on a welding machine.