Ma’am Darling

The funny and tragic, bestselling biography of The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, perfect for fans of Netflix’s The Crown.
A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • A DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘I honked so loudly the man sitting next to me dropped his sandwich’ Observer
She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando clam up. She cold-shouldered Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine and Pablo Picasso lusted over her. To her friends Princess Margaret was witty and regal, to her enemies, she was rude and demanding. Ma’am Darling looks at her from many angles, creating a kaleidoscopic biography, and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.

Reviews

‘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