Sue Townsend is one of those authors I grew up with. Her Adrian Mole books were introduced to me by one of my cousins, Chris (I still have the copy of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 with his inscription in it), and were some of the first I couldn’t get enough of. I remember visiting my family in England when I was about ten and collecting tokens from cereal packages to redeem for a prize. The prize I coveted was a copy of True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole. I sent in the tokens, and then sat on the path waiting for the post every day for weeks until it finally arrived. It was one of the best packages I’ve ever received – and may have played a part in a lifelong love for receiving books in the mail! Townsend had this tremendous gift for finding the right words to express the inner life of regular folk, but simultaneously painting a picture of the larger context in which they live. Her work is always political, but not overtly so.
The premise of The Queen and I is one that, apparently, Townsend came up with as a schoolgirl. In the film The Secret Life of Sue Townsend,one of her childhood friends remembers her talking about this idea, but it was many years before she turned it into a novel. It’s the story of what it would be like if the royal family were removed from power and forced to live as “normal” folk. They are given a day to pack up their belongings, not allowed to sell anything or take any money with them, and moved to council houses on Hellebore Close (known locally as “Hell Close”). They must live in the same houses as some of the poorest people in Leicester, and they must learn to live on the small amount of money that they are provided by the government – and deal with the same bureaucratic dead ends and delays.
As you can imagine, this does not go smoothly. They have varying reactions – getting on with it, taking to bed, complete incomprehension and even coming to sort of enjoy the simple things in life. (I’ll let you discover which is which for yourself). All sorts of issues come up that they must grapple with, and for the first time they are reliant on the help of people around them who have absolutely no reason to offer it. Suddenly they are less able to manage than the poorest people they used to be able to look down on, and lack any skills at all whatsoever that would be of any use in their new circumstances.
There are many twists and turns in the story, character development (and lack thereof) and surprising friendships. It shows how human beings are able to adapt to changes in circumstances (though it takes longer for some than others), but also that some can dig their heels in and refuse to even try, much to their own detriment. It’s a wonderful thought experiment in novel format, and I found it so interesting to go through all the details of how this change affected them, all the unexpected surprises they discovered.
That said, if didn’t have quite as much humour as I feel I remember in Townsend’s books, and there’s a darkness about it that, while somewhat expected, felt a little more pervasive than I had expected. It has lots of ups and downs, but lacks a definitive sense of forward motion, rather taking a more meandering route. And while I don’t want to share (spoil) what happens in the end, I must confess that it didn’t quite work for me and left me feeling less satisfied than I would have liked. It’s a great book for those who’ve toyed with this idea and are curious to see it played out on the page, or for dedicated Townsend fans, but isn’t my favourite of her works.
Townsend, author of the phenomenally successful Adrian Mole books, here brings off an audacious notion with considerable elan. She imagines a Britain where an unforgiving, newly elected Republican Party decides that the entire Royal Family must learn to live like other Britons, or in their case, like desperately poor lower-class Britons on a hideous housing estate in a provincial city.
A notable farceur, Townsend has terrific fun imagining how they would cope: the Queen buckles down sturdily, mindful of stiff-upper-lip duty; Prince Philip goes to pieces and takes to his bed; Margaret remains a royal pain, perpetually and irritably in search of a cigarette; Diana haunts thrift shops for designer castoffs and snares a flashy West Indian boyfriend; Charles, infatuated with a zaftig neighbor, gets involved in a brawl and is jailed, while his organic garden goes to pieces; Anne copes stolidly, much helped by the gift of a horse and the Queen Mum, never quite aware of what is happening, dies peacefully in her little bungalow, and has a splendid horse-drawn funeral in a home-made coffin. Meanwhile Harris, the Queen’s corgi, runs wild with a pack of mongrels. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Queen and I
Author: Sue Townsend
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: Penguin Books
Released: January 1, 1992
Genre: Fiction, Politics, Humour, Social Commentary
Pages: 267
Date Read: April 9-13, 2024
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.72/5 (6,631 ratings)