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Ma’am Darling

99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

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About this listen

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.

Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. John Fowles hoped to keep her as his sex-slave. Dudley Moore propositioned her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was in love with her.

For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy. “If they knew what I had done in my dreams with your royal ladies” he confided to a friend, “they would take me to the Tower of London and chop off my head!”

Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures. To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding.

In her 1950’s heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. By the time of her death, she had come to personify disappointment. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman.

The tale of Princess Margaret is pantomime as tragedy, and tragedy as pantomime. It is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled.

Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues and essays, Ma’am Darling is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography, and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.

‘Brown has been our best parodist and satirist for decades now … Ma’am Darling is, as you would expect, very funny; also, full of quirky facts and genial footnotes. Brown has managed to ingest huge numbers of royal books and documents without losing either his judgment or his sanity. He adores the spectacle of human vanity’ Julian Barnes, Guardian

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Critic 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

All stars
Most relevant
I'm not a Royalist and although I occasionally dip into 'Royal' books or biographies, I dislike anything that smacks of having the seal of approval from the subject. I was astonished to note that Craig Brown is the author; he's an entertaining columnist, but I wouldn't have expected him to write a Royal bio. Eleanor Bron's delivery is outstanding. She catches the tone exactly right with every voice. What a woman!

As for the glimpses; I've never read a bio quite like this. Although largely linear, following HRH's life from start to finish, it flits back and forth over the years as incidents make a particular point. The source material is often from contemporaneous diary notes made made other notables. Roy Strong, Evelyn Waugh, Noel Coward. Their insight into events and remarks is astonishing.

I'm left not knowing quite what to make of this somewhat enigmatic lady. There are a few redeeming features, revealed towards the end of the book and her final years I wouldn't wish on anyone. I had no idea that Armstrong Jones was so despicable. The world seemed to adore him in the 60s and 70s but his cruelty and waspishness was appalling.

99 chapters, some long, some short, some what if and overall a remarkable and memorable listen. I really enjoyed this one, far more than I thought I might.

Simply superb; scurrilous and so different

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the narrator was excellent but it was put together in such a strange way so if one nodded off one woke up to find Princess M. was married to Picasso.! Much better to read this one

not a good one for Audio Book

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A must-read for fans of Royal history, of even just the the TV series The Crown, this is an interestingly constructed multitude of snapshots of the life and character of HRH Princess Margaret. A fascinatingly complicated and paradoxical person once you put together a picture of her from the accounts within.

Sharp, funny, poignant

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not only real anecdotes but also really funny imagined alternatives, read fluently and with added accents

unexpected humour

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Clever but catty. So much emphasis on PM’s bad traits, it gives a very one sided account of her life. Only a few ‘good words’ are allowed, and they present a very different picture. The PM who wrote the heartfelt, touching and extremely articulate letter to Robin Douglas Hume is clearly a deeper and nicer person than the one so gleefully depicted in most of the book. I listened on Audible, and Eleanor Bron’s reading is a sheer delight. She greatly increased my enjoyment of the book.

Very unkind but very funny

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