If you're anything like us, you've already binged season four of Netflix's The Crown and are eagerly awaiting season five. Since that likely won't come out until 2022 (a bummer, we know), get your royal family fill in the meantime by reading one of these six books—both fiction and nonfiction—about Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher and the rest of the crew.
6 Books to Read if You're Obsessed with 'The Crown' on Netflix
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Published Nov 22, 2020
1. margaret Thatcher: Herself Alone By Charles Moore
Season four of The Crown sees Gillian Anderson taking on the role of Margaret Thatcher. This book, based on unique access to Thatcher herself, her papers and her closest associates, tells the story of her last period in office, her combative retirement and the controversy that surrounded her even in death. Moore's three-part biography of Britain's most important peacetime prime minister paints an intimate political and personal portrait of the victories and defeats, the iron will but surprising vulnerability of the woman who dominated in an age of male power.
2. diana: Her True Story—in Her Own Words By Andrew Morton
Written with Princess Diana’s cooperation—and featuring first-person interviews with the woman herself—this book honestly chronicles everything from Diana’s unhappy marriage to her relationship with Queen Elizabeth. What’s more, it was re-published 25 years after its original 1992 release to include even more details about the princess’s extraordinary royal life. (Writer Morton re-visited the interview tapes to glean more insights into Di’s life and mind.)
3. the Other Side Of The Coin: The Queen, The Dresser And The Wardrobe By Angela Kelly
Queen Elizabeth herself gave Kelly personal permission to pen this book, which details her 25 years working as her royal highness’s personal dresser. It’s about the clothes first, of course, but it includes gossipy revelations about royal protocol and life inside Buckingham Palace.
4. the Other Windsor Girl: A Novel Of Princess Margaret, Royal Rebel By Georgie Blalock
In this work of historical fiction, Blalock writes of the queen's younger sister's whirlwind of fame and notoriety, capturing the fascinating, fast-living princess as seen through the eyes of one of her ladies-in-waiting.
5. ninety-nine Glimpses Of Princess Margaret By Craig Brown
Though the previous book is a work of fiction, this is one of the more sympathetic portraits of Princess Margaret, whose glamour, vulnerability, likeability and unlikability are all captured by Brown. To do this, he relies on interviews, parodies, diaries, royal announcements and more, painting Princess Margaret as the opposite of Cinderella—someone full of hopes and dreams that all get thwarted (or mishandled) in favor of preserving the crown.
6. the Queen Mother By William Shawcross
The Queen Mum died in 2002 at 102 years old, but before she passed, she authorized this biography—which came out seven years after her death—and includes access to her personal papers, letters and diaries, provided by Queen Elizabeth II’s mother herself. For background, the Queen Mother was incredibly well-liked during her reign as monarch. This biography is a portrait of a lady, but also a portrait of Britain’s evolution over the course of the 20th century.
