Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain's Queen

xi, 564 pp. "Although it conscientiously chronicles the marital misadventures of the English queen's offspring, this solid, evenhanded book devotes more time to assessing Elizabeth's considerable skills as a constitutional monarch and the political crises confronted and (for the most part) resolved since her coronation in 1953. On the personal side, Sarah Bradford offers a three-dimensional rendering of a kind, rather unimaginative woman, a devoted wife but distant mother with a tendency to ignore family troubles in the shortsighted hope that they would simply go away. A nice example of the traditional British biography."