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  • Ma'am Darling

  • 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret
  • By: Craig Brown
  • Narrated by: Eleanor Bron
  • Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (29 ratings)

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Ma'am Darling

By: Craig Brown
Narrated by: Eleanor Bron
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Publisher's Summary

From our funniest writer, a portrait of our most talked-about royal.

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 1950s 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.

©2017 Craig Brown (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic Reviews

Praise for Craig Brown: "The amazing Craig Brown - the greatest satirist since Max Beerbohm." (Elaine Showalter)
"The wittiest writer in Britain today." (Stephen Fry)
"Every page is gold...genius." (Boris Johnson)

What listeners say about Ma'am Darling

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Ghastly & Vile & Boring

Yet another “writer” selling/“writing” nothing but a boring, ghastly and vile “biography” of a Royal, in the hope of gulping our money - the stupid readers money. I have look forward to this book as I thought it would be hilarious, toe crumbling, ocasionally gripping, moving and informative. I couldn’t finish this mess, I was not interested/never captivated even the slightest gripped by the story as a listener/costumer my money is wasted. If you don’t have salt, sugar & vinegar in any story you want to tell as an author - the mix - then you have nothing but self-promoting and embarrasing NOTHING! Waste of time and money - mine and yours - you, the next Audible reader if you buy it. Don’t. 👎🏼

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7 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Dreadful

Absolutely dreadful🤮 - a complete waste of your time and money! Don’t bother with this book!

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic! Don't believe what you've read!

So insightful, funny and so perfectly narrated. If you love the Royals like I do, but see them warts and all, you'll eat this up!

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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what was this book About?

One of the most ridiculous books ever..Chronologically all over the place. and not very interesting.

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1 person found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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Save your money

This book is all over the place with way too much detail given to unnecessary and and boring information. The reader is excellent but the story is a shambles. Not sure what the authors aim of writing the book was. Cannot recommend at all.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant, literary, hilarious

i can only imagine that the negative reviews of this glorious book are from people expecting a more conventional royal bio. This is not one for royalists but a mix of sharp, psychologically acute social commentary and acerbic wit that absolutely skewers the style and pretension of this once iconic royal.

The style is quite literary/experimental, drawing on a plethora of journalistic sources. It's beautifully written with many laugh-out-loud moments.

Eleanor Bron's narration is pitch perfect. One of my most listened to audio-books.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable if largely trivial material

Craig Brown is a very clever writer for Private Eye, and he has written a clever book which will not be to everyone's taste - so much gossipy stuff about one woman. Yet she is an extraordinary figure - not very nice, a combination of royal dignity and bohemian affectations, always looking for a meaningful place in the world. I was naive in swallowing some sections of the book, eg Margaret's supposed marriage to Picasso, until I finally woke up - wait a minute! Craig Brown simply relates these sections as if they were part of the factual information, which makes the reader distrust the text from then on, at least slightly. He has researched his subject well, going through so many diaries which are no doubt otherwise forgettable, extracting some fascinating snippets. The whole book has the flavour of 'fascinating snippets' - and not so fascinating. I had no trouble finishing the book - and by the way, the reading by Eleanor Bron was one for the connoisseurs. She nailed the tone of the book perfectly, I thought. In fact it was Ms Bron who kept me reading keenly, when I might have got bored by the material.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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truly dreadful

This book was at of endurance of which I am afraid I failed. I tried but several hours was more than I could stand of long chapters based on one comment that the Princess may or as it turns out may not have said and a whole argument over the possibilities of who may or may not have been present if she may or may not have said it pretty well did me in.

Duller than a phone book and a damn sight less informative .

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