Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34434 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
A seminal comic masterpiece of our time, now published for the first time in Penguin. The Monarchy Has Been Dismantled; When a Republican party wins the General Election, their first act in power is to strip the royal family of their assets and titles and send them to live on a housing estate in the Midlands. Exchanging Buckingham Palace for a two-bedroomed semi in Hell Close (as the locals dub it), caviar for boiled eggs, servants for a social worker named Trish, the Queen and her family learn what it means to be poor among the great unwashed. But is their breeding sufficient to allow them to rise above their changed circumstance or deep down are they really just like everyone else?

Customer Reviews

How very funny! NOT!
All those rave reviews here must have been written by the members of Sue Townsend's family and people from her publisher's office.

I'm really sorry, but there is nothing funny about this book. It's not `screamingly comical' as one reviewer put it. It's not even interesting as a story. It takes the writer 60 pages to convince us that the royals don't know how to make a cup of tea, boil water or shave. The story gets bogged down in details like this, moving in no direction whatsoever.

I gave up reading at that point. I'm really not interested in what's gonna happen to all those dull characters. And there are too many of them. All the royals take the front position and you don't know who to identify with, especially when they are two-dimensional cartoon characters.

Sue doesn't know how to write a joke or a scene gag because she doesn't include a single one. Certainly, she's never heard of a punchline. None of the chapters end with one, not even with a cliff hanger. Sometimes we get a feeble conclusion.

Frankly, the whole point of the book seems to be that if you take the royal family out of the palace, they are gonna be a bit clumsy. How very hilarious!

surprisingly compassionate
A funny and touchingly human portrait of the Royal Family in exile on a Midlands council estate. It says a lot about Britain in the 1990s without being heavy-handed about it. I loved Prince Charles' pony tail and shell suit.

Wow
Wow. That is an amazing book. So Funny!!!!!!!!!! One of my favourite books I have ever read. I don't normally read funny books but i got this for Christmas and read it and I am so pleased I read it. I am going to read her other books. Sue Townsend is a guniess!!!