Product Description

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 andtitles 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?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25729 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Sue Townsend became Britain's bestselling author of the 1980s with her books THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE AGED 13 3/4 and THE GROWING PAINS OF ADRIAN MOLE. She is the author of seven other novels, including THE QUEEN AND I and GHOST CHILDREN, andmost recently her collected journalism, THE PUBLIC CONFESSIONS OF A MIDDLE AGED WOMAN (AGED 55 3/4), was published in 2001. She is also well known as a playwright, and lives in Leicester.

Customer Reviews

Very, very funny
This is clever humour at its best. The book details the escapades of the Royal Family when they are moved into council estates following a republican victory in the general election. Sue Townsend's humourous style, as seen in Adrian Mole, is retained and this book achieves the almost unachievable in actually being more funny than Mole. The novel does give an insight into the problems of the British welfare system, but this does not prevent it from being hilarious. Everyone really MUST read this book.

A wonderful book
The queen and her family are taken from Buckingham palace and placed in a housing estate by the new republican party. I haven't got a bad word to say about this book, yes the characters date the book slightly but due to fictional way they are described you can easily get past this.
The story is wonderfully written and the characters are enjoyable and realistic. The royal families individual reactions to their new situation are realistic and charming, their descriptions play on the publics perceptions of the royal family perfectly.
But the real heroes are the welcoming locals who are proud of where they come from and what they have worked for.
Each chapter is so readable pages pass with out your noticing until the end arrives leaving you wanting more! Wonderful!!

Laugh ? I almost peed my pants
This book has to be the most funniest that I have come across in a long time. Not my normal type of bedtime read but the book was unputdownable ! The authors view of how the royal family would behave once booted out of the palace was so believable that god help them should that day ever arrive.