Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2284 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Binding: Hardcover
• 124 pages

Robert McCrum, Observer
`...a masterpiece of comic brevity.'

Jane Shilling, Times
`An exquisitely produced jewel of a book...[but] beneath the tasteful gilt-and-beige cover seethes a savagely Swiftian indignation against stupidity, Philistinism and arrogance in public places, and a passionate argument for the civilising power of art.'

Robert McCrum, Observer
'A masterpiece of comic brevity.'

Customer Reviews

Short & sweet... oh, and really funny too!!
If you need some brightening up at the end of a dull day, then this is the book to pick up. It's deliciously entertaining and great fun and will take you no more than a couple of hours to read.

'It was the dogs' fault.' The Queen's corgis, sensing an imposter in their garden, go racing around the terrace barking away at what turns out to be the City of Westminster mobile library. The Queen feels compelled to take out a book, choosing an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel, and from here the Queen's interest in literature begins. Her appetite for books becomes insatiable as she works through many different authors, and as her public duties begin to suffer (in the eyes of her private secretary, Sir Kevin), her equerries, under the instruction of Sir Kevin, conspire to bring her literary quest to an end.

Pure unadulterated delight - the perfect booklovers' bedtime companion.

An Ode to Reading and its Constant Delights
This is the loveliest little book I've read since I discovered Helene Hanff's "84 Charing Cross Road" a million years ago. Using the Queen as his catalyst, Alan Bennett gives us this love story between a new reader and the world that opens to her through the magic of books. He could be speaking of any bibliophile, but because it is Her Royal Highness, the opportunities for wit and plot twists in this slim volume are multiplied exponentially. There were several beautiful quotes which I will be adding to my favorites list, and I recognized myself on every page as a person who struggles to find time to read and resents having the obligations of everyday life intrude upon that time.

Time spent reading is never wasted; furthermore, time spent reading The Uncommon Reader will be looked back upon with great affection.

An enchanting story
This little novella is a real gem. It depicts the burgeoning interest in the Queen for reading novels when her corgis one day lead her unwittingly into the Westminster mobile library and the tender clutches of its librarian and a ginger haired palace servant with a taste for gay literature.

It is gentle, amusing and dryly witty. I loved it. On a drab, rainy Wednesday with three children to entertain I unashamedly stuck them in front of the television for an hour and escaped to a world where the Queen chats to the French Prime Minister about Genet and thinks of writing her memoirs a la Proust. Lovely