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The Uncommon Reader

Alan Bennett

20071 pagesabout 5–10 minutes
2007
first published
  • 2007Farrar, Straus and Giroux · ENGISBN 9780374280963
  • 2007Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux · 120 pages · ENGISBN 9780312427641
  • 2007Faber and Faber Ltd. and Profile Books Ltd. · 124 pages · ENGISBN 9781846680496
  • 2007Profile Books Limited · 128 pages · ENGISBN 9781846681066
  • 2007Profile Books Limited · 128 pages · ENGISBN 9781846880940
  • 2008Thorndike Press · ENGISBN 9781410406712
  • 2008Faber and Faber / Profile Books · 128 pages · ENGISBN 9781846681332
  • 2007BBC Books · 1 pagesISBN 9781405687478

The Uncommon Reader is none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely ( JR Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton Burnett and the classics) and intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister and his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with much that she has to do. In short, her reading is subversive. The consequence is, of course, surprising, mildly shocking and very funny.

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