Audiobooks by Craig Brown

"THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER THE TIMES and SUNDAY TIMES BEST MEMOIR OF 2024 … 'GENIUS' A BOOK OF THE YEAR for theSPECTATOR, MAIL ON SUNDAY, NEW STATESMAN, FINANCIAL TIMES, INDEPENDENT, TELEGRAPH, SUNDAY EXPRESSand THE TABLET. From one of the funniest writers of our time, the award-winning author of One Two Three Four and Ma'am Darling turns his attention to Queen Elizabeth II in an unforgettable and fascinating biography. 'A crown jewel among royal biographies' OBSERVER ‘Extraordinarily original, enlightening and fresh’ SPECTATOR 'Absolutely fascinating' Ruth Langsford, LOOSE WOMEN 'A very unusual masterpiece' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Brilliantly funny and well-researched' FINANCIAL TIMES Virginia Woolf compared her to a caterpillar; Anne Frank kept pictures of her on the wall of her annex; Jimi Hendrix played her tune; Haile Selassie gave her a gold tiara; Dirk Bogarde watched Death in Venice with her; Andy Warhol envied her fame; Donald Trump offended her; E.M. Forster confessed he would have married her, if only she had been a boy. Queen Elizabeth II was famous for longer than anyone who has ever lived. When people spoke of her, they spoke of themselves; when they dreamed of her, they dreamed of themselves. She mirrored their hopes and anxieties. To the optimist, she seemed an optimist; to the pessimist, a pessimist; to the awestruck, charismatic; and to the cynical, humdrum. Though by nature reserved and unassuming, her presence could fill presidents and rock gods with terror. For close to a century, she inhabited the psyche of a nation. Combining biography, essays, cultural history, dream diaries, travelogue and satire, the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of this most public yet private of sovereigns. – 'An unconventional tribute that offers a snapshot of almost a century of social history with a mix of royal insanity, and superior anecdotes, from farts and corgis to Paul McCartney and poets laureate' THE TIMES and SUNDAY TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2024 'An enthralling reverie on memory, identity, coincidence and meaning – testing, teasing, charming, moving and deceptively wise' RORY STEWART ‘An entertaining and revealing digest … fascinating … Craig Brown has captured something essential about Britain’s curious relationship with royalty’TLS 'Completely and utterly brilliant and exquisitely funny and fascinating. This book is, dare I say, majestic. Craig Brown has no peers – I would curtsey to him if I met him' MARINA HYDE 'Wonderfully readable … At once sympathetic but clear-eyed, kind but sharp' NEW STATESMAN 'Brown is as sharp and dryly funny as his subject'EVENING STANDARD 'You wouldn’t think the world needed another book about Queen Elizabeth – but how wrong you’d be. Craig Brown’s wholly original and enthralling biography is absolute heaven from start to finish’ INDIA KNIGHT 'Craig Brown continues to reinvent the art of biography… utterly fascinating' JASON COWLEY Craig Brown's book One Two Three Four won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2020."

Craig Brown (Author), Harriet Walter (Narrator)

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Craig Brown: A BBC Radio Collection: This is Craig Brown, 1966 & All That, As Told to Craig Brown an

"'The wittiest writer in Britain today' Stephen Fry Columnist, critic and award-winning author Craig Brown is well known for his Private Eye parodies lampooning politicians and celebrities. He has written for numerous newspapers, both under his own name and as his alter egos Wallace Arnold and Bel Littlejohn. Collected here are Brown's four fantastic radio series, plus two bonus programmes in which he discusses his life and work. Mixing satire, social observation and nonsense, This Is Craig Brown is a hilarious selection of work taken from his vast back catalogue of diaries, parodies and general silliness. A combination of monologues, dramatisations, verse and music, these five episodes see him examining The Arts, Celebrity, Travel, Communications and Hallucinations, aided by a stellar cast including Rory Bremner, Harry Enfield, Edward Fox and John Humphrys. 1966 and All That is Craig Brown's four-part satirical history of Britain, ranging from the 1920s and 30s to the 1980s and 90s. It sees him investigating how DH Lawrence of Arabia wrote Lady Chatterbox's Llama, exploring the era of 'Flour Power' and looking back on the age when Neil Knock-Knock and John Minor made the political headlines. Narrated by stars including Eleanor Bron, Joss Ackland, Ewan Bailey and Margaret Cabourn-Smith, it won a Sony Gold Award for Best Comedy in 2007. In As Told To Craig Brown, the satirist offers up more inspired parody, mockery and pastiche, as he romps through anything that's newsworthy and a good many things that aren't. Narrated by Juliet Stevenson and Steve Wright, these six episodes feature a host of top comedians and impressionists including Ronni Ancona, Jon Culshaw, Lewis MacLeod and Sally Grace. In the crosshairs of satire are Tuscan holidays, CCTV, the Jane Austen industry and busty starlets. Craig Brown's Lost Diaries finds Brown dipping into the private lives of public figures from the 1960s to the present day. Over the course of six episodes, he covers a whole year of satire, from the musings of great thinkers like Barack Obama and Barbara Cartland in January and February, to the journals of Germaine Greer and Nigella Lawson in November and December. Voicing these, and many other, celebrities are Jan Ravens, Alistair McGowan, Lewis McLeod, Ewan Bailey, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Dolly Wells. And in Work in Progress and Desert Island Discs, we hear from Brown himself as he describes writing the Private Eye diary and his 'Way of the World' column for The Daily Telegraph, and shares the soundtrack of his life with Kirsty Young. Credits Part 1: This Is Craig Brown Produced by Simon Nicholls First broadcast BBC Radio 4: The Arts 3 Mar 2004 Celebrity 10 Mar 2004 Travel 17 Mar 2004 Communications 24 Mar 2004 Hallucinations 31 Mar 2004 Part 2: 1966 and All That Produced by Victoria Lloyd First broadcast BBC Radio 4: The 1920s & 30s 8 Sept 2006 The 1940s 15 Sept 2006 The 1960s 22 Sept 2006 The 1980s & 90s 29 Sept 2006 Part 3: As Told To Craig Brown Producer: Victoria Lloyd First broadcast BBC Radio 4: Episode 1 21 Apr 2008 Episode 2 28 Apr 2008 Episode 3 5 May 2008 Episode 4 12 May 2008 Episode 5 19 May 2008 Episode 6 26 May 2008 Part 4: Craig Brown's Lost Diaries Producer: Victoria Lloyd First broadcast BBC Radio 4: January & February 4 Oct 2010 March & April 11 Oct 2010 May & June 18 Oct 2010 July & August 25 Oct 2010 September & October 1 Nov 2010 November & October 8 Nov 2010 Part 5: Behind the Scenes with Craig Brown Work in Progress Producer: Fiona McLean First broadcast BBC Radio 3: 21-25 May 2001 Desert Island Discs Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Leanne Buckle First broadcast BBC Radio 4: 12 Aug 2012 © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd."

Craig Brown (Author), Alistair Mcgowan, Barry Norman, Craig Brown, Dolly Wells, Ewan Bailey, Harry Enfield, Jan Ravens, John Humphrys, Juliet Stevenson, Lewis Mcleod, Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Rory Bremner, Various (Narrator)

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Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown

"‘Our greatest living satirist’ Sunday Times ‘The most screamingly funny living writer’ Mail on Sunday From the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four, a selection of Craig Brown's finest writing collected together for the first time. Haywire presents a survival guide to the 21st century. The acclaimed biographer of Princess Margaret and The Beatles considers such diverse topics as gloves, outer space, the Marx Brothers, Richard Dawkins, Hitler’s hair, John Stonehouse, Katie Price, tongue-twisters, Bruce Springsteen, Harry and Meghan, Stanley Spencer, Brian Epstein, Downton Abbey, Sigmund Freud and Karl Lagerfeld’s cat. With the full battery of the humourist's armoury – clerihews, tongue twisters, whimsy, parody, farce, satire, social observation, nonsense – Brown skewers the fads and delusions of the contemporary world."

Craig Brown (Author), Jan Ravens, Kieran Hodgson (Narrator)

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One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

"SHORTLISTED for the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020 A Spectator Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the Year From the award-winning author of Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four. John Updike compared them to ‘the sun coming out on an Easter morning’. Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs. The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. JRR Tolkien snubbed them. The Rolling Stones copied them. Loenard Bernstein admired them. Muhammad Ali called them ‘little sissies’. Successive Prime Ministers sucked up to them. No one has remained unaffected by the music of The Beatles. As Queen Elizabeth II observed on her golden wedding anniversary, ‘Think what we would have missed if we had never heard The Beatles.’ One Two Three Four traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up The Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George) and earth (Ringo). It also tells the bizarre and often unfortunate tales of the disparate and colourful people within their orbit, among them Fred Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Maharishi, Aunt Mimi, Helen Shapiro, the con artist Magic Alex, Phil Spector, their psychedelic dentist John Riley and their failed nemesis, Det Sgt Norman Pilcher. From the bestselling author of Ma’am Darling comes a kaleidoscopic mixture of history, etymology, diaries, autobiography, fan letters, essays, parallel lives, party lists, charts, interviews, announcements and stories. One Two Three Four joyfully echoes the frenetic hurly-burly of an era."

Craig Brown (Author), Kate Robbins, Mark Mcgann (Narrator)

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Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

"The funny and tragic, bestselling biography of The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, perfect for fans of Netflix’s The Crown. A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • A DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘I honked so loudly the man sitting next to me dropped his sandwich’ Observer 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 1950’s 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. ‘Brown has been our best parodist and satirist for decades now … Ma’am Darling is, as you would expect, very funny; also, full of quirky facts and genial footnotes. Brown has managed to ingest huge numbers of royal books and documents without losing either his judgment or his sanity. He adores the spectacle of human vanity’ Julian Barnes, Guardian"

Craig Brown (Author), Eleanor Bron (Narrator)

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