

Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues, and essays, Craig Brown's Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.Listen to the full interview with Craig Brown

Such an enigmatic and divisive figure demands a reckoning that is far from the usual fare. The tale of Princess Margaret is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman. By the time of her death in 2002, she had come to personify disappointment. In her 1950s heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding.

Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures.

For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy. Peter Sellers was madly in love with her. She iced out Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. " -Karen Heller, The Washington PostĪ witty and profound portrait of the most talked-about English royal She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando tongue-tied. His book is big fun, equal measures insightful and hysterical. "Brown has done something astonishing: He makes the reader care, even sympathize, with perhaps the last subject worthy of such affection. to those who gawked at her, who huddled around her, pens poised over their diaries, hoping for the show she never denied them. The wisdom of the book, and the artistry, is in how Brown subtly expands his lens from Margaret's misbehavior. " -Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal " I ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice. who swooned to Netflix's The Crown, this book will be manna from heaven." -Hamish Bowles, Vogue " Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret is a brilliant, eccentric treat. "Rollicking, irresistible, un-put-downable.
