Mrs. Queen Takes the Train - Tapa blanda

A lively, witty debut novel following Queen Elizabeth as she strolls out of the palace for a little fun, and the team of courtiers who set out to find her before a national scandal breaks.

Day-to-day life for Queen Elizabeth has grown increasingly wearisome after decades of public service and years of family scandal. The Queen decides to take things into her own hands, walking out of the palace unannounced one rainy day while wearing a skull-emblazoned hoodie.

A little down in the dumps, The Queen sets her mind to visiting the scene of so many happy memories, Her Majesty's former royal yacht, Britannia, now moored in Leith, Scotland as an exhibition ship. All she has to do is get to Kings Cross and hop on a train from there.

An unlikely group of six--a lady-in-waiting, a butler, an equerry, a mistress of the Mews, a dresser, and a clerk from the cheese shop where Queen Elizabeth's horse's favorite cheddar is sold--are the only ones who know of the Queen's disappearance, and they vow to find her and bring her back to the palace before MI6 turn her desertion into a major national scandal.

Much like Alan Bennett's hit The Uncommon Reader, MRS QUEEN TAKES THE TRAIN captures the faded but enduring glamour and glory of a seemingly arcane institution, and of a woman who herself wonders if she, too, has become outmoded. As the plot unfolds, so do the upstairs/downstairs dynamics of the Household at Buckingham Palace, as well as the tensions between the monarchy and the government. The novel also captures the often hilarious incongruity between competing generations, each of which thinks it knows best. It is at once humorous and poignant, fast-paced and thoughtful. It's a truly entertaining read -- one that makes light of the rigidity and pomp and circumstance of the British monarchy, but that also breathes humanity into it, and into its central figure, Queen Elizabeth.

William Kuhn is a biographer, historian, and the author, most recently, of Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books, an account of the editorial life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. He has written three previous books: Democratic Royalism (1996), Henry and Mary Ponsonby: Life at the Court of Queen Victoria (2002), and The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (2006). Most recently Kuhn has been professor of history at Carthage College. He has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago; and completed his doctorate in history at Johns Hopkins.