Sally Bedell Smith, a well-known American biographer of celebrities, includes many more anecdotes in her mammoth 663-page Elizabeth the Queen. The biography is readable but fawning and full of notebook-emptying detail about dry subjects like all the queen鈥檚 horses.
Smith too often turns to comments by the queen and others that don鈥檛 say much, apparently because there aren鈥檛 many that actually reveal anything. (The queen, after all, has never given an interview to a journalist.)