The palace aides and the prime minister, who have no time for novels, are alarmed by the queen's unpredictable literary adventures. The president, not briefed on the subject of Genet, is dumbfounded. "Homosexual and jailbird, was he nevertheless as bad as he was painted?" she asks. In the palace, the queen finds an unlikely but helpful literary guide, a well-read kitchen worker who's gay and favors gay writers.Īt a state dinner, the queen, unscripted, asks the president of France about the writer Jean Genet.
She read of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people." But before long, the queen would rather be reading Nancy Mitford than dutifully attending endless ceremonies.īennett, whose plays and screenplays include The History Boys and The Madness of King George, has a deft touch for dialogue and intrigue. To be polite, she borrows an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel, although "she'd never taken much interest in reading. The reader in Alan Bennett's hilarious and pointed novella, The Uncommon Reader, is a modern-day queen of England who happens upon a mobile library outside Buckingham Palace.
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