This year marks the golden jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. It has been a challenging reign, one where she has had to characterise the monarchy in a modern age. She has been forced to accustom herself to the prying eye of the media and to maintain a sense of dignity while family upheavals stormed around her. This she has done with steadiness, so that she has emerged from 50 years as queen with, largely, the respect of the nation.

Nanette Newman reads this balanced view of the Queen written especially for Naxos AudioBooks by the journalist and writer Pearson Phillips. He looks at her life from its beginnings (when she had little thought that she would become queen) through to her dutiful adoption of its responsibilities. Against the changing political situation, Phillips draws a sympathetic portrait, with her love of horses, her marriage to the strong-willed Prince Philip, and the, at times tumultuous, family life that followed.

Naxos AudioBooks has also recorded the graceful...