Young Elizabeth

This book has the depth and beauty of an elegy. - Country Life

A fascinating but too little noticed book which tells a great deal about [the Queen’s] formation. It draws on a single royal trip [the 1947 royal tour of southern Africa] … The Last Hurrah, by Graham Viney, vividly tells the full tale. - Daily Telegraph

For me, this was the literary surprise of the decade, to be so moved and enlightened by a book about British royals and their 1947 tour of South Africa. In Viney’s hands, this … turns into an unforgettable excursion into a world peopled by gracious blue bloods, lovely princesses, bowing colonials and great throngs of Boers and Africans, inexplicably cheering the rulers of a kingdom that had subjugated their ancestors. Bathed in the fading glow of empire and buffeted by the coming storm of political struggle, Viney’s South Africa is a country most of us will barely recognise, teetering on the brink of tumultuous change and yet almost united, at least for a moment, by love for a king and queen who weren’t really ours. This is a very fine book. It deserves readers.

Brilliantly conveys the glamour and gruelling nature of a tour that temporarily united a divided nation, but ultimately failed to embed South Africa within ‘a Commonwealth of free peoples and many races’. Casting a discerning eye on his royal protagonists and the people they encountered, Viney penetrates beyond the frippery and froth to provide fascinating sidelights on the history of twentieth-century South Africa.

Meticulously researched, and inspiringly evoked, Graham Viney relates the story of the 1947 Royal Tour of South Africa, and in so doing captures a defining moment in the history of the South African nation.

A superb achievement, graceful, readable, bringing to light the bonds of empire and its end.