After Dinner Speakers: Ben Pimlott, Sonia O'Sullivan,

Ben Pimlott is a Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at Birkbeck and Goldsmiths College and is famous for his biography of Queen Elizabeth II. A superbly judicious book in that it understands this connection between monarchy and masses, and carefully evokes its political importance. The book is mercifully free from crude republicanism, but it also has a wry awareness of the paradox of a populist monarchy being at the centre of a constitutional democracy. Ben Pimlott speaks in a similar vein and is compulsive listening, a wonderful choice for any event.