EASY HEAD, UNEASY CROWN

By Martha Duffy

With its evenhanded blend of public spectacle and intimate detail, Sarah Bradford's new biography, Elizabeth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 564 pages; $30), is rumored to have nettled the Queen when published in Britain recently, but it is really the book she deserves. It's all here, the public occasions and ceremonies, the baffling indirections of court diplomacy, the knots and ravels of an intense family life. Elizabeth II, 70 this month, has reigned 44 long years, years spent largely in public. Her lifetime assignment is to be the embodiment of the monarchy, and at that she is impeccable--serene, stately, swift at reading people and situations. In short, a national symbol to be proud of.

Why, then, ask the press and her subjects, does such an exemplary person have such troubled children, who have already sullied the crown and could even bring it down? Some well-reasoned arguments are suggested here. Elizabeth married the handsome, hot-tempered Prince Philip for love at 20. It wasn't easy for him to walk two steps behind his wife, and Elizabeth hit on a tacit compromise: she would run the monarchy, he would run the family. Elizabeth, pursuing endless duty, was often absent for months at a time, and her children were brought up by nannies with strong wills and limited imaginations. Philip, worried about the sensitive Charles, sent him off for toughening to his own spartan alma mater, Gordonstoun. Bradford's pages on Charles' beatings and bullyings are hard to read. Both neglected and spoiled, none of the children could quite absorb their mother's sense of purpose into their own lives.

THAT, OF COURSE, IS AN OVERsimplification. The book offers myriad fascinating examples of the fragility of the royal world. Bradford previously wrote a biography of George VI, and the strongest chapters of this book deal with Elizabeth's first 30 years, where Bradford's sources are strongest. The pages teem with hardy secondary players--the spoiled, resentful Duke of Windsor; the Queen Mother, tough as tacks but effervescently charming; the ambitious, meddling Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Princess Margaret's saga runs throughout the narrative, showing that today's young royals did not invent bad behavior. Margaret was prettier and wittier than her sister, but Elizabeth got the throne. Shortly thereafter, Margaret told her sister and sovereign that she loved the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend and wanted to marry him. Scarred by memories of the abdication and cautious in her role as head of the Church of England, Elizabeth turned her down; Margaret never really recovered, and the episode may have left the Queen permanently incapable of disciplining her family. Margaret's subsequent marriage to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones exploded in mutual infidelities after a few years. Elizabeth could be formidably cool. Once, Margaret threatened to jump out her window if a friend who was hosting a house party did not leave his guests to comfort her at home. Panicked, the host called the Queen. "Carry on with your party," she said. "Her room is on the ground floor."

Elizabeth has flaws. Bradford states that Philip has had affairs; a princess, a duchess and two countesses are mentioned, but without a shred of documentation as to identity, time or place. She also shortchanges the Queen's passion for horses--an odd lapse since Elizabeth's brightest smiles show up in pictures taken at the races and she is a fine horse breeder. Bradford devotes perhaps too much space to the roiling pack of female corgi dogs nipping at the royal ankles.

In these years the Queen should be reaping the rewards of a half-century of dedication, but the continuity of her line--really her first duty--is still not secure. To read this book is to understand a great deal of the human dilemma.

--By Martha Duffy