The Queen and I (novel) Navy submarine under the Arctic ice cap. Their neighbours, who are at first sceptical, eventually include the ex-royal family in their society and help them as much as their own circumstances allow. Although the Queen Mum is the oldest, she learns very fast how to cope with the new situation, but even in the poor circumstances of Hellebore Close she cannot stop herself from betting on horses. Her death shakes the whole neighbourhood and everyone takes part in her cheap, but solemn funeral. A disgruntled fishmonger and his wife start a campaign to "Bring Our Monarch Back", under its acronym
Sue Townsend closed in 1997. These first two books were adapted into a television series, broadcast in 1985 and 1987. "The Queen and I" (1992) is a novel imagining that the Royal family have been rehoused in a council estate after a Republican revolution, although it turns out to have been merely the monarch's nightmare. Townsend had become a republican while a child. In an interview for "The Independent" published in September 1992 she related that after finding the idea of God a ridiculous idea, an argument in favour of the British monarchy also collapsed. "I was frightened that people believed in