Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret (Brown) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—May 23, 1957
• Where—England, UK
• Education—B.A., Bristol University
• Awards—James Tait Black Memorial Prize
• Currently—lives in London, England


Craig Edward Moncrieff Brown is an author, biographer, an English critic and satirist. He is the only person ever to have won three different Press Awards―for best humorist, columnist, and critic―in the same year.

Brown was educated at Eton and Bristol University and then became a freelance journalist in London, contributing to the Tatler, Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, Evening Standard (as a regular columnist), Times (UK: notably as parliamentary sketchwriter; these columns were compiled into a book called A Life Inside) and the Sunday Times (as TV and restaurant critic).

He later continued his restaurant column in the Sunday Telegraph and has contributed a weekly book review to the Mail on Sunday. He created the characters of "Bel Littlejohn," an ultra-trendy New Labour type, in the Guardian, and "Wallace Arnold," an extremely reactionary conservative, in the Independent on Sunday.

Brown has been writing his parodic diary in Private Eye since 1989. In 2001, he took over Auberon Waugh's "Way of the World" in the Daily Telegraph following Waugh's death but lost that column in December 2008. He also has a column in the Daily Mail.

Brown also writes comedy shows such as Norman Ormal for TV (in which he appeared as a returning officer). His radio show This Is Craig Brown was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004; it featured comics Rory Bremner and Harry Enfield and other media personalities. He has appeared on television as a critic on BBC Two's Late Review as well as in documentaries such a Russell Davies's life of Ronald Searle.

His book 1966 and All That takes its title, and some other elements, from 1066 and All That, extending its history of Britain through to the beginning of the 21st century. A BBC Radio 4 adaptation followed in September 2006, in similar vein to This Is Craig Brown. The Tony Years is a comic overview of the years of Tony Blair's government, published in paperback by Ebury Press in June 2007.

Brown's predominantly factual biography of Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, was published in 2017 (2018 in the U.S.) and won the 2018 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the biography category.

Personal life
Brown's wife is the author Frances Welch. They have two children. Frances Welch's niece is Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/26/2018.)