Craig Brown Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Charlie Mortdecai Books

Craig Brown
Craig Brown is a prolific author and journalist. He’s been writing Private Eyes, his parodic diary since 1989. He is the only person that has ever won three different Press Awards (for best critic, humorist, and columnist) in the same year.

“Ma’am Darling: Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret” won the 2018 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the biography category.

Craig has been a columnist for The Mail on Sunday, The Times (London), The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and The Spectator, as well as others.

He was educated at the University of Bristol and Eton before becoming a freelance journalist in London, contributing to Harper’s & Queen (collaborating with Lesley Cunliffe on articles, some of which resulted in books), Tatler, The Times Literary Supplement, the Evening Standard.

He would later continue the restaurant column he began writing in The Sunday Times in The Sunday Telegraph and has contributed a weekly book review to The Mail on Sunday.

Brown’s wife is Frances Welch (an author), who is the daughter of Colin Welch (the journalist). They have two kids, and Welch’s niece is Florence Welch, singer of Florence and the Machine.

“The Tony Years” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2006. A whole lot has happened since that fateful and bright day in May of 1997 when New Labour swept to power. Things Could Just Get Better. That’s what we were told, anyway. Instead, things took a turn for the worse.

In order to console Tony Blair while he embarks on his long and grinning journey into oblivion, Craig has packed a special time capsule of Britain during these Tony Years. From Cool Britannia to ASBOs and from Camilla and Charles to Becks and Posh, the nation’s funniest satirist makes sense (and nonsense) of all of it.

“Ma’am Darling: Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2018. A profound and witty portrait of the most talked about English royal and the sister of Queen Elizabeth II.

She left Marlon Brando tongue tied and made John Lennon blush. Gore Vidal revered her, while Frances Bacon heckled her. She humiliated Elizabeth Taylor and iced out Princess Diana. She was the object of sexual fantasy for Pablo Picasso and Peter Sellers was madly in love with her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine and Andy Warhol photographed her.

Princess Margaret aroused indignation and passion in equal measure. To her foes, she was demanding and rude, but to her friends, she was regal and witty. During her 1950s heyday, she was viewed to be one of the most desirable and glamorous women in the entire world. By the time she died in the year 2002, she had come to personify disappointment. One of her friends said that he had never known a more unhappy woman. The story of Princess Margaret is Cinderella in reverse: hopes dashed, happiness mislaid, and a life mishandled.

Such a diverse and enigmatic figure demands a reckoning which is far from typical fare. Combining lists, parodies, parallel lives, catalogs, interviews, dreams, announcements, and essays, Craig’s biography is this kaleidoscopic experiment in biography and is a witty meditation on deference and snobbery, art and fame, high society and Bohemia.

Anne Tennant, Baroness of Glenconner, described the book as being horrible, and wouldn’t even mention Craig Brown’s name. She didn’t know why anyone would want to rot such a woman in this way.

“One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2020. The Duchess of Windsor adored them, while Noel Coward despised them and JRR Tolkien snubbed them. John Updike compared them to ‘the sun coming out on an Easter morning’. Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs. The Rolling Stones copied them. Leonard Bernstein admired them, while Muhammad Ali called them ‘little sissies’. Successive Prime Ministers sucked up to them. Nobody has remained unaffected by The Beatles’s music. While Queen Elizabeth II observed on her golden wedding anniversary, ‘Think about what we would’ve missed if we’d never heard The Beatles’.

This book traces the chance fusion of the four key elements which made The Beatles up: Air (George), Fire (John), water (Paul), and earth (Ringo). It also tells the often unfortunate and bizarre stories about the disparate and colorful people inside of their orbit. Among them include Yoko Ono, Magic Alex (the con artist), Fred Lennon, Aunt Mimi, Helen Shapiro, Det Sgt Norman Pilcher (their failed nemesis), Phil Spector, and John Riley (their psychedelic dentist).

“One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time” won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction in 2020. With Martha Kearney (a journalist serving as a judge that year) saying it was a profound book of failure and success which won the unanimous support of their judges. Craig reinvented the art of biography. And the idea that there is a fresh book about The Beatles is tough to imagine, since so much has already been written about them, yet it is still such an original and unique book.

“Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2022. Featuring handy household tips from Mary Berry and some historic admissions from Queen Elizabeth I to Oprah about her mom’s beheading, this book presents the reader with a survival guide to the 21st century.

Brown, in this one chapter, writes about the influence of Blackpool on Les Dawson and Sigmund Freud. And in another, he unearths the Historical Online Archive and learns that the invention of the wheel in Mesopotamia in 4000 BC drew some fierce criticism on social media.

The acclaimed biographer of The Beatles and Princess Margaret delivers some essays on such diverse figures like Katie Price, Ronald Searle, Harry and Meghan, Simon Dee, John Stonehouse, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Dawkins, Brian Epstein, Katie Price, Stanley Spencer, the Marx Brothers, Ronald Reagan, and Kenneth Williams.

With the full battery of this humorist’s armory: nonsense, farce, clerihews, social observation, whimsy, satire, tongue twisters, social observation, and parody, Brown skewers all the passing fads and delusions of our contemporary world.