Plate throwing and cold feet — a peek inside the palace
THE CROWN IN CRISIS by Alexander Larman (W&N £20, 352pp)
‘EDWARD VIII believed that the whole world, wherever he was, revolved around him,’ writes Alexander Larman in this compelling countdown to the Abdication in 1936. His stubbornness is indeed something to behold.
Bewildered Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin received a letter from a sexual psychologist explaining that the king had ‘overcompensated’ for sexual inadequacy as a younger man, hence his being ‘persistently obstinate in attaching himself’ to Wallis Simpson.
A cast of fascinating minor characters walk across the set of this fast-paced story, including an Irish fantasist, George McMahon, who (Larman believes) was encouraged by MI5 to have a pop at Edward during a procession in July 1936, but the gun was knocked out of his hand by a woman in the crowd who noticed his twitchy behaviour.
PRINCE PHILIP REVEALED by Ingrid Seward (S&S £20, 384pp)
STAYING with his friend, the beautiful Daphne du Maurier, in Cornwall just before his wedding, Prince Philip had a severe attack of cold feet. ‘I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here with you.’ To which Du Maurier replied, ‘Not on your life. For a start I am 14 years older than you. Second, I am married, and third, your country needs you. Get on that train.’
In this wide-ranging biography, Ingrid Seward celebrates Philip’s ensuing 73-year role as (in the Queen’s words) ‘my strength and my stay’, without shying away from some of his less family-minded attributes, such as that he failed to attend six out of the first eight of Prince Charles’s birthdays.
BATTLE OF BROTHERS by Robert Lacey (William Collins £20, 400pp)
IT WAS more complicated than ‘heir and spare’. As Princes William and Harry grew up, their roles evolved i nto ‘golden boy’ and ‘clown’. ‘It was the predetermined future — the very destiny — of the youngest brother to carry the can for his exemplary eldest sibling,’ writes Robert Lacey in this chatty and clear-eyed chronicle of how the brothers, once so close and affectionately teasing of each other,
came to be ‘ separate entities’. When William questioned Harry about his plans to marry Meghan Markle, Harry took deep offence.
As Lacey writes, William was ‘speaking less as a brother than as the chief personnel officer concerned to evaluate the newcomer and the qualities she could bring to The Firm’. Perhaps not such a good idea.
KENSINGTON PALACE by Tom Quinn (Biteback £20, 320pp)
READING Tom Quinn’s sparkling history of Kensington Palace, you see what a member of staff meant when she said, ‘It’s as if the very walls have a baleful influence on the inhabitants . . . everyone who l i ves at the palace eventually becomes jealous and suspicious — sometimes even paranoid.’ Those walls have heard everything, from George II’s wife Queen Caroline screaming at her detested firstborn son, to Queen Victoria evicting the loathed Sir John Conroy, to Diana and Charles throwing pictures, plates and vases during their marital rows.
‘ The aunt- heap’, Edward VII called KP; in other words, the place where eccentric minor relatives were put away for life. This book will introduce you to a host of them, including Victoria’s Uncle Augustus, who had 5,000 Bibles.
THE WINDSOR DIARIES by Alathea Fitzalan Howard (Hodder £25, 368pp)
LODGING with her grandfather in a house in Windsor Great Park during World War II, 16-year-old Alathea Fitzalan Howard felt unloved and misunderstood: so misunderstood that she sometimes self-harmed, cutting her arms. But there was magic in her life. She attended weekly drawing and dancing lessons with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret at Windsor Castle and they became close friends.
For a glimpse into the lives of the young princesses, who were still having ‘nursery tea’ in their teens, as well as playing games of charades and ‘making the dogs jump the tennis net’, these diaries are riveting.
FINDING FREEDOM by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand (HQ £20, 368pp)
‘HARRY and Meghan didn’t want to walk away from the monarchy; they wanted to find a happy place within it.’ Thus write the authors of this gushingly Meghan- centric book, who gawp (irresistibly) at her shopping sprees, her high-end travel preferences, her Instagram and her healthy eating habits.
The fairytale marriage started so promisingly, with the Queen taking her on a one-day tour to Chester, where she excelled herself.
But the couple took offence at a thousand perceived slights, and the cracks widened until there was no happy place for them inside the monarchy — the Queen being pragmatically brusque in quashing their hopes of being ‘half-in, half-out’.
‘There are so many occasions,’ Scobie and Durand write, ‘when the institution of his [Harry’s] family could have stood up for them, backed them up, and never did.’