BATTLE OF BROTHERS
WILLIAM, HARRY AND THE INSIDE STORY OF A FAMILY IN TUMULT
ROBERT LACEY
Wm Collins, 386pp, £20
It is difficult not to be familiar with the troubled childhoods of the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex. They grew up with warring parents, instability and emotional manipulation, much of it played out in front of the media’s hungry gaze. Individually they constitute the heir and the spare. Together, as brothers, they had to navigate their family’s many public traumas. British historian, biographer and consultant for The
Crown, Robert Lacey delves into the relationship between Prince Charles’s two sons. Erin Vanderhoof, writing in
Vanity Fair, was most interested by Lacey’s examination of how the press shaped the lives of the boys as everything unfolded. ‘Treating the press as a significant force – and some of the leading royal correspondents as characters – means that Lacey brings a new eye to some of the biggest tabloid controversies and mysteries of the last quarter century.’ Rosamund Urwin in the Sunday Times was intrigued by something else; ‘the public perception of William and Harry isn’t fair.’ The two boys have been wrongly mis-cast; the heir is always covered in glory, while the spare takes the rap. She was sometimes critical of Lacey’s style; ‘royal biographers are prone to some bad habits: heavy reliance on newspaper accounts, few named sources and too much flowery prose’, and here, ‘the writing is breathy — “whisper it!” he commands the reader at one point — and he’s too indulgent on the adjectives: reporters are “tireless”; nannies “beloved”. Melanie Reid in the Times, found Lacey’s tone often ‘pompous’. She concluded, painfully, that the truth is ‘the princes’ story is a sad one. But royal flimflam lends gaiety to our lives.’
The heir is always covered in glory, while the spare takes the rap