My recent piece for the I newspaper
I’ve
read hundreds of books about the royals – these are the 11 best
has been tremendously productive for the blog. It led me to find out more about Barbara Cartland, producing two more posts and huge interest from my lovely readers.
It was generally a most enjoyable project, though as I was
keeping up with the latest royal news, the King and Diana’s brother having the
same name, Charles obv, was occasionally confusing in the reading. Bad
planning.
The list was ‘best’ books about the Royals, fair enough, so
I was able to miss out some terrible ones: including those where I
enjoyed reading the harsh reviews - ‘flimsy and sycophantic’ as it might be, or
‘grimly fawning’ - more than the books.
But I will look here at one that didn’t make the cut, Revenge
by Tom Bower: This is what I would have said about it:
Tom Bower’s Revenge, 2022, a relentless attack on
Harry and Meghan, should be used in media studies classes. Not because it’s
good – it’s terrible – but because it shows how spin works. Students could be
set to use his (well-researched and referenced) facts to show a different view,
rather than Bower’s determination to throw everything bad at the couple.
Nothing is beneath him: in a report on the famous Oprah interview he reports
that viewers asserted that they could not see any ‘genuine sadness in [Meghan’s] eyes’. Really?
Meghan is described as an angry adventuress, and the book
is relentless in its refusal ever to give the Sussexes the benefit of the
doubt. Is the book Bower’s Revenge on the couple, did they do something to him 😊 ?
The book that haunts me is Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare,
because it is revealing and sad and, yes, sometimes ridiculous. He was probably foolish to write it but you
feel surprisingly sorry for him, he is doing his best to be honest, and it is
hugely readable. And full of moments when you wonder what his family made of that.
Reading it now, you think, in Taylor Swift’s words, that in relation to the
rest of his family ‘they are never ever getting back together’.
One that I Iiked very much more than I was expecting to was
Courtiers by Valentine Low – I said in the piece:
Low looks at the grey-suited men who assist the royals –
but there is nothing grey about the book, which is sparkling, funny and
revelatory.
It was fascinating and convincing, a really interesting
look at the way the system works. But I had one argument with it: he is by no
means supportive of how things have worked, and still do, but he does not
question that system enough, he does not step back enough and say ‘this is
nonsensical’.
My question to him and the rest of them would be this: we
are forever told that these men (and they mostly are) are the brightest and
best, the best-educated and the best connected.
So why are they so bad at their job, so unsuccessful? The
book is a long history of mis-steps and failures at key points, even if they
are very good at getting a Royal to a civic event on time. They seem to have no
ability to look ahead, to try to predict where the big problems will come, to
try to offer help where it is needed.
Low quotes a member of staff saying this:
The people who work with [the
royals] need to be comfortable with them. So whether we like it or not, there’s
a kind of class thing. You need to be comfortable and able to operate in that
world. If you’re in the senior household, you’ve got to be able to sit next to
the Queen at dinner and know how to operate the place setting. And know how to
have a conversation with her. So I think there’s an immediate thing around her
which makes it quite difficult to diversify. It is a problem, because it means
you have no one in the organisation that really understands the world outside
the world they inhabit.
That’s how they operate. I’m not buying it. It does NOT
have to be like that. Apart from anything else, senior Royals should be able to
talk to anyone, shouldn’t they? Wondrous as they are? And, for example, I
happen to know (private information) that the late Queen could talk to anyone about horses and
similar and was very chatty with some of the staff. Who were not being invited
to dinner. Give me strength.
A lot of lip service is paid to diversity and inclusion, a
lot of boasting that there is a black secretary here, a woman doing a top job
there. But in the end they all want that safe pair of hands, which means, does it, always, someone like them?
There’s a lot about how charming and delightful these
people are, how much they respect their employers. In one case Low says the key
aspect of one of the queen’s private secretaries is: ‘ basically he was in love
with the Queen. Always was, never stopped’.
Being nice or meaning well is not enough, as it wouldn’t be
for your doctor.
There've been mutterings on the blog about public schoolboys lately - from me and from the comments. Not because individuals have anything wrong with them, but because of their over-representation in public life, their entitlement, and the lack of judgement by their peers.
The Low book, Courtiers, has 15 mentions of Eton and Etonians...
A happy Queen Elizabeth, Sydney, 1954. | Queen Elizabeth II … | Flickr
Queen Elizabeth II at Invercargill, New Zealand, 1954 | Flickr
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