We’ve Moved!

Please visit our new home on the web at:

http://www.royalroundup.com/

Thanks for reading!

Ella

Review: Gyles Brandreth’s “Philip and Elizabeth”

Gyles Brandreth's "Philip and Elizabeth"

Review: Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage by Gyles Brandreth

(Buy it at Amazon.com)

One of my primary scholarly interests as a graduate student is the genre of biography. As much as I love reading and dissecting them, I’ve often found that when I’ve attempted to write biographical sketches, there’s a fine line between sounding too dry and academic and sounding too much like a sensational tabloid or a chatty friend.

Gyles Brandreth manages to balance these two extremes quite brilliantly. His Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage is the kind of biography that I love to read and that I’d someday like to write. He has a warm and approachable tone that still maintains an air of authority. He handles his subject matter sensitively and appropriately, but he doesn’t shy away from talking about subjects that are sometimes difficult and potentially scandalous.

In short, I have to admit that Philip and Elizabeth is perhaps the best royal biography I’ve read yet – and I’ve read quite a few of them.

Companion Book: Robert Hardman’s “A Year with the Queen”

"A Year with the Queen"

Robert Hardman’s A Year with the Queen

(Buy it at Amazon.com)

I don’t like to blog about books that I’ve yet to have the chance to get through, but I thought that since the film to which this book is a companion, Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work, is now airing in America, I’d drop in a link.

A Year with the Queen is marketed as a companion book; it’s reportedly part-guide and part-coffee table book, featuring lots of photographs and helpful information for new royal watchers who want more information on the various members of the Windsor family.

Monarchy is currently airing on PBS stations in most American markets; the first four episodes have already been broadcast, and next week the last two segments are scheduled to air. I highly recommend the film; it’s been fascinating so far, especially the inside look at Buckingham Palace investitures in hour three.

Buy A Year with the Queen by Robert Hardman at Amazon.com!

Upcoming Releases: Claudia Joseph’s “Kate: Princess in Waiting”

Claudia Joseph's "Kate: Princess in Waiting"

Amazon has details on an upcoming new book about Prince William’s girlfriend, Kate Middleton. The tome, written by Claudia Joseph, is scheduled for release by Mainstream Publishing on April 2, 2009.

It’s the second book written about Kate – the first was Robert Jobson’s William’s Princess, published in 2006. The synopsis on Amazon suggests that the book features “exclusive interviews” and “previously unpublished photographs,” and also notes that members of Kate’s family have apparently spoken to the author.

Joseph is a British journalist who has written for Tatler, The Times, and The Mail on Sunday. The Mail features a piece (“The making of the Middletons: How Kate’s family rose from a condemned flat to the verge of royalty“) written by Joseph almost a year ago which seems to be the basis for the upcoming book. The article features interviews with some distant family members, including Kate’s great-aunt and and her daughter. It’s more a history of the family than one of Kate herself, and it seems that’s possibly true of the book as well. Amazon notes that the book is “the extraordinary tale of an impoverished working-class family that overcame deprivation and adversity to rise to the upper echelons of society.”

If it is simply a family history rather than a book with new information on Kate, I probably won’t be reviewing it here, as it won’t be a book about anyone closely connected to the royal family. Others who may be interested can find more information about the book here: Kate: Princess in Waiting.

Review: Jerramy Fine’s “Someday My Prince Will Come”

Jerramy Fine's "Someday My Prince Will Come"

Review: Someday My Prince Will Come by Jerramy Fine

(Buy it at Amazon.com)

Anyone reading a royal blog obviously has an interest in the lives of the British royal family. Some readers may be fascinated by the legal and constitutional roles of the royals in the British realm; others may be more intrigued by the personal lives and loves of kings, queens, princes, princesses, and other nobles. Some may even entertain fantasies of meeting a prince or a princess, falling in love, and becoming a member of the royal family with all its gems, castles, pomp, and tradition.

But how many royal watchers actually try to make that dream a reality? One, an American woman named Jerramy Fine, not only attempted to snag her prince but also penned a book about her adventures: Someday My Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wannabe Princess.

Here’s the gist of the story: Fine, a small-town American girl, with hippie parents, dreams of marrying a prince and living an upper-class lifestyle in England. At a young age, she discovers that Queen Elizabeth’s eldest grandchild, Peter Phillips, is just about her age, and she sets her sights on marrying her “prince” — quotation marks because, of course, as the son of the Princess Royal, Peter Phillips does not have a title. Improbably, she makes it to Britain, and after some major pitfalls, she actually does encounter her royal crush.

We all know the end of the story, of course — Peter Phillips married Canadian Autumn Kelly this May in a family ceremony at Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel. Peter and his new bride earned the ire of the press when they chose to sell exclusive photos of their wedding to Hello! magazine for a tidy sum of money, something no member of the royal family had previously done. The newly married pair has recently moved to Hong Kong, where Peter has taken a job with a bank.

But Fine’s adventures through the world of British royalty are amusing even though many will know the ending before even cracking the spine of the memoir, and there are plenty of reasons to go along with her on her journey from the American west to the streets of London even if we know that her dreams to become a princess did not come true.

Review: Sarah Bradford’s “Diana”

Sarah Bradford's "Diana"

Review: Diana by Sarah Bradford

(Buy it at Amazon.com)

I decided this summer that it was time to bite the bullet and finally delve into a corner of the royal library that I had so far purposely avoided: the Diana section. So much has been made about the sensational and often suspect books written about the late Princess of Wales that I felt somehow better off not having waded into the mess, choosing instead to stay on the safer borders of books specifically about the monarchy and its long and storied history. The idea of reading the Andrew Morton books, with their controversial connection to the princess, left a bad taste in my royal-watching mouth. Paul Burrell’s tell-all, which so angered Diana’s sons when it was published in 2003, was also quickly filed in the “don’t touch that” section for me.

But when I read a few positive reviews about Sarah Bradford’s biography of the princess, simply titled Diana, I began to rethink my boycott of all books about her. I found a bargain-bin copy of the initial hardcover issue in my local bookstore and decided to give it a go.

I was surprised at how careful and yet still readable the biography was. It’s not the kind of sensational book that the press likes to grab hold of to cull more tabloid fodder from. Instead, it’s an intriguing book because it treats an intriguing subject — a woman mercurial and yet shockingly childlike, someone who was internationally beloved and yet caused major problems for a millenial institution like the British monarchy.

The Diana in Bradford’s book is at times immature and stoic, both glamorous and mousy. She loves her family and her friends, but she is easily angered. She publicly denounces the press for their intrusive treatment of her but keeps the numbers of the likes of Richard Kay and Martin Bashir on virtual speed-dial. This woman is not the saint who was so publicly venerated in the days following her death, but she is also not the disturbed devil portrayed by some colleagues of her former husband. She is, at the core, strikingly human.