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Nor did she always receive a warmer welcome within her own family. The queen never ceased to be fond of her and, later, sorry for her, but she was busy being queen. In the Townsend crisis, the queen mother offered her little or no help. The queen’s secretary Martin Charteris thought that ‘she was not a mother to her child. When the princess attempted to broach the subject, her mother grew upset, and refused to discuss it.’ The queen mother’s dislike of unpleasantness was legendary. She refused to visit her most loyal courtiers when they were dying. One old lady in waiting is said to have actually died at Clarence House, just before one of the queen mother’s famous lunches under the cedar tree in the garden. Her body was shunted into a side room and HM was not informed until the lunch was over, so as not to spoil the fun. When they were both invalids, Princess Margaret was more than once spotted pinching her mother’s wheelchair. Each chapter provides an illuminating vignette which progressively adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It's a social history as much as a musical one. This kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four is even better than Ma'am Darling, which is saying something. Their story and influence is perfect for this type of exploration. A joy from start to finish. A playful, impish approach…Brown gives us lots of wonderful incidental detail…The deftly amused writing constantly tugs the corners of your mouth upwards” - Evening Standard
Ma’am Darling: The hilarious, bestselling royal biography
Did I enjoy the topic? 5. Jen made me into an amateur Beatle cognoscenti. This book has so many fabulous insights, details and opinions. Who wants these days to sound posher than the family they were born into? One man at least: Jacob Rees-Mogg He goes on to show how Britain’s Industrial Revolution was founded on India’s deindustrialisation and the destruction of its textile industry. In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain’s stained Indian legacy. Princess Margaret with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor at the Royal Film Performance of The Taming Of The Shrew at the Odeon Theatre, Leicester Square, 1967. Photograph: Douglas Miller/Getty ImagesDame Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her Wolf Hall saga, focusing on the downfall and execution of Henry VIII’s leading courtier, Thomas Cromwell, is surely the most highly anticipated book of 2020. It has been heralded by a popular BBC adaptation of the earlier books ( Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies), an RSC play, and endless column inches discussing anything from Tudor fashion to Mantel’s views on the Harry and Meghan saga. (Racism “is more deeply embedded in people’s consciousness than any of us are willing to admit,” she says. “I hesitate to call her a victim but ... there has been an element of racism in the invective against her.”) Some of you may remember an American sci-fi show from the '80s, called Quantum Leap. In it, a physicist gets caught in his own quantum time machine, willy-nilly jumping from one historical moment to the next, taking over a person's body for a short while. Reading this book will have you, dear reader, quantum leaping through Beatles history.
Earl of Snowdon to publish new biography on mother Princess
With unique access and written with the participation of those closest to the couple,Finding Freedomis an honest, up-close, and disarming portrait of a confident, influential, and forward-thinking couple who are unafraid to break with tradition, determined to create a new path away from the spotlight, and dedicated to building a humanitarian legacy that will make a profound difference in the world. Racist, misogynist, reactionary, one-dimensional trash. In Brown's view, foreigners - Japanese (obviously), Indian, Greek - independently worked to destroy the world's greatest pop band.One of Britain’s most distinguished biographers turns her focus on one of the most vilified woman of the last century. Historian Anne Sebba has written the first full biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, by a woman which attempts to understand this fascinating and enigmatic American divorcee who nearly became Queen of England. ‘That woman’, as she was referred to by the Queen Mother, became a hate figure for allegedly ensnaring a British king. She nevertheless became one of the most talked about women of her generation, and inspired such deep love and adoration in Edward VIII that even giving up a throne and an empire for her was not enough to prove his total devotion. Ma’am Darling is fascinating. Brown has done something amazing with Ma’am Darling: in my wilder moments, I wonder if he hasn’t reinvented the biographical form” - Observer From the award-winning author of Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.
Tim Adams’s best biographies of 2017 | Biography books | The
Brown is also as concerned with the innumerable people who missed out on fame than the few that achieved it; one of the most moving snapshots is a deep dive into the life of Jimmie Nichol, who is elsewhere a tiny footnote in the story of the band. He replaced Ringo as their drummer for only a week or two but the repercussions of that time would alter his entire life. It is one of the many many instances that manages to find incredible untrodden ground in one of the most chronicled artefacts of modern history. As Brown notes, Margaret wore her rudeness as Tommy Cooper did his fez: it was her trademark – the bitchier of her showbusiness friends actively longed for her to parade it at their parties so that they could roll their eyes afterwards. (“I hear you’ve completely ruined my mother’s old home,” she once said to an architect who’d been working on Glamis Castle. Of the same man, disabled since childhood, she also asked: “Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and seen the way you walk?”) But if she is ghastly, her court is worse. The groupies, the servants, the lovers. What a bunch of creeps. Jenny Colgan - Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery, Doctor Who, Welcome to Rosie Hopkins Sweet Shop of Dreams Based on new archives and material recently made available, this scrupulously researched biography re-evaluates the role of politicians in the 1930s, sheds new light on the character and motivations of this powerful, charismatic and complex woman.I think the thing that bothered me the most was that there was a much larger focus on John than any of the others and I didn't quite understand why that was the case.
Flattening in England, resurgent in Scotland: accents still Flattening in England, resurgent in Scotland: accents still
As Craig Brown points out there have already been many excellent books about the Beatles - so what's the point of another one? She was just seventeen – you know what I mean!’ sings Paul, to an audience largely composed of young girls who probably have no idea what he means." Anglophobia certainly exists in Scotland, and the “slightly posh-sounding English” that Dunlop says she speaks probably does make her inimical to the more bigoted nationalist. But in England too that voice has lost friends. Who wants these days to sound posher than the family they were born into? Part of a series of books which examines real-life stories that have made newspaper headlines around the world, this looks at scandals of the 20th century, across royal families throughout Europe.Some chapters are short, a few a lot longer. What each chapter certainly has, is a real sense of presence. You feel part of the moment, making it so much more enjoyable. There are big moments (say, the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show), and there are many more little moments, full of delightful little details (if all true - more on that later) that humanise these people. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial ‘gift’ from the railways to the rule of law was designed in Britain’s interests alone. The last "Glimpse" I'll share is a commonly known one, when The Beatles played their last public concert on the roof of their business entity Apple Corp. which was on Savile Row in London. This was a street of pricey bespoke tailor shops and other businesses, and soon irate phone calls were received by the police station because of the noise. So here is a personal recounting from a young police officer, sharing how none of the police wanted to do anything like arrest The Beatles, and how they went up to the roof. He couldn't believe it when he was suddenly standing near Ringo. Well, this young police officer became Princess Diana's personal protection officer in 1988. His name? Ken Wharfe. It is intended entirely as a compliment to say that Craig Brown’s Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret (4th Estate) is astonishingly odd – a cross between biography and satire that perfectly displays Brown’s rare skills as journalist and parodist. A notoriously erratic genre – the comedian’s memoir – yielded two unusually classy examples: How Not to Be a Boy (Canongate) by Robert Webb and Little Me (Canongate) by Matt Lucas. Each writer found an elegant structural alternative to the usual cradle-to-Bafta-award trot-through, and, in examining deep miseries (the death of Webb’s mother, the imprison-ment of Lucas’s father), explored the transformation of pain into comic creativity in a way far beyond the stereotype of the melancholy clown. This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay (Picador) is so clinically funny and politically important for supporters of the NHS that it should be given out on prescription. Robert Macfarlane
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