Royal: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Book

If you're looking for scandal or gossip, Robert Lacey is not your man. Balance and measure are his hallmarks and, like his Royal subjects, he is solidly conservative in his approach. But while he lacks the frivitas of the likes of Kitty Kelly, Andrew Morton and Penny Junor, he is nothing if not thorough. As a record of the life of the present Queen, Royal cannot be faltered. In fact, Royal is Lacey's second bite of the Windsor cherry as in 1977 he produced Majesty to coincide with the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Much of this book is rehashed for the early part of Royal. In 1977, Majesty was considered cutting-edge stuff as it dared to portray the Royal Family as real people, rather than as semi-detached descendants of the Almighty. Now, it appears in a somewhat different light; his picture of a rather bumbling set of not-very-bright aristocrats having picnics on a Scottish moor no longer seems particularly endearing. Rather it appears as bizarrely anachronistic even for the 1970s and all the more so for what has followed since. The story of the last 25 years is of a family and institution struggling to get up to speed with the 20th century--let alone the 21st. So we get all the royal divorces, the tacky Hello! spreads, the paying of taxes, the scrapping of Britannia and, of course, the death of Princess Diana. Lacey tells the story very well--he clearly has well-placed sources as his command of detail is both comprehensive and has the ring of authenticity. Where his tone slightly lets him down is in his treatment of his central character. He happily depicts his huge cast of other royals--including the Queen Mother--as flawed personalities, yet he is reluctant to show the Queen as anything less than perfect. Any mistakes she might have made have always--apparently--been for the most pure and honest of motives. Either the Queen has been desperately unlucky in the gene dispersal among her blood relatives, or she too is not immune from some of their failings. But what Lacey's biography ultimately shows is that the work is never complete, as shortly after the book was published Princess Margaret died. And her death sounded its own salutary pointer. While the press filled their pages with endless nonsense about her life, the Royal family showed it was more in touch with the mood of the nation than the media by making her death a matter for private rather than public grief. Maybe the notion of a modern monarchy isn't so absurd, after all. --John CraceRead More