Monday, 27 August 2018

Ma'am Darling : 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown

"As she grew older , Princess Margaret  turned pickiness into an art form, snubbing  hosts who offered her items of food and drink that were not exactly what she wanted."

My favourite Aunt shares a name with Princess Margaret and let's face it, after The Crown,  I was intrigued to learn more about the black sheep of the family. One black sheep of a family to another, so to speak.

Given that this "biography", and the inverted commas are intentional, was awarded the James Tait Biography award, you might expect more of a typical biographical setup and yet, this is something else. Having said that, it is delightfully entertaining and certainly easy to swallow.

Ultimately what we have here is a brief sojourn into a weird and wacky, other world, removed from the hoi polloi, but unsure of where it stands. Unusually, as a period of history, the life of Margaret corresponds with that strange time where the media became omnipotent and the untouchable nature of royalty was called into question. It is a notion writ large in Brown's book and to great comic effect.

I can't really describe what exactly was lacking here; I just wanted something more.




4 out of 5 royals detest bad hats.



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