The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-24)

ROYALTY

Camilla Long

The Palace Papers Inside the
House of Windsor — the Truth
and the Turmoil by Tina Brown
Century £20 pp592

Is it really 15 years since The
Diana Chronicles, Tina Brown’s
hot take on Diana’s life and
death? Even now I find myself
referring back to that buzzy
book, truffling down through
its rompy folds like one of Jilly
Cooper’s oversexed spaniels
delving hungrily down the
back of the sofa.
It is not as if Brown, a
former editor of Vanity Fair,
delivers huge scoops. The
Diana Chronicles wasn’t, by
anyone’s yardstick, a
“definitive” account, nor was
it packed with bitchy analysis
or opinion.
What it was was Tina’s
account: a testament to sheer
dogged research and an eye

for effervescing detail, based

on, it seems, old-fashioned

yakking to people at parties.

The acknowledgments section

of this follow-up, The Palace

Papers, is ten whole pages.

Not all of the many, many

celebs (sorry, sources) she

thanks — for example the

American literary critic Adam

Gopnik — seem, er, entirely

relevant. Did she just want to

list her famous friends?

I’d heard that The Palace

Papers would be her

“Meghan” book, but that

couldn’t be further from the

case. The Californian actress,

or the long-limbed, luscious

mixed-race acting mega-

phenom, as Brown might call

her, does not meaningfully

appear until about page 400.

Instead Brown thrashes her

way through absolutely

everything that has happened

to the family since the end of

the last book in 1997 — the

good, the bad and, in the case

of the 2012 Olympics, the

downright boring. How fun

a chapter is depends on how

badly the royals are behaving,

which makes anything before

2010 dull. In the absence of

any serious meat, you simply

have to lie back and let her

heady mix of light gossip and

turn of phrase wash over you.

Reading some of her more

frothy sentences can feel

almost alarming. At the first

magazine she edited, Tatler,

she invented a hyper-breathy

kind of glossy writing in which

it was essential to talk

everything up. Pillows weren’t

just pillows; they were

luscious 900-thread-count

slumberous dumplings of

gorgeousness. Anyone who

wasn’t a looker, like, say,

Princess Anne, was praised

for their “amazing legs”. In

Brown’s book red hair isn’t

just unusual or exciting, it is

“exploding”. Asses are never

anything but “epic”. The

Queen doesn’t just love Philip;

she has “been crazy about

him since 1939”. Camilla’s

engagement ring isn’t just any

old ring, but “the ring of fire

through which she had passed

over thirty tumultuous years”.

I laughed out loud at the

chapter that began: “Until he

lost his hair, Prince William

was probably the biggest

heartthrob to be heir to the

throne since the pre-obese

Henry VIII.” William is one of

the few characters in the book

to emerge seeming at all calm

or statesmanlike, although he

assumes some Jafar-like

qualities stalking Meghan and

Harry in the early days of their

Royal bad

behaviour

There’s an endless supply of light gossip

in Tina Brown’s exhaustive trawl through

the past 25 years of the royal family

romance. Learning the couple

have bought a Christmas tree

in Battersea Park, William feels

it “looked suspiciously... like

nesting”.

Charles and Camilla are

vividly brought to life in a

series of well-researched

stories and anecdotes. If you

have any doubt where the

lion’s share of Brown’s

sources lie, they are over the

age of 70, bitchy and British.

It’s the details that really

help you through the book’s

arid patches. Sometimes it

feels as if she is summarising

every article that has been

written about the family since

1997. If you wanted to know
      what Camilla saw out of her
      bedroom window as a child of
      eight, then Brown, or one of
      her tireless Oompa Loompas,
      will have found it out. Or what
      nickname Charles gave to
      Anne’s first husband, Mark
      Phillips (“Fog”, because of his
      utter thickness). Or what Diana
      called £50 notes: “pink
      grannies”. Or what Paul

A lunatic

system

Sebastian Faulks

reads a shocking

book about the failed

history of psychiatry

30

War no

more

The British men and

women who refused

to fight in the Second

World War

34

Family tensions Harry and

Meghan offload to Oprah

Winfrey; inset, the Queen

Princess

Diana called

£50 notes

‘pink grannies’

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28 24 April 2022