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The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil
Maybe someday
35
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
52/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Tina Brown
Publisher:
Crown
Date:
April 26, 2022
Picking up where The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the trauÂmatic years when Diana's blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet. Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey through the scandals, love affairs, power plays, and betrayals that have buffeted the monarchy over the last 25 years. We see the Queen's stoic reÂsolve after the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother, and Prince Philip, her partner for seven decades, and how she triumphs in her Jubilee years even as family troubles rage around her. Brown explores Prince Charles's determination to make Camilla Parker Bowles his wife, the tension between William and Harry on "different paths," the ascendÂance of Kate Middleton, the downfall of Prince AnÂdrew, and Harry and Meghan's stunning decision to step back as senior royals.
What The Reviewers Say
Tina Brown, the writer making the comment in her new royal potboiler, is not, in that sense, nice.
Well-sourced and exhaustively researched.
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.
Featuring a combination of preexisting press accounts and Brown’s own reporting, it’s high-minded and gossipy, and addictively readable, despite a slow first half spent revisiting the well-trod history of the Diana Years. Much like the royal family itself, it gets more interesting when Meghan comes along.
