For my personal interests, my academic interests, and my professional interests, I tend to keep a fairly close eye on upcoming royal biographies. With it being Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee year, I think that we are going to see more biographies coming out than ever. (And that is not a complaint.) I’m going to be updating this 2022 royal biographies post continually throughout the year as I find more books with release dates- keep checking back!
Note: I am going by the North American release date, as I am in Canada. Some have already been published in the UK/Europe in the last quarter of 2021. If any of the release dates change, I will do my best to update this post promptly! (And if it is not clear, I will be focusing on English-language biographies.)
2022 Royal Biographies to Watch For
Crown and Sceptre: A New History of the British Monarchy, from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II, Tracy Borman (1 Feb 2022)
Since William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel in 1066 to defeat King Harold II and unite England’s various kingdoms, forty-one kings and queens have sat on Britain’s throne: “shining examples of royal power and majesty alongside a rogue’s gallery of weak, lazy, or evil monarchs,” as Tracy Borman evocatively describes them in her sparkling chronicle, Crown & Sceptre. Ironically, during very few of these 955 years has the throne’s occupant been unambiguously English–whether Norman French, the Welsh-born Tudors, the Scottish Stuarts, and the Hanoverians and their German successors to the present day.Acknowledging the intrinsic fascination with British royalty, Borman lifts the veil to reveal the remarkable characters and personalities who have ruled and, since the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, more ceremonially reigned–a crucial distinction explaining the staying power of the monarchy as the royal family has evolved and adapted to the needs and opinions of its people, avoiding the storms of rebellion that brought many of Europe’s royals to an abrupt end. Richard II; Henry VIII; Elizabeth I; George III; Victoria; Elizabeth II: their names evoke eras and the dramatic events Borman recounts. She is equally attuned to the fabric of monarchy: royal palaces; the way monarchs have been portrayed in art, on coins, in the media; the ceremony and pageantry surrounding the crown.
In 2024, Elizabeth II would eclipse France’s Louis XIV as the longest reigning monarch in history. Crown & Sceptre is a fitting tribute to her remarkable longevity and that of the magnificent institution she represents.
Why I Want to Read This…
As co-Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, I would argue that Borman is particularly well-placed to write this book. I don’t tend to read a lot of “general history” books that quickly move through dynasties anymore, but Borman’s book is the exception. We are more than due a new “encyclopedia” on the British royals, so this book is more than welcome! In particular, I’m interested in reading about her take on the House of Windsor- she tends to focus on the Tudors and Stuarts, so her interpretation of the modern royals will be new!
Queen Alexandra: Loyalty and Love, Frances Dimond (28 Feb 2022)
Queen Alexandra was a private person who destroyed or left instructions to destroy, much of her archive, but nevertheless enough remains in the form of original documents, such as engagement diaries and letters and informal information, to chart her life more completely than ever before and to attempt to rectify the negative or dismissive attitude towards her which has gained credence in some previous works. This method, rather than drawing mainly from over-salted and peppered memoirs written much later, aims to show her character, enables readers to get to know her and to appreciate what an enormous amount a senior member of the royal family has to accomplish, while still remaining the loving daughter, sister, wife and mother, and keen supporter of the arts, welfare and education, that Alexandra was.
During her life she met many famous, notable and intriguing people, while her own journey – from the young, modest Danish Princess who married the Prince of Wales in 1863, to the popular Queen Consort of King Edward VII, and the beloved Queen Mother – saw her personal development and courageous struggle against disability, especially deafness. She was a generous, thoughtful and caring woman, who maintained her sense of humour and interest in all kinds of things and under sometimes challenging circumstances. She could be a lively correspondent and her letters will help readers to understand her far better than has hitherto been possible. This book is long and detailed and readers may like to dip in and out of it, finding stories in all parts, rather than reading it straight through, but it might claim a place among the variety of entertainments which are comforting us in these difficult times.
Why I Want to Read This…
I could not make a 2022 royal biographies post without including this book. I’ve been looking for a Queen Alexandra biography since I saw several of her surviving garments in the Royal Women exhibition at the Fashion Museum in 2019, and finally, I have one to look forward to! Alexandra has long fascinated me, but she seems to get passed over for her mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Dimond was the first Curator of the Royal Photography Collection at the Royal Archives, and has worked extensively with Alexandra’s photographs- she is the perfect biographer to tackle Alexandra. And impressively, she had the permission of The Queen to research the book in the Royal Archives. I’m quite excited for my copy to arrive!
After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War, Hellen Rappaport (8 Mar 2022)
Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food, and the latest fashions. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution, never more so than before and after the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all that Belle Époque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. It was a place of artistic experimentation, such as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. But the brutality of the Bolshevik takeover forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland, sometimes leaving with only the clothes on their backs.
Arriving in Paris, former princes could be seen driving taxicabs, while their wives who could sew worked for the fashion houses, their unique Russian style serving as inspiration for designers like Coco Chanel. Talented intellectuals, artists, poets, philosophers, and writers struggled in exile, eking out a living at menial jobs. Some, like Bunin, Chagall and Stravinsky, encountered great success in the same Paris that welcomed Americans like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Political activists sought to overthrow the Bolshevik regime from afar, while double agents from both sides plotted espionage and assassination. Others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and their all-consuming homesickness for Russia, the homeland they had been forced to abandon.
This is their story.
Why I Want to Read This…
I always look forward to reading Helen Rappaport’s books; she writes incredibly engaging books and dedicates herself to her subject. She has written several books on the last generation of the Romanov dynasty, so I was not surprised to see a related book. However, I’m quite excited to read about the extended circle of the Romanovs, and those that ended up in Paris particularly. While I am not enamoured of Paris (I had a bad experience visiting), the Russian quasi-court there is fascinating. This looks to be a fantastic book!
Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II, Robert Hardman (17 Mar 2022)
Shy but with a steely self-confidence; inscrutable despite ten decades in the public eye; unflappable; devout; indulgent; outwardly reserved, inwardly passionate; unsentimental; inquisitive; young at heart.
All of these describe Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned through more seismic social change than any monarch since 1066 (Charles I included). From the Abdication to the Sussexes, she has witnessed family crises on a scale not seen since the days of George III.
Yet she is not merely hanging on. She is a 21st Century global phenomenon commanding unrivalled respect and affection. Sealed off during the greatest peacetime emergency of modern times, she has stuck to her own maxim: ‘I must be seen to be believed.’ And now she is preparing for an event without parallel since the reign of Louis XIV: her Platinum Jubilee.
On February 6th, 2022 ,she marks 70 years on the Throne. Robert Hardman, the acclaimed and respected author of Her Majesty and Queen of the World has already examined the Queen as a modern monarch and her role as a stateswoman abroad. Now, he wraps up the full story of one of the undisputed greats in a thousand years of monarchy.
Hardman distils Elizabeth’s complex life into a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal. It is a portrait of a world leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the Throne at age twenty-five.
With peerless access to members of the Royal Family, staff, friends and royal records, Queen of Our Times will bring fresh insights and scholarship on the modern royal story. There will be no more thorough, more readable, more original book on the record-breaking Elizabeth II as she reaches a landmark which, surely, can never be equaled.
Why I Want to Read This…
Hardman’s biographies are detailed and in-depth, and take a focused approach to what could be a very large book. I suspect that Queen of Our Times will be broader than his other biographies, but I’m still looking forward to reading this. The Queen is approaching a massive milestone that is rarely seen, and a monumental biography is certainly appropriate. I have found in the past that Hardman tends to stay away from the more gossipy/ unsubstantiated claims, and I don’t think there will be any difference with this book.
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor- The Truth and the Turmoil, Tina Brown (26 Apr 2022)
‘Never again’, became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Diana’s death. More specifically, there could never be ‘another Diana’ – a member of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and posed an existential threat to the British monarchy. Picking up where The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana’s blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet.
Tina Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey that shows the Queen’s stoic resolve as she coped with the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother and her partner for seven decades, Prince Philip, and triumphed in her Jubilee years even as the family dramas raged around her. She explores Prince Charles’s determination to make Camilla his queen, the tension between William and Harry who are on ‘different paths’, the ascendance of the resolute Kate Middleton, the disturbing allegations surrounding Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, and Harry and Meghan’s stunning decision to ‘step back’ as senior royals. Despite the fragile monarchy’s best efforts, ‘never again’ seems fast approaching.
Why I Want to Read This…
I’m debating when/if I will read this, but I do think it will be an incredibly popular book. Brown’s 2007 The Diana Chronicles is a popular royal biography, and as a former editor of Tatler, Brown is particularly well-placed to write these lighter, “tabloid-style” biographies. I do question whether or not anyone has substantial facts about the Sussexes and Prince Andrew’s current situation. However, I foresee a lot of people picking this up!
Queen Victoria and the Romanovs: Sixty Years of Mutual Distrust, Coryne Hall (1 May 2022)
Despite their frequent visits to England, Queen Victoria never quite trusted the Romanovs. In her letters she referred to “horrid Russia” and was adamant that she did not wish her granddaughters to marry into that barbaric country. She distrusted Tsar Nicholas I but as a young woman she was bowled over by his son the future Alexander II, although there could be no question of a marriage. Political questions loomed large and the Crimean war did nothing to improve relations. This distrust started with the story of the Queen’s “Aunt Julie”, Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg, and her disastrous Russian marriage. Starting with this marital catastrophe, Romanov expert Coryne Hall traces 60 years of family feuding that include outright war, inter-marriages, assassination, and the Great Game in Afghanistan. In the fateful year of 1894, Victoria must come to terms with the fact that her granddaughter has become the Tsar’s wife, the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. Eventually, distrust of the German Kaiser brings Victoria and the Tsar closer together. Permission has been granted by the Royal Archives at Windsor to use extracts from Queen Victoria’s journals to to tell this fascinating story of family relations played out on the world stage.
Why I Want to Read This…
I’ve read several of Hall’s books, and her scholarship on the Russian royals is unparalleled. While Victoria had a close relationship with her granddaughter, the last Empress of Russia, she had an incredibly tense and difficult relationship with the Romanovs as a whole. I am looking forward to her treatment of this royal relationship!
Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Andrew Lownie (3 May 2022)
Traitor King, by Sunday Times bestselling author Andrew Lownie, looks at the years following the abdication of Edward VIII when the former king was kept in exile, feuding with his family over status for his wife, Wallis Simpson, and denied any real job.
Drawing on extensive research into hitherto unused archives and Freedom of Information requests, it makes the case that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were not the naïve dupes of the Germans but actively intrigued against Britain in both war and peace.
It reveals:
– the story behind the German attempts to recruit the Duke as a British Pétain in the summer of 1940.
– the efforts, by Churchill in particular, to prevent post-war publication of the captured German documents which detailed the Duke’s Nazi intrigues.
– the reasons why the Duke, as Governor of the Bahamas, tried to shut down the investigation into the 1943 murder of his close friend Harry Oakes.
– the full extent of the feud with the British Royal Family, based on his betrayals going back to his dishonesty about his true financial position at the time of the abdication.
– that far from a love story, Wallis felt trapped in a marriage she had never wanted with a pathetic and suffocating husband, one of the reasons she took several lovers, including the gay playboy Jimmy Donahue.
Traitor King tells the story of a royal exiled with his wife, turning his back on duty, his family and using his position for financial gain.
Why I Want to Read This…
While I’m interested in the Windsors, I’ve actually not read a lot about them. They are another couple that tends to get a tabloid-treatment, and I’m finding I’m just not interested in that style anymore. (No judgement on anyone who does enjoy- read whatever floats your boat!) However, Lownie is a talented biographer, and one of the most thorough and dedicated that I’ve found, and I believe that this Windsor biography will be no exception!
A Royal Life, The Duke of Kent, Hugo Vickers (12 May 2022)
HRH The Duke of Kent has been at the heart of the British Royal Family throughout his life. As a working member of the Royal Family, he has supported his cousin, The Queen, representing her at home and abroad. His royal duties began when, in 1952, at the age of sixteen, he walked in the procession behind King George VI’s coffin, later paying homage to The Queen at her Coronation in 1953. Since then he has witnessed and participated in key Royal occasions. He represented The Queen at independence ceremonies from the age of twenty-five, he was riding with her when blanks were fired at Trooping the Colour in 1981, he was the oldest soldier on parade at Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph in November 2020 and he was alongside The Queen at her official birthday celebrations in June 2021 as Colonel of the Scots Guards.
No member of the Royal Family has spoken extensively of the modern reign and their part in it before. A Royal Life is a unique account based on a series of conversations between the Duke and acclaimed Royal historian Hugo Vickers. It covers some of the most important moments and experiences of the Duke’s life, from his upbringing at his family home Coppins in Buckinghamshire, his twenty-one years of army life, his royal tours and events, through to his work for over 140 different organisations, including presenting the trophies at Wimbledon for more than 50 years. Here too are recollections of family members including his mother, Princess Marina, his grandmother, Queen Mary, his cousin, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and his uncle, King George VI.
The Duke is a keen photographer and the book contains never before seen photographs from his private collection.
Other members of the Royal Family contribute their memories, including his wife, the Duchess of Kent, the Duke’s siblings, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael of Kent, his son, the Earl of St Andrews, his daughter, Lady Helen Taylor as well as his cousins, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Archduchess Helen of Austria and her brother, Hans Veit Toerring.
Why I Want to Read This…
The Kents are two of my favourite members of the royal family, both are fascinating. The Duke is incredibly hard working, and has dedicated his life in service to the crown but receives very little recognition or attention for his work. Not only am I rather excited to learn more about his own life, I cannot wait to read his perspective on the modern monarchy and several members of the royal family. He has witnessed several significant moments in The Queen’s life and reign, and this is a must-read for me. (Along with the Queen Alexandra biography from above, this is the biggest release of 2022 for me!)
What 2022 royal biographies are on your to-read list?
Cheers,
The Historian
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