Today, if you are anything like me, you will be binging the third season of The Crown. We’ve been waiting two years for this season, and the wait is finally over. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that between now and the end of the year I will probably have watched the new season twice through. But what to do tomorrow? I say, royal reading! In the last two to three decades we have been spoilt with royal biographies, and there are many to choose from. So, these are my top recommendations on what to read after you watch The Crown!
These books won’t necessarily continue the story on past season three, but they will give you more insight into the characters and the actual people. The royal family can often seem larger than life and not real, but they are very real people. They have fights and favourite meals and get sick and go on vacation, just like we do. These books are a great window into the royal family, and are my best recommendations on what to read after you watch The Crown!
Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, Craig Brown
She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando clam up. She cold-shouldered Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. John Fowles hoped to keep her as his sex-slave. Dudley Moore propositioned her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was in love with her.For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy. “If they knew what I had done in my dreams with your royal ladies” he confided to a friend, “they would take me to the Tower of London and chop off my head!”Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures. To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding.In her 1950’s heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. By the time of her death, she had come to personify disappointment. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman.The tale of Princess Margaret is pantomime as tragedy, and tragedy as pantomime. It is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues and essays, Ma’am Darling is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography, and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.
Princess Margaret is one of the most fascinating modern royals to me. She was caught inbetween- not the monarch, not a commoner. Much like Prince Harry but he is now given much more freedom to pursue the things that he loves, while Margaret was unable to do much of anything. Sure, she may not have been the easiest person to get along with, but I feel bad that she has been largely written off. This is an interesting biography of Margaret, it is not a straight forward telling of her life. It is ninety-nine different glimpses into her life, through her own eyes and through others. My only quibble is that a few of the glimpses are fictional, but for the most part, it’s pretty obvious when that is the case. It is a quick read, if you are looking for a royal fix but are quite busy!
The Little Princesses, Marion Crawford
Once upon a time, in 1930s England, there were two little princesses named Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. Their father was the Duke of York, the second son of King George V, and their Uncle David was the future King of England.
We all know how the fairy tale ended: When King George died, “Uncle David” became King Edward VIII—who abdicated less than a year later to marry the scandalous Wallis Simpson. Suddenly the little princesses’ father was King. The family moved to Buckingham Palace, and ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth became the heir to the crown she would ultimately wear for over fifty years.
The Little Princesses shows us how it all began. In the early thirties, the Duke and Duchess of York were looking for someone to educate their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, then five- and two-years-old. They already had a nanny—a family retainer who had looked after their mother when she was a child—but it was time to add someone younger and livelier to the household.
Enter Marion Crawford, a twenty-four-year-old from Scotland who was promptly dubbed “Crawfie” by the young Elizabeth and who would stay with the family for sixteen years. Beginning at the quiet family home in Piccadilly and ending with the birth of Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in 1948, Crawfie tells how she brought the princesses up to be “Royal,” while attempting to show them a bit of the ordinary world of underground trains, Girl Guides, and swimming lessons.
The Little Princesses was first published in 1950 to a furor we cannot imagine today. It has been called the original “nanny diaries” because it was the first account of life with the Royals ever published. Although hers was a touching account of the childhood of the Queen and Princess Margaret, Crawfie was demonized by the press. The Queen Mother, who had been a great friend and who had, Crawfie maintained, given her permission to write the account, never spoke to her again.
This book is quite special to me; this is a first edition copy that I found at a charity book sale for $1 CAD. However, more importantly, it is one of the original royal tell-alls! Compared to the things that we read nowadays, it is very tame and kind, but cause quite a stir. Marion Crawford was governess to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret for 17 years, and wrote this memoir in her retirement when she was struggling to make ends meet. Although it is one of the nicest tell-alls that I have ever read in my life, the royal family was incredibly hurt and upset and cut off all contact with their beloved Crawfie. In any case, it provides a good deal of insight into Elizabeth and Margaret’s childhood. And after you’ve read it, you can start to make connections between their childhood and the adults they grew into. If you are looking to impress a devoted royal history buff, get them this book!
Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, Sally Bedell Smith
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Perfect for fans of The Crown, this magisterial biography of Queen Elizabeth II is a close-up view of the woman we’ve known only from a distance—and a captivating window into the last great monarchy.
From the moment of her ascension to the throne in 1952 at the age of twenty-five, Queen Elizabeth II has been the object of unparalleled scrutiny. But through the fog of glamour and gossip, how well do we really know the world’s most famous monarch? Drawing on numerous interviews and never-before-revealed documents, acclaimed biographer Sally Bedell Smith pulls back the curtain to show in intimate detail the public and private lives of Queen Elizabeth II, who has led her country and Commonwealth through the wars and upheavals of the last sixty years with unparalleled composure, intelligence, and grace.
In Elizabeth the Queen, we meet the young girl who suddenly becomes “heiress presumptive” when her uncle abdicates the throne. We meet the thirteen-year-old Lilibet as she falls in love with a young navy cadet named Philip and becomes determined to marry him, even though her parents prefer wealthier English aristocrats. We see the teenage Lilibet repairing army trucks during World War II and standing with Winston Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on V-E Day. We see the young Queen struggling to balance the demands of her job with her role as the mother of two young children. Sally Bedell Smith brings us inside the palace doors and into the Queen’s daily routines—the “red boxes” of documents she reviews each day, the weekly meetings she has had with twelve prime ministers, her physically demanding tours abroad, and the constant scrutiny of the press—as well as her personal relationships: with Prince Philip, her husband of sixty-four years and the love of her life; her children and their often-disastrous marriages; her grandchildren and friends.
This book is quite possibly one of my favourite biographies of all time. Sally Bedell Smith has written several notable biographies, including a recent book on Prince Charles. However, I do think that this is her strongest. (And general readers agree, it won a Goodreads award in 2012!) Smith introduces us to the public Queen Elizabeth II and the private Elizabeth Windsor. She has interviewed countless former staff members, friends, and family, and truly done her research into the primary sources. It can be easy to dismiss Elizabeth II as a monarch who has simply signed off on things, but she has done much more than that. And even though I’ve watched pretty much every documentary and read every possible book, I still learned more about the Queen and the royal family when reading this. I would recommend this for the new royal fan and the experienced royal watcher!
Not in Front of the Corgis: Secrets of Life Behind the Royal Curtain, Brian Hoey
Interest in the British royal family is inexhaustible. Just take the amazing clamor over the recent wedding of William and Kate! But who are the Royals, and what do they get up to when we aren’t watching them?
In Not in Front of the Corgis, a veteran Royal commentator and author of more than twenty books on the Royals peeks behind the curtains to tell us what they really get up to in their spare time. The book asks questions like what the Queen watches on TV and why she does not have a driving license, and answers thousands of questions about the world’s most famous family, including who are the most popular Royals to work for, and who the least? Who is the grandest of the Queen’s children and why? Why do Edward and Andrew pay less than Charles’ private secretary for the rent of their homes, and what records did the Queen Mother like to dance to?
Not in Front of the Corgis is a unique and fascinating miscellany containing everything you ever wanted to know about the Royal Family, away from the spotlight.
Brian Hoey has been a writer and broadcaster for over forty years, covering countless Royal events, including the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 and Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.
This is book is wonderful peak into what life is really like for the royals. Hoey answers all of those pub quiz questions and tells you the tidbits we all want to know. It isn’t as in-depth as other books, but it also isn’t as heavy. Hoey has written several different books on the royal family, and I enjoy the congenial tone. And while some of the people mentioned in the book have either passed away or no longer work for the royal family (in terms of staff members), it is nice to be able to put more info behind the names that we see in press releases and articles. If you know someone who has just started watching The Crown but doesn’t know much about the royal family, this is a light and fun behind-the-scenes look!
So, what are your recommendations on what to read after you watch The Crown?
Cheers,
The Historian
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