The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

TCJ Book Club Pick: Adrian Tinniswood’s BEHIND THE THRONE

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Get excited, magpies! Our next selection for The Court Jeweller Book Club is…

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Adrian Tinniswood’s Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the British Royal Household! The book is a fascinating look at the people and systems that have kept the monarchy running from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I up until today. From the Lord Chamberlain to the equerry to the maids and footmen, Tinniswood traces the fascinating, evolving history of the people who were responsible for working behind the scenes to support and enhance the British monarch. It is a completely compelling look at both the upstairs and downstairs workings of the royal household.
Image by The Court Jeweller; do not reproduce!
We changed our reading schedule last go-around to accommodate more of you who wanted to participate, and we’re going to continue with that schedule going forward. You get a little extra holiday bonus time to finish this book, too! Our discussion of Behind the Throne will happen here at The Court Jeweller on January 2, 2019.
Behind the Throne is currently available via Amazon (and many other retailers!) in both a hardback edition and an electronic version. Grab a copy, dig in, and we’ll meet back here after the holidays to discuss this fascinating book!
Note: Some links on this website are Amazon affiliate links. I put all money that I receive from these affiliate links back into materials for review on the site (including the book discussed in this post), so if you want to read more reviews, please consider purchasing items through the affiliate links in this post and throughout the site. Thanks, everybody!

TCJ Book Club Discussion: Craig Brown’s MA’AM DARLING

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It’s that time again, magpies: we’re discussing our September/October selection for The Court Jeweller Book Club! I’m very excited to hear your thoughts on the latest biography of Princess Margaret, Craig Brown’s Ma’am Darling.

Princess Margaret at Buckingham Palace, 1947 (Getty Images)

The American edition of Brown’s book is simply titled Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, a title that does capture the unique structure of the biography. The book tells the story of Margaret’s life in a collection of snippets, presented in a roughly chronological manner. These include everything from a transcript of her Desert Island Discs appearance to tales of her romances and marriage.

Lauren Bacall and Princess Margaret at the Royal European Preview of Applause, November 1972 (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Most of these glimpses, though, are just that: images of Margaret constructed through the eyes of the people who encountered her, both famous and infamous. Peter Townsend, Tony Snowdon, Marion Crawford, Peter Sellers, Cecil Beaton, the Beatles, Colin Tennant, Elizabeth Taylor and more populate the pages of the book. The glimpses often feel voyeuristic, and sometimes downright intrusive, and then Brown complicates the issue even more by tossing in the occasional imagined, fictional “glimpse” into a life that Margaret might have had. Ultimately, the book is as inquisitive about the project of royal biography as it is about the life of its subject, and that makes it a fascinating (and occasionally maddening) read. We think we know the royals so well, and yet…

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Brown’s book is such an inventive, unusual royal biography that I’m not even going to try to provide you with book club-style questions for discussion — I just want to hear your thoughts! Let us know what you liked (or didn’t like) about Ma’am Darling in the comment section below. (Remember that you might want to leave separate comments on separate topics, as our spam filter gets cranky about super-long comments!)

Our discussion of the book continues below in the comments! Stay tuned later this morning for the big reveal of our next selection for The Court Jeweller Book Club!