The lengthy wink-and-nudge footnotes are more rewarding than the wishy-washy main narrative.
Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth, speaks—guardedly—in this gossipy, sympathetic account of marital shenanigans by a British broadcaster and self-confessed insider.
Having written a short account of Philip’s life with his help and approval on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2002, Brandreth can hardly be considered an unbiased historian of the facts he musters here into a larger, more detailed volume. He admires the stoic, irascible Prince Consort and believes “he deserves to be better understood.” Before they get a chance to do that, however, readers must first wade through a maze of incestuous genealogy. Philip and Elizabeth are cousins, both descendants of Queen Victoria: he via Louis of Battenberg, transliterated to Mountbatten in 1917 in the interests of patriotism; and she through her father, who became George VI upon the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. Brandreth follows their fairy-tale romance in the early ‘40s, when the slim, fair, handsome Royal Navy officer first caught teenaged Elizabeth’s eye. They married in 1947; the births of Charles (1948) and Anne (1950) preceded the death of George VI and their mother’s spectacular coronation in 1952. Victoria’s consort had worked closely with the queen, serving effectively as her confidential assistant, but Philip was told to keep out of the way, as the monarchy had changed from an executive power to an institution with which he “had to fit in.” Another emasculating blow arrived when Elizabeth took her prime minister’s advice and gave their children her family name, Windsor, rather than Mountbatten. Though shy as a child, sheltered and happy in the company of her dogs and horses, Elizabeth confidently assumed the role of queen, while Philip, relegated to the sidelines, became “scratchy.” Brandreth devotes pages to speculations about the Prince Consort’s marital fidelity, aspiring to “nail the issue once and for all”; in the end, he limply concedes that Philip likes the company of larky young “playmates.”
The lengthy wink-and-nudge footnotes are more rewarding than the wishy-washy main narrative.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-393-06113-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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