A lucid account of one of the messiest, sleaziest and most dangerous times in British history.
An examination of the 1820 prosecution of unpopular George IV’s popular queen, arguing that it instigated and/or solidified a variety of cultural changes in England and perhaps prevented a civil war.
Although numerous biographies of both parties (e.g., Steven Parissien’s George IV, 2002; Flora Fraser’s The Unruly Queen, 1996) retell the story of Caroline’s trial on charges of sexual infidelity, it prompts perennial fascination thanks to its seamy and steamy aspects. (In the courtroom, some of the queen’s former servants testified about nasty stains on bedding and Her Highness’ hand resting on the groin of a man who was not her husband. American readers will recall the Clinton impeachment.) British journalist Robins begins with the engagement in 1794 of young Caroline, Princess of Brunswick, to George, Prince of Wales. The soon-to-be-newlyweds had never met, and when they finally did, some five months later, George was aghast. He found Caroline physically repulsive, unclean and smelly, and judged her behavior far too frisky for the staid English court. (Secretly married to Maria Fitzherbert—“the only woman I shall ever love,” he told his brother on his wedding morning—the prince was hardly unbiased.) George and Caroline managed to conceive a daughter, Princess Charlotte, but by 1797, the royal couple were separated and the Queen was living on the continent. There she traveled, spent tens of thousands of pounds and, according to her enemies, frolicked inappropriately with Italian solider Bartolomeo Pergami. When George III died, Caroline headed home to recommence life with George IV, who almost immediately sought a divorce. It proved to be an unwise move: the common folk preferred Caroline to her husband, as did most of the press, the opposition Whig party and political radicals. There were massive demonstrations in her favor, and her acquittal, argues Robins, empowered the people and strengthened the opposition press.
A lucid account of one of the messiest, sleaziest and most dangerous times in British history.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-5590-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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