Muse and monster
Nancy Cunard’s defiance of convention began early, fuelled by bitter resentment towards her mother, says Jane Ridley
More juicy gossip from Kenneth ‘Climbing’ Rose
When this second volume of diaries begins in 1979, Kenneth Rose is 54 and well established as the author of…
Behind the Throne is a cracking read about a neglected subject – the royal household
Never judge a book by its cover. To look at, this is a coffee-table book with shiny pages which make…
![The proud, lonely queen dressed up in Garter ribbon and diamonds for dinner at Sandringham every night, even when alone with the king [Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/queenmary.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Queen Mary: stiff and cold, but no kleptomaniac
The best royal biography ever written is probably James Pope-Hennessy’s Queen Mary. Published in 1959, only six years after the…
Conan Doyle for the Defence tells the fascinating story of Britain’s ‘Dreyfus’
One day in December 1908, a wealthy 81-year-old spinster named Marion Gilchrist was bludgeoned to death in her Glasgow flat.…
Britain über alles
David Cannadine was a schoolboy in 1950s Birmingham, which was still recognisable as the city that Joseph Chamberlain had…
A feminist trailblazer
On the evening of 28 October 1908, two unremarkable middle-class women wearing heavy overcoats gained admission to the Ladies’ Gallery,…
Cultivating the fourth estate
Lord Palmerston is remembered today not for his foreign policy nor for his octogenarian philandering, but for his management of…
Songs of innocence and experience
We live in an age of generational turmoil. Baby-boom parents are accused of clinging on to jobs and houses which…
Skirmishes on the home front
You might be forgiven for thinking that there is no need for yet another book about Margot Asquith. Her War…
After Albert
A new, revisionist biography argues that it was only after her husband’s death that Queen Victoria found her true self. Jane Ridley is impressed
Nights at the Opéra
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris and writes book with titles such as 1,000 Years of Annoying the French. Dirty Bertie…
One queen, cut by two others
Queen Victoria was the inventor of official royal biography. It was she who commissioned the monumental five-volume life of Prince…
We were not amused
Princess Louise (1848–1939), Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, was the prettiest and liveliest of the five princesses, and the only one…
The food of love
The Albek Duo are two astonishingly beautiful and talented Venetian musicians, Fiona and Ambra, who are identical twins. Hearing the…
The baby and the bathwater
Mrs Christabel Russell, the heroine of Bevis Hillier’s sparkling book, was a very modern young woman. She had short blonde…
Diplomatic meltdown
In pre-1914 cosmopolitan society, everyone seemed to be related — ambassadors as well as monarchs. But increased militarisation was fast obliterating old family ties, says Jane Ridley
Je ne regrette rien
Verdi’s La Traviata is the story of a courtesan who is redeemed when she gives up the man she loves…
