A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
NO one, I suppose, can be prevented from writing a book about royalty if he (or she) wants to. But it would be all gain and no loss if the royal family could be left in peace to do the work they do so well, and be regarded as immune, for a period at any rate, from the attentions of biographers. Here is Mr. Compton Mackenzie wanting, for some reason or other, to write a life of the Duke of Windsor, the Duke saying he never authorised the volume, and the prospective publishers insisting that he did. The occurrence, whatever the rights and wrongs of it, is mani- festly unfortunate. In any case why must every discoverable detail about every person associated with the royal family by birth or marriage be assiduously dragged into public view ? We have lately had a life of the Duchess of Kent, and if I am not mistaken the lengthy and crowded life of Princess Elizabeth has been made spoil for a biographer. Into most of such volumes—not all—a note of adulation and sub- servience creeps that to no one can be quite as repellent as to those eminently sensible people the King and Queen and their immediate relatives. We are fortunate in the possession of the best royal family in the world, and the highest compliment we can pay them is to treat them as they would obviously desire to be treated. With all that needs to be known about their private lives the public is quite adequately familiar Tissues of trivialities about what Prince Someone's chauffeur or Princess Somebody's hairdresser said of them do small service to their reputation.
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