High life
Minor royalties
Taki
SAthens omething is rotten in the British pub- lishing world, and I'm not thinking of those unreadable novelists who regularly get short-listed for the Booker. The fact that Princess Anne, Fergie and Princess
Michael demand and receive six-figure advances so that their researchers (not in Anne's case) can compile dumb books about even dumber people must be on a par with, say, Susan Gutfreund's habit of giving expensive gifts to the likes of Yacob Rothschild.
This is the bad news. The good is that not all readers are fools. Princess Anne's book is a flop, having reportedly sold just 600 copies, although it has outsold that of Fergie, whose opus I am reliably told is the first book ever to be read by the illiterate Paddy McNally.
I will not comment about Marie Chris- tine's tract because I have no intention of reading it, and also because last time I crit- icised her literary efforts four historians took umbrage because I had criticised them indirectly.
Once upon a time royals could and did scribble without researchers and ghosts. Eugene of Savoy in the 17th century and Gustav of Sweden in the 18th are good examples. Although Frederick the Great and Napoleon did not they were neverthe- less brilliant men who could compete in equal terms with the best brains of their time. Alexander the Greatest, needless to say, had Aristotle for a teacher, but was nevertheless considered a barbarian by my ancestors in Athens. Imagine what they would have thought of Fergie and Marie Christine, not to mention Andrew.
Yet Prince Philip's father, Andrew of Greece, did write a short book on the war of Asia Minor, and Prince Nicholas of Greece, Princess Alexandra's grandfather, some interesting memoirs. It goes to show that not all royals are cretins, and that there were books being written without teams of helpers. Which brings to mind what the publishers of Princess Anne's book had to say about it: that every word in it was written by her. Hooray, glory be, finally a royal author who writes. I think her efforts belong in the Guinness Book of Records.
Michael of Greece has written a few his- torical novels, one of which was turned into a film about an American girl who ends up in a harem. Or so they tell me. I guess the Greek royals, who have not a drop of Greek blood, are the most literary, proba- bly because they've spent most of their lives in exile. Writing takes up a lot of time, especially if one writes one's own books.
Mind you, it does seem awfully unfair for rich royals to be filling their pockets with publishers' loot in order to have others write unreadable and bland stuff about German princelings. I can imagine why Weidenfeld does it, but what about the others? Do all publishers of royal opuses have money to burn?
If! were a publisher, and I may one day be one, I would commission Fergie to write about her life before she became royal, and I would call it Low Life. Now there would be a best-seller — if she told the truth, of course.
Previous page
