December 12, 2018

"One of the stranger and more bookish rumours about the princess..."

"... is 'that Princess Margaret, having read Richard Holmes’s biography of Coleridge, craved to see Nether Stowey. Accordingly she instructed her pilot on the way back from an official chore to circle several times around the Somerset cottage.'... Did the princess actually get through 402 pages of Holmes and then order a pilot of the royal flight to buzz Coleridge’s cottage? It sounds more than improbable, but the percentage of truth, if any, in the story would be a question for the traditional foot-slogging biographer. Instead, Brown gives us a chortling 11-page riff, describing this unverified event in 31 styles."

Writes Julian Barnes in a review of the book that in the U.S. is titled "Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret."

I'm reading that book and just got through the chapter with 31 retellings of the plane circling over Nether Stowey. Each version has a heading — "Journalistic," "Comic," "Statistical," "Discreet," "Confrontational," "Oleaginous," "Limerick," "Psychedelic," "Spoonerism," "Tragic." I love it. You certainly don't need to care in the slightest about Princess Margaret to enjoy this book. In fact, it will help if you don't. I know I don't.

Here's a passage I highlighted:
The Princess liked to one-up. I have heard from a variety of people that she would engineer the conversation around to the subject of children’s first words, asking each of her fellow guests what their own child’s first words had been. Having listened to responses like ‘Mama’ and ‘doggy’, she would say, ‘My boy’s first word was “chandelier”.’
The author is Craig Brown, I should mention.

12 comments:

Nonapod said...

That Netflix series certainly makes her seem more than a little superficial and vain. As usual as suspect the truth is a bit more complicated.

tcrosse said...

By all accounts she could be a real handful. It runs in the family.

Fritz said...

We used to joke that our son's first word was "electrophoresis."

tcrosse said...

We used to joke that our son's first word was "electrophoresis."

How old was he?

Yancey Ward said...

I tell people my first word was "Fuck".

Yancey Ward said...

tcrosse said...
We used to joke that our son's first word was "electrophoresis."

How old was he?


32?

Ralph L said...

Margaret kept getting pushed down the succession order, which must have been a bummer for someone who from age 6 to 22 was the second child of a king. That doesn't happen to many people.

chuck said...

I liked "My Life as a Forth Interpreter", written in the style of Kafka.

Sebastian said...

"the percentage of truth, if any, in the story would be a question for the traditional foot-slogging biographer. Instead, Brown gives us a chortling 11-page riff, describing this unverified event in 31 styles."

Who needs truth when you can have style?

Who(m) shall we blame? Nietzsche?

William said...

There's can't be many unread books on your bucket list if you're down to reading bios of Princess Margaret....,,The study of English aristocrats gives us the opportunity to study how, even with every advantage in life, it's still possible to lead a pointless, unhappy life. I never expected my life to be anything but pointless and unhappy, but it takes some doing to achieve that much drab misery after you've been swaddled in ermine.

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