James Pope-Hennessy’s Queen Mary (1959) may be the best royal biography ever and The Quest for Queen Mary (Hodder &?Stoughton, £25; Tablet price £22.50), edited by Hugo Vickers from Pope-Hennessy’s diaries and notes, is a masterpiece. Pope-Hennessy regarded his guise as royal biographer as akin to an “ornithologist in quest of a rare species”. Almost every page inspires amusement, whether Queen Mary saying of the abdication: “This might be ROUMANIA!” or Lady Juliet Duff observing that royals are not like “normal human beings, they are faithful and monogamous, Edward VII an exception”.
24 December 2018, The Tablet
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