Review: History You Never Read in School
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 19, 2013
Tattoos and sewers, dying words and toothpaste, consanguinity and circumcision -- royalty can be as human as their subjects and have the same concerns. Victoria Martinez presents the humanity and the concerns without sounding like a supermarket tabloid or a pontifical brief of beatification.  The writing is lively and the reader begins to feel that at least some of the royals are old friends.The author obviously feels (correctly) that footnotes or endnotes would interrupt the flow of narrative, but the tendency of royalty to draw names from a rather small pool can leave the reader wondering just which Prince Eddy or Princess Mary is being referred to. She also subscribes to the cult of Diana-idolatry which leads her to overlook at least one other royal icon (Princess Marina of Greece, Duchess of Kent) whose cult was as great in the 1930's and 40's as the Princess of Wales' was in the 1980's and 90's.These are very minor faults and they are outweighed by all the book's virtues.