The Palace Papers - Tina Brown

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A review:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely biased
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2022
The premise is a good one, Tina Brown picks up where she left off with the Diana Chronicles. Then it is all downhill from there, now Brown praises Camilla to the skies and makes some negative comments about Diana (saying she "used" William and "overconfided" in him), something that is straight out of the spin of Charles and Camilla. She also absolves Camilla Parker Bowles of any wrongdoing with her contention that the marriage of Charles and Diana "would not have worked anyway." The usual spin for those who don't like Diana and "adore" Camilla And praised Kate's and Camilla's families, forgetting that Camilla was a married mistress and also descended from another royal mistress. Plus Charles complained to his biographer about his own family circumstances. No family is ideal, Ms. Brown. With Harry and Meghan vis a vis William and Kate she truly shows the bias. Praising Kate to the skies likening her to the Mona Lisa and also for her waiting for years to get the ring because she was going for the Future King. Never mind that she put her life on hold and had no career to speak of in the run up to the wedding. She blames HARRY for the fights with William, never mind that William and Harry had falling outs and William was no saint himself. She also makes it seem that Harry was rejected by Cressida and thus turned to Meghan Markle. The fact is Harry was the most serious about Chelsy Davy and did not appear to be all that interested in Cressida. The worst part of the book is interviewing none other than Thomas Markle as a source!!! The same person who continually goes to the media (he admitted getting paid for this by the media) to slam his daughter Meghan. She does not go to potential pro Meghan people as a balance. I am disappointed in Tina Brown. I am sorry she apparently condones Mr Markle's mercenary behavior and disparaging his child publicly. Not recommended.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Mean and meaningless. Adds nothing new. More Meghan Abuse
Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2022
It’s written like a piece for the royal family by someone in the upper classes. No real perspective on reality. She very much advocates for women just taking what is dished out to belong to royal family. Never looks at the cost of that, eg the obvious strain on Katherine who gets thinner every year. What is really sad and biased is her take on Meghan. She says M did not give royals time to work through their bias and racism. She said that M was angry. Well…why should she excuse their racism and wait for them to adjust, which is ahistorical at best. Power does not change until demanded to or forced to. It would be absolutely abnormal to not be angry at a family inquiring about your child’s skin tone and the press publishing pictures of monkeys. Tina’s book is more of the same. Meghan you should be happy just to be here cause you’re black. So just suck it up and take the abuse. This book is an homage of an insider. A clueless and mean one at that.

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And here's a glowing review:


Yes, it's dishy. And a page-turner. It's also wise about the human cost of royalty.
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2022
Before I read "The Diana Chronicles," I thought I knew enough about the life and death of the “People’s Princess” to be a runner-up on a quiz show. And so, I bet, did you. Well, reading Tina Brown’s 2008 book, I learned…

– The “engagement ring” that Dodi Fayed bought Diana on the last day of her life — he was in and out of the jewelry store in “seven minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”
– That last dinner at the Ritz — Diana was “quietly weeping in full view of the clientele.”
– Before their wedding, Diana and Charles saw one another just 13 times.
- When the marriage ended, Charles had the unused wedding presents piled up in the garden — and burned.

And much, much more.

I opened Tina Brown’s new book, the 592-page “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil,” with a different hope: that I could skim the history of Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years on the throne and the sorry Charles-and-Diana years so I could dive into the dish about Andrew, Meghan and Harry, and Kate and William. That didn’t happen. I inhaled it all.

“The Palace Papers” is a brilliant anthropological saga — the story of a tribe (the royal family) with a single goal (survival) and a willingness to eat any creature that threatens it (including its young).

I’ll get to Brown’s deep understanding of this dynasty. But you want dish, right? Let’s start there…
– At the wedding, Amal and George Clooney were asked how they knew Meghan and Harry. “We don’t,” they replied.
– Charles never eats breakfast. He lunches on bird seed and peeled fruit.
– Prince Philip sent some pants to the tailor to be adjusted. They were 51 years old.
– Charles broke his arm playing polo in 1990. Until it healed, an aide squeezed toothpaste onto this toothbrush.
– Meghan’s father gave too many interviews. His conversations with Tina Brown are the most revealing. “You want evil stories about reporters?” he asked her. “I can keep you here for a long time.” And he did.

Now we get to the character assessments…

The Queen: “If you’re talking about brands, no one is more attuned to their brand than the queen. She has never given an interview. She has never put a foot wrong.”

Harry and Meghan: “Temperamentally, he was a human IED.” His girlfriends bailed. And there was Meghan Markle, a co-star on the USA Network show “Suits.” She was 34, aging out of leading parts. She and Harry shared several key bonds: “a mutual addiction to drama” and less than exalted status. She was sixth on the call sheet of a basic cable show. He might as well have been sixth on the royal call sheet. They became “comrades in arms,” and their shared grievances would inevitably lead to an us-against-them war with his family, which they could not possibly win.

Diana vs. Meghan: “Diana gave her royal role 20 years. Meghan gave it 20 months.”

Andrew: “A coroneted sleaze machine…”

Kate: She played the long game for a decade before William agreed to marry her. “The lack of drama gave William an emotional safe space.”

Diana as a mother: “Like many women whose relationships with their husbands have become dysfunctional, Diana used her elder son as both a stand in and a buffer.”

Brown’s conclusion: “The fascination of monarchy is that its themes repeat themselves because its protagonists are earthly.”

Decade after decade, you have seen the public Tina Brown, the brainiest Brit in media, an icon on the scale of Anna Wintour. I worked for her at Vanity Fair and on her television show, and I know another Tina Brown, the reporter who wants to get the story at its deepest level.

For “The Palace Papers,” Brown interviewed hundreds of people. It turns out the most memorable for her were the people who had given their lives to the crown, the “little people.” About those interviews, she writes, “The smell of their stair carpets always filled me with gloom. The light always seemed to go out on the third-floor landing… The door would open to a small, heavily book-lined one-bedroom apartment full of tasteful knickknacks, a world of remnants from a life of palace duty.”

When I finished the book, that passage stayed with me, and I had the oddest feeling — I was sad. For everybody. So much human frailty. So much loneliness. I recalled Brown’s description of the Queen at her husband’s funeral: “small and bereft in her black mask and simple black hat and coat dress, grieving alone in the corner of the cavernous pew of the chapel. In normal times, she would have been surrounded by consoling family and the world’s dignitaries, but like everyone else who had lost a loved one in pandemic England, she was mourning in isolation.”

Yes, in isolation. As she had spent her life. Tina Brown’s book reminds us that whatever little privacy Charles and Harry and William have enjoyed will permanently end when the Queen dies and her secretary alerts the prime minister with a sentence of chilling code: “London Bridge is down.” Wish them luck.

Fewer and fewer now agree with that

Assertive is fine, but Meg shoved her way in front of Hapless on more occasions that not. Pulled him away from people he was speaking with etc.