Buckingham Babylon: The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor

An expose+a7 of Britain's ruling dynasty from its foundation to recent marital breakups discovers hypocrisy, greed, phoney marriages, routine infidelity, rampant lust, revolutionary plots, and murder beneath the surface morality of the Royal Family. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo.

Ninety years of dirt on the British royal family. Fearon (a British freelance journalist) gives us a blow-by- blow account of the royal scandals from the end of Queen Victoria's reign up to Prince Charles and Princess ``Squidgy'' Diana. En route, we're regaled with the amours of Edward VII; the death of George V by an injection of morphine and cocaine so that the news might be announced by the London Times ``rather than the less appropriate evening journals''; how Edward VII was maneuvered into abdicating not because of his resolve to marry Wallis Simpson but because of his Nazi sympathies, and much more. Fearon wastes no words as he passes from one scandal to the next. His achievement is that we now have them all in a single book--though there's little here that an informed reader would not know already. In tabloid fashion, the author exudes moral indignation, yet not consistently: He mocks George V's failure to rescue his cousin the Czar, popularly seen to be a cruel autocrat, and then condemns George VI's attempt to cover up the involvement of his German relatives with the Nazis. Fearon is at home with a vast network of political and royal personages and has a gift for evoking historical occasions--but he provides no footnotes and cites few authorities, so it's difficult to check his accuracy. Confidence isn't inspired when he confuses Charles II with the deposed James II, especially since the context is the choice of the name ``Charles'' for the present Prince of Wales. Fearon treats his characters more as objects of detraction than real people, and he fails to grasp that the royal cover-ups have been motivated, at least in part, by a particularly English sense of noblesse oblige. At once morally repugnant and compelling reading. (Photographs--24 pp. b&w) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

If a supermarket tabloid ran to 390 pages and focused entirely on the British monarchy, it could pass for Fearon's book. The author, an English journalist, rehashes scandals and rumors dating back to Edward VII, trying to give the impression that he is unearthing new, suppressed information. In fact, he has simply pulled together the nasty bits from all the biographies published in the last ten years and then added a little gratuitous spice. Some of the incidents have been well documented in earlier works; others are apocryphal, and Fearon makes no attempt to provide supporting evidence for his claims. He believes that most of the recent scandals have been publicized and in some cases directed by the British Secret Service and other government agencies. Save your money.
- Katharine Galloway Garstka, Intergraph Corp., Huntsville, Ala.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.