Product Description

What is the point of Kings and Queens What do they do all day? And what does it mean to be one of them? Jeremy Paxman is used to making politicians explain themselves - but royalty has always been off limits. Until now. In "On Royalty" he delves deep into the past and takes a long hard look at our present incumbents to find out just what makes them tick. Along the way he discovers some fascinating and little-known details. Such as: how Albania came to advertise in England for a king; which English queen gave birth in front of 67 people; how easy it is to beat up future kings of England; and, how meeting the Queen is a bit scary - whoever you are...No other book will tell you quite as much about our kings, queens, princes and princesses: who they are and what they're for.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76300 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
'Paxman's book is everyhing that royalty is not allowed to be - witty, stylish, intelligent, pugnacious and political.' The Times 'On Royalty is an absorbing, well-researched book, part serious enquiry, part rollicking anecdote.' Evening Standard 'Action-packed and entertaining.' - The, Sunday Telegraph

Synopsis
What is the point of Kings and Queens What do they do all day? And what does it mean to be one of them? Jeremy Paxman is used to making politicians explain themselves - but royalty has always been off limits. Until now. In "On Royalty" he delves deep into the past and takes a long hard look at our present incumbents to find out just what makes them tick. Along the way he discovers some fascinating and little-known details. Such as: how Albania came to advertise in England for a king; which English queen gave birth in front of 67 people; how easy it is to beat up future kings of England; and, how meeting the Queen is a bit scary - whoever you are...No other book will tell you quite as much about our kings, queens, princes and princesses: who they are and what they're for.

About the Author
Jeremy Paxman is a journalist, best known for his work presenting Newsnight and University Challenge. His books include Friends in High Places, The English and The Political Animal. He lives in Oxfordshire.

Customer Reviews

Perceptive, readable, informative, balanced
A perceptive and highly readable account of royalty in all its forms, inevitably concentrating on the House of Windsor but with amusing and informative diversions elsewhere.

As one would expect of Jeremy Paxman, this book is written with a cynical edge, but is careful to maintain some sense of balance and not descend into the sneering republican rant that I'd feared a book about royalty by someone like Paxman would be.

A grudging vote of confidence in "The Firm"
At the outset of this book Paxman declares that he favours a British Republic but then spends the remainder explaining why the status quo should be retained. There is a slightly schizophrenic element to the book; part of it looks at the glorious past of the British and European royal families and the remainder at what they have become: tabloid fodder slightly below Shilpa Shetty in terms of fame and glamour. Some of the bizarre working practices of the Palace do raise an eyebrow (in this media conscious age Palace staff can only access the internet if they bring in their own laptops from home!) and you get the impression that every royal would prefer the lifestyle of Edward VII, shooting, eating and wearing tweeds. The basic conclusion of the book is what would be the point of change? The royals have little power other than to appoint primeministers (and even this is only at royal descretion after particularly inconclusive election results) and what would replacing them with a president achieve apart from satisfying readers of the Socialist Worker and the Guardian? Would Britain really be better served by a past-his-best politician being appointed head of state (assuming that most power would remain with the primeminister)and would Britain accept President Hague or President Prescott in place of a monarchy with 1000 years of history? The only benefit of a republic would be it would allow the House of Windsor to lead normal lives instead of living in a goldfish bowl where they can be verbally attacked but cannot respond. My advice is that they employ Alistair Campbell and try to make the best out of a bad (non)job.

SPECIFICALLY, BRITISH ROYALTY
There is currently a reigning Queen in Denmark and another in Holland that I can recall, but who - for anyone the world over - is The Queen? We all know, and her name is the title of a box-office-storming film. The theme this time is not just `The Queen' but `Royalty'. The book duly contains a certain amount about royalty in Italy, Albania, Greece, Russia and old-testament Israel, but the author knows where his readers' interest will be focused, and these royal outriders are allowed to feature only insofar as they add colour to the majestic cavalcade of Elizabeth II and the ribald retinue of her own Royal Family, a group title whose reference is again impossible to mistake.

This book is no kind of tract. It is the work of an independent-minded and slightly cantankerous journalist possessed of a strong sense of the ridiculous, a certain sense of history and a grudging fairmindedness. Most of us, if required these days to devise a system of government, would not come up with monarchy as our proposal, and Paxman, I suspect, would be even less inclined than the next man to do so. Nevertheless he has to admit to himself what seems equally obvious to me, namely that republican sentiment in Britain, however logically the case may be argued, has never taken much more hold than the campaign, perhaps equally logical, for phonetic spelling.

In for a penny, in for a gold sovereign, Paxman does his best to explain why the British monarchy is almost universally tolerated and in many quarters held in high affection and regard, although one suspects in higher affection nowadays than regard. He rightly characterizes Bagehot's reasoning as condescending, but he is honest enough to concede (if I read him rightly) that it is somewhere near the truth too. As a sociologist he is an amateur, just as he is not a professional historian, and I'm inclined as an amateur myself in both fields to say that his reasoning is probably all the better for its independence of hierarchies, establishments and thought-police in both disciplines. Paxman is a rationalist prepared to admit that the forces of irrationality are, at least for now, getting the better of the argument. So far does he lean over backwards to be fair that he actually ducks the issue (which I would have loved to have seen him handle) of what sort of vicarious existence is enjoyed or endured by the type of person self-styled `an ardent royalist'.

The style will be familiar to anyone who knows Paxman from his earlier books and from the BBC's Newsnight. As a writer he seems to me to achieve better focus this time than previously. Either Muggeridge or Clive James could show him how to time his punch-lines better, and perhaps he has been reluctant to compromise his impartiality by copying such egocentrists, but he seems to be learning the trick gradually from somewhere. The book is not particularly `structured', and in my opinion it is none the worse for that. The topic of British royalty does not, after all, lend itself readily to any Kantian flow of logic, and I rather sense that Paxman's way of changing the spotlight is likely to be more illuminating in the long run than most attempts to treat the subject systematically. If there is a chapter you can safely skip, it is probably the chapter on the execution of Charles I, which is much better handled in, say, Geoffrey Robertson's `The Tyrannicide Brief'.

Her Britannic Majesty Elizabeth II is now well into her 80's, although likely destined for a good many more years in the job. It is very probable that much of the public attitude to the monarchy has really narrowed itself down to a public view of this dutiful if dull monarch personally. Typically, her broadcasts to the nation are distinguished by such insights as `many events have happened to all of us'. It may all become more eventful after her, but I wonder how many, even self-proclaimed republicans, will really welcome that when it happens.