Tag Archives: Wendy Holden

#BookReview ‘The Princess’ by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden #historical #royal

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The early days of a young girl who is in love with the idea of being in love, with heroes, with paperback romances. Whatever love means. The Princess by Wendy Holden starts with two thirteen-year old girls, Diana Spencer and her friend Sandy, on the train going back to boarding school. Love, thinks Sandy, sounds ‘like a particularly delicious bath, deep and warm, with lots of bubbles.’ Wendy HoldenIt is Diana’s character that beams off the page. Packed with contemporary references, foods, music, expressions, we see what happens when the enthusiasm and can-do attitude of a teenage girl meets the tradition and rules of royal life. Through Diana’s voice and thoughts, through Sandy’s eyes and that of Stephen Barry, valet to the Prince of Wales, we see the young girl who is destined to become a queen. Holden has captured the exuberance as well as the shadows and emotional bruises of a broken family. But this isn’t a love story, it’s the story of old-fashioned matchmaking by two grandmothers.
The second part moves quicker than the first. I enjoyed the meetings between Diana and Princess Margaret. The pace, and sadness, picks up after the engagement when Diana moves into an empty, soulless Buckingham Palace; foreshadowing the days her body would lay at rest at St James’s Palace before her state funeral in 1997.
A poignancy hangs over this tale, the knowledge of the marriage’s failure and Diana’s death. Also the sadness of Charles, trapped in his role, unable to marry the woman he loves, forced into marriage by the need to marry and produce an heir. But The Princess is Diana’s story.
Though young and naïve in this book, she was also smart and not afraid to challenge the status quo. Her influence can be seen in the royal family today. Holden ends her story in 1992, the divorce was finalised in 1996. The book is packed with familiar incidences and quotations mixed in with many inventions. The story of how the famous photograph was taken of her in a transparent skirt at her nursery school in Pimlico, her sister Sarah saying, ‘Your face is on the tea towels,’ the Emmanuels taking in the waist of her wedding dress at every fitting.
Holden gets the tone of Diana’s voice spot-on. So familiar from page one from her public appearances and recordings, it is clear that the spoken words on the page, and the inner thoughts, belong to Diana.
Not as compelling as I expected, perhaps because the story is so well known. The Princess seems to end when it is just getting going.

And here’s my review of THE DUCHESS, also by Wendy Holden.

If you like this, try:-
‘Shrines of Gaiety’ by Kate Atkinson
‘The Forgotten Sister’ by Nicola Cornick
‘The Heiress’ by Molly Greeley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE PRINCESS by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7pI via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Elizabeth Fremantle

#BookReview ‘The Duchess’ by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden #historical #royal

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The Duchess by Wendy Holden turned out to be a surprising read. After all, we all know the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, don’t we? I started the book half-expecting not to finish it, unsure whether I could empathise with Wallis Simpson. But having read Wendy Holden’s first novel – Simply Divine, published in 1999 – and many since, I was curious about her subject matter. I finished it wanting to go back to the beginning again, reading it with fresh eyes. Wendy Holden Holden, a former journalist, has done her research to portray the middle-aged American divorcee. Wallis arrives in London in 1928 with her second husband Ernest, determined to be a part of the party scene. Scrimping and saving, and with the quick mind and equally quick tongue of her mother, she learns to deal with the snubs, putdowns, cold shoulders and snobbishness, all the time backed by her steady husband. After a difficult childhood raised alone by her mother without much money, followed by an abusive first marriage, Wallis now reads the Court Circulars and newspaper stories about the parties of the Bright Young Things and longs to have fun. But she hadn’t bargained on the British class system. With her own sense of chic and by altering cheap dresses herself, Wallis catches the eye of Coco Chanel who offers some salutary advice.
The dual timeline, always from Wallis’s viewpoint, alternates between the Duke of Windsor’s funeral in 1972, and Wallis’s life in England from 1928-1936. After a lot of hustling, scrimping, spending money they don’t have, the Simpsons meet the Prince of Wales and are invited to his home at Fort Belvedere, Windsor, for the weekend. There we see the divisions between the prince’s public role and private political views. Holden juxtaposes the freedom and ‘what if’ American approach to life with the stuffy 1930s British ‘not possible’ view. This culminates finally in the Abdication. The final twist is intriguing.
The first few pages are a slow read and felt more like a historical record – there is a lot of emotional and historical baggage wrapped up in this story – but the story gets going once Wallis is in London. She struggles to be accepted, hosting cocktail ‘open evenings’ that no one attends, always being sparkling and entertaining despite Ernest’s misgivings. We see her vulnerabilities as the difficulties of her childhood, and her first marriage, are revealed. I finished the book with new-found respect for Ernest Simpson.
I read The Duchess in two days on holiday. Compulsive, wicked, sad and funny, I was left with a feeling of regret about the Windsors, and for Ernest, though with the obvious footnote that this is a fictional account not a biography. Even taken with a large pinch of salt, I came to empathise with Wallis; simultaneously head over heels in love but also exasperated, despairing, trapped, powerless, lonely and maligned.
Definitely food for thought. A compulsive fictional take on royal history

And here’s my review of THE PRINCESS, also by Wendy Holden.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Glass House’ by Eve Chase
‘The Orphan’s Gift’ by Renita D’Silva
‘The Cottingley Secret’ by Hazel Gaynor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DUCHESS by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Qe via @SandraDanby