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 enlarge | Author: Jeremy Paxman
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $5.28
You Save: $21.67 (80%)
New (7) Used (8) from $4.42
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 38686
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 370
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.0099
ASIN: B00119UG44
Publication Date: May 7, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
A Very Polite Review March 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Jeremy Paxman endeavours to produce a balanced look at today's British Royal Family. Why they behave as they do, the influences, events that have brought about the current family. He has confined his main comparisons to the Queen and Prince Charles with Prince Phillip in a minor role. It is a very readible and well researched book with many facts being presented in a style that keeps the book moving and does not allow it to get "bogged down". He has trod a very careful path through the Princess Diana era and on going influence. A book that aims to demonstrate how the Monarchy in England has evolved over the centuries.
 Biased leftwing dogma February 28, 2008
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
The author is a leftist who either assumes everyone agrees with his anti-monarchist opinion or, in the condescending manner of many of those of his political ilk, assumes that anyone who does not agree with him is not as intelligent. He implies the idea of monarchy is not rational, a typical leftwing talking point that thereby assumes "rational" is ill-informed and generally ill-read electorates voting in incompetent, nitwit political candidates based on looks and "charisma" and with absolutely no understanding of how to lead a nation. It has become what some of america's founding fathers assumed democracy would become - mob rule with all of its negative consquences. These democratically elected politicians are all in the back pockets of private business interest who care about money before they care about people - and again the world is seeing all of the consequences of that. Some representive government. The current European monarchs are each worth 100 of these elected leaders.
 A Delightful Stroll Through Royalty November 23, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is just what the title says: a polite inquiry into that modern anachronism called Royalty, with particular emphasis on the British royalty. Although the author claims he is an ardent republican (meaning anti-monarchy), he is unsuccessful at defending that claim. By the time I finished reading it, I became convinced he's an ardent monarchist--and I like the reasons he gives. The book never really gains momentum, but then again it's not designed to. Not only is the inquiry polite, but it is also leisurely. There is one exception, however. He comes down pretty hard on Prince Charles, basically saying the poor prince has no proper conception of his real role. Do I recommend this book? Absolutely! For anyone who wants some insight into why royalty is the way it is and why it survives as an institution (and even thrives), this book is a delightful essay. And, yes, there's a bit of dirt thrown in. The one thing he didn't mention, and I write this as an American, is that royalty is probably Britain's number one export--we Americans, while staunchly republican (in the anti-monarchist sense), are absolutely fascinated by the doings of British royalty.
How can someone the size of my grandmother evoke such awe? November 20, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
UK journalist Jeremy Paxman never liked the monarchy. How could thinking people in a democracy put up with such an archaic institution? But when Paxman bumps into the Queen at a reception, he is shocked to find that he is a quivering wreck in her presence. How can someone the size and age of his grandmother evoke such nerves and such awe? This is the question that his book sets out to answer.
SPECIFICALLY, BRITISH ROYALTY October 23, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
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