“This is a book about the world’s most beautiful princess”, states the Swedish journalist Daniel Nyhlén, former royal correspondent of Aftonbladet and Svensk Damtidning, in the preface to his first book, Prinsessan Madeleine, which was published by Lind & Co last week, just in time for the wedding of Princess Madeleine and Christopher O’Neill tomorrow.
And that is indeed what it is. But the author contradicts himself, for having written a paragraph of how beautiful, glamorous, hot and ravishing she is, he goes on to state that he has never cared much about the royals’ “glamorous and extravagant life style” and that there is something much more interesting about Princess Madeleine: the private person.
We are treated to 233 pages which mostly contain photos of Princess Madeleine since the age of nineteen, accompanied by brief texts about her graduation from high school, her friends, her partying, her family, her holidays, her dogs, her work, her public engagements, the Nobel banquets, her sister’s wedding, her beauty, celebrities she has met, her ex-boyfriends, her ex-fiancé, the media, her fiancé, New York and her engagement to the man she will marry tomorrow.
It can all be read in an afternoon, and occasionally it reads like a cheap novel – after Jonas Bergström proposed, “they kissed each other in the sunset over the beautiful-as-a-fairytale Bay of Naples”, we are assured, although neither of the two people present have ever said that they kissed or what time of the day it was. And the author repeatedly uses the word “literally” when he means practically, although I admit it would have been fun to see Princess Madeleine literally steal the show.
The photos are a mix of official portraits, photos from public engagements and paparazzi snapshots, some of them of very little interest. Focusing on Princess Madeleine’s looks, the author rarely gets beyond the surface, and therefore the book never really gets interesting. But Princess Madeleine is a very private person, and perhaps Nyhlén’s approach is at least better than that of Johan T. Lindwall of Expressen, who, in his so-called biographies of Princess Madeleine and Crown Princess Victoria, wants us to believe that he knows the members of the royal family so well that he can even tell us what they thought and did when alone in a room. And I am sure many “royalty fans” will buy this book, which is probably also the main reason why it has been written and published.
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Friday, 7 June 2013
Thursday, 29 November 2012
New books: The wit and wisdom of Margrethe II
Om man så må sige – 350 Dronning Margrethe-citater, published by Lindhardt & Ringhof, is arranged alphabetically, ranging from “abdikation” to “året” (the year) and covering a vast field of topics on the way from A to Å.
I am not sure if an alphabetical order is the best way of arranging such a book; it might perhaps have been more interesting if related topics had been grouped together. As it is, one will for instance find a quote about the Order of the Elephant under E for “Elefantordenen”, while a quote about orders in general is found under “O” for “ordensvæsen”.
The quotes are taken from the Queen’s speeches and from Andersen’s interviews with her for her biography, but primarily from the many, many interviews Queen Margrethe has given to newspapers, magazines, television and books. The oldest are from 1966, the newest very recent.
Occasionally one might have wished for other quotes to have been selected. For instance, there are two quotes about “ungdommen” (young people), both of them dating from 1975, when the Queen herself was fairly young. One supposes her views on that topic may have developed since then. On a couple of occasions I could also think of better Queen Margrethe quotes than those chosen for this book.
Queen Margrethe is interesting, intelligent and witty, and knows how to utilise the Danish language (only one utterance is quoted in another language than Danish). Thus this is a book full of pearls. Just a few examples will be enough:
“We do not have that much to moan about when one thinks of what people did not moan about before”.
“When one loves one gets more to lose”.
“I do not think one should chase the fashions of the day, concerning neither sweaters nor opinions”.
“Generalisations must be broken down on the spot”.
“One would not die from my cooking, but I am not sure one would survive my driving”.
“One may well use one’s head even though one is in love. Someone has said that one cannot prevent lightening from striking – but one may prevent the whole town from burning down”.
“It is not possible to develop into a complete human being if one must live in a room with only three walls”.
“The monarchy is an anachronism if one decides that it should be one”.
“When people say that I may not speak, they forget that I may well think. I may think what I want, like everyone else. I shall just refrain from saying everything I think. That might be something many people should do once in a while”.
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
New books: The decline of monarchy in Sweden
The book opens with a 50-page introduction to the development of royal power from the reign of Gustaf V in the sixteenth century to Oscar I. However, the majority of the book concerns the developments since Carl XV, who came to the throne in 1859 and whose reign marks the beginning of the decline. Berggren’s analyses of the significant events and developments which led to the King’s powers’ continuous decline are very sharp. To those not too familiar with the story of the decline of monarchical power in Sweden this book will probably be an enlightening eye-opener.
The chapter on Carl XV is admirable, clearly setting out why his reign was a turning-point and summing up the key events which inflicted defeats on the King’s power from which it never recovered. The process continued through the turbulent reigns of Oscar II and Gustaf V into the rather more peaceful years of the old and generally beloved Gustaf VI Adolf, whose reign ended with the so-called Torekov agreement of 1971, whereby the monarch was confined to a symbolic role. Berggren proves to be an expert guide through the political events of this century of monarchical decline and retains a sharp eye for the turning points. About the reign of the current King, however, he has little to say (indeed he contends that it is wrong to say that Carl XVI Gustaf “reigns” at all).
Unlike most Swedish authors Berggren takes into account the crucial fact that the first four Bernadotte monarchs were also kings of Norway, which was in a personal union with Sweden from 1814 to 1905. Swedish writers tend to leave out Norwegian issues and to treat the kings as Swedish monarchs only, which means that much of vital importance is ignored. Berggren does not make this mistake, and is to be commended for his ability to present the often complex and entangled political strives of the late nineteenth century, which eventually led to the dissolution of the union, in a clear and accessible prose.
However, one might wish that Berggren would have seen the developments in the two kingdoms more in relation to each other. For instance, one of the main reason why Oscar II, following his deposal as King of Norway in 1905, declined the offer of the Norwegian crown for a Bernadotte prince, was concern that such a move might undermine the standing of the monarchy in Sweden as well as in Norway, and diaries and memoirs suggest a certain Swedish discontent with the royal family in the wake of the union’s dissolution. But how events in one country influenced the monarchy in the other is a topic Berggren avoids.
The book’s greatest weakness is indeed its lack of context. While Berggren’s survey of the political events which led to the decline of monarchical powers is in itself excellent, he does not say more than a few words about the ideas and currents of the time, which were surely the preconditions for the political developments influencing the role of the monarchy.
The author also demonstrates an interest in the monarchs’ sex lives which does not really belong in such a book. Furthermore there are some errors and over-simplifications. For instance the author writes that the famous signature stamp of the Age of Liberty was to prevent the King from refusing to give assent, but, as Jonas Nordin has shown in his excellent book Frihetstidens monarki, the main reason for acquiring this stamp was to save the King from the burden of having to sign everything by hand and it was only rarely used to stamp his signature onto documents he was unwilling to sign. He misspells the name of the leader of the Left throughout (“Svedrup” rather than Sverdrup) and that his claim that the Norwegian Parliament altered the wording of Oscar II’s refusal to give the royal assent to the consular bill of 1905 is nonsense. His claim that Queen Victoria’s behaviour during World War I bordered on the treasonous seems exaggerated given that Sweden was not actually at war.
The last chapter is not worthy of the high standard of the rest of the book. It is indeed a curious chapter, a mix of various topics, much of it consisting of polemics against various books on the monarchy and the royal family published between 2006 and 2010. For instance, there are several pages about the very well-known story of how Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte became Crown Prince of Sweden in 1810, all of it in order to argue that the word “we” used in the subtitle of the notoriously unreliable author and tabloid journalist Herman Lindqvist’s book on Carl XIV Johan, “The Man We Elected”, is misplaced.
What makes this chapter even more confused and confusing is that it was obviously written in 2010 and only very lightly updated since then. And given the events of the past two years, which have seen the standing of King Carl Gustaf dramatically undermined, much of this chapter is no longer relevant – in particular what Berggren considers the deference shown to the royal family by the media.
Monday, 19 November 2012
New books: Mountbatten’s daughter, Elizabeth II’s lady-in-waiting
In Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson last month, Lady Pamela Hicks tells the story of her early years with humour and a sharp eye for the telling detail. She relates the story of her life from her privileged childhood, the “exile” in the United States in the early stages of World War II, her time in India while her father was its last viceroy and the tours on which she accompanied the current Queen as lady-in-waiting. These travels include the visit to Kenya in February 1952 which was cut short by the death of George VI and the accession of Elizabeth II, which Lady Pamela observed at first hand.
As children of famous parents often are in their memoirs, Lady Pamela is admiring and generally uncritical of her parents. Yet she is very candid about her parents’ unusual marriage, and how their open infidelity to each other brought their lovers into the children’s lives in what seems a most natural manner and how these lovers themselves became important to the two Mountbatten daughters. The portrayal of her paternal grandmother, Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven, stands out as one of the most memorable aspects of the book, along with her loving depiction of the time she spent in India with her parents during that country’s transition from colonial status to independence.
There seems to be a set of “approved” royal anecdotes which are included in all such memoirs (how many times have we not read for instance of how the then Princess Elizabeth’s tiara snapped and the pearls and the bridal bouquet had been mislaid just before she set off for her wedding?), but besides these there are many amusing stories in this book, some of them hilarious.
Occasionally Lady Pamela gets her facts wrong, for instance by giving a wrong date or misspelling a name, or imagining she departed from “JFK” airport in the 1940s when she apparently means La Guardia. And there is a glowing account of what “a privilege” it was to meet “the legendary King Haakon of Norway”, who “was deeply revered by his countrymen as a war hero, a symbol of his people’s resistance”, before Lady Pamela goes on to tell us how he “remained defiantly in his palace and rode out on his white horse through the streets of Oslo every day”, which is the exact opposite of what King Haakon actually did (leading a government in exile from London), but reminiscent of what his brother, King Christian X of Denmark, did.
The book ends with Queen Elizabeth II’s great Commonwealth tour following her accession and then a brief epilogue about Lady Pamela’s marriage to the designer David Hicks in 1960 and how they learned of the death of her mother upon returning from their honeymoon. As such it is not a complete autobiography and indeed I think this early end to the book makes Lady Pamela herself appear less interesting than what she might actually be.
There had been marital approaches made by Prince Georg of Denmark, who was turned down by Lord Mountbatten without Lady Pamela having been consulted. There was a romance with a Lebanese man and, we are told, ten proposals of marriage. But it was only when she met an untypical suitor in the shape of David Hicks that she was “completely bowled over”.
“It was an unorthodox match but one that would change my life completely”, she writes. “After twenty-nine years as the dutiful daughter of a family at the heart of British society, with all its traditions and ceremonies, I was about to enter a completely new world – of fashion, design and the whirlwind of the 1960s”. The contrast between the world into which she was born and the world into which she married must have led to interesting experiences and, perhaps, difficult transitions, something which might have been an interesting tale. But perhaps Lady Pamela Hicks considers that a different story?
Sunday, 4 November 2012
New books: The Queen Mother in her own words
The book runs to 666 pages and covers the huge time span from 1909 until 2001. In between the letters there are also some extracts from the diaries she occasionally wrote in younger years, a few speeches and extracts from recorded conversations with Eric Anderson in 1994 and 1995. The letters are written to a great many different addressees and only very occasionally has the editor chosen to include extracts from letters written to Queen Elizabeth.
Obviously, not all of the letters are equally interesting. The largest section of the book is devoted to the brief fifteen years when she was Queen, while less space is given to her five decades as Queen Mother. To me this seems a reasonable solution, as her years as Queen were obviously more interesting and event-filled than her long widowhood. As the wife of the monarch she was naturally more involved in affairs than as the mother of the monarch, and there are occasional glimpses of her machinations behind the scenes during World War II – for instance how she tried to ensure that the King got the media attention she thought he deserved, and criticism of the King’s advisers in that respect as well as of Churchill for upstaging her husband in a way she thought undermined his position.
There are, in my opinion, perhaps too many letters included from the teenage Lady Elizabeth to her governess turned best friend Beryl Poignand, which deal with such things as her infatuation with the Justin Biebers of a hundred years ago. On the other hand one is charmed when the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth is going to a tea “to meet Princess Mary and Prince Albert next Sunday”, adding that “[t]hey don’t frighten me quite as much as Queens” (“rather nice” was her comment, after the tea, about the Prince who would one day make her Queen). Some of her observations of royal life shortly after her marriage, seen with the eyes of one who was until recently an outsider, are also quite amusing.
Through the letters the reader gets closer to a person who was highly visible for eighty years, but who nevertheless managed to remain very private. In her letters Queen Elizabeth made no attempt at hiding her views on party politics. Already in 1924 she describes herself as “extremely anti-Labour”, followed by other harsh words through the years and herself longing to use her vote and dispatching “a busload of servants up to London” to vote for the Conservative candidate Duff Cooper in 1931.
She declares her hate for the League of Nations and her view that it is “a crime for women to take jobs that men can do as well”. Gandhi was in her eyes “an old blackmailer […], practically committing murder to gain his own ends […]”. There are no signs of her having become less conservative with time, but apparently she learned to express herself somewhat more diplomatically on political matters with the passing of the years and in her old age even acknowledged that Attlee had been “a very good Prime Minister”.
On the other hand she mostly remained discreet about family matters, although there are some critical remarks about her parents-in-law and expressions of the young Duchess’s sense of being frustrated in her wishes by “Press & Precedent”.
Occasionally her letters are self-revelatory in a way which was perhaps unintended. For instance, when Beryl Poignand in 1930 is about to publish a book on Princess Elizabeth, the Duchess of York asks only for the removal of a suggestion that she might one day be Queen. “It always irritates me, this assumption that the Prince of Wales will not marry – he is quiet young and it is rude to him in a way too”, she writes, and one is left wondering if it was perhaps also a thought the Duchess herself was uncomfortable with.
On the subject of King Edward VIII one notes how close she used to be to him in the early years of her marriage. When he abdicated she found it “hard to believe that the one that we knew as Prince of Wales could possibly have done what King Edward did” – to her, the Prince of Wales and King Edward were apparently almost two different men. Queen Elizabeth is often said to have thought that the abdication, and thus in fact Edward VIII, caused the early death of her husband. This is not a view expressed in any of the letters quoted, but already in 1951 we find her referring to the Duke of Windsor as “the part author of the King’s troubles”.
Her deep sense of loss after King George’s death is very evident, as is the degree to which she had depended on him and how he, as she wrote to Queen Mary on the day of his death, had been her “whole life”. Doing things without him “nearly kills one”, she writes in 1954. The letters speak of a blackness which engulfed her for years after his death – in 1957 she was still struggling to find peace of mind – but also of her resolve to never give in, as “the King never gave in, and I am determined to try & do what he would have wished”.
Her letters to Queen Elizabeth II in particular speak of a sense of loneliness which apparently never left her after the death of her husband (the letters suggest that her relationship with Princess Margaret was less confidential than with her elder daughter). The most moving personal aspect of this book is perhaps that of the contrast between the joy which always radiated from the Queen Mother in public and the melancholy and loneliness she felt in private as she lived on for fifty years after losing the man she had been reluctant to marry but who became everything to her. In that way this collection of letters is also implicitly a love story in itself.
Monday, 8 October 2012
New books: Royal anti-Nazis
According to the author’s foreword, it “is actually two books in one, each dependent on the other”. The first half deals with the rise of Nazism in Germany; the second is mostly four case studies of royal anti-Nazis. It seems quite obvious that the result would have been much more interesting and readable if the two parts had been worked into an entity where the two things were seen in relation to each other.
The author admits that he “came to the subject of the lead up to the Second World War with little prior knowledge”. While this may seems very surprising for a historian, it makes one realise why the first half of the book is taken up with what seems to be the author’s attempt to explain to himself what Nazism, eugenics, Social Darwinism et al was and how Nazi Germany and World War II came about.
The second part looks at the wartime stories of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, ex-Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, Prince Hubertus of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg and ex-Crown Prince Otto of Austria-Hungary and his Hohenberg cousins, before adding a chapter summarising what other royals did during the war.
As much as a book about royal resistance to Nazism this is a book about various ideas about monarchical restoration in Germany and Austria-Hungary, and indeed it seems to be the author’s idea that Nazism and World War II would not have happened if the monarchies had been restored in these countries.
The author seems to believe that those belonging to royal families are somehow bound to be good men (there is also an uncomfortable religious overtone which even leads Millard to pronounce god’s blessing over one of his subjects). “Princes are the products of, and are and [sic] susceptible to, the influences of their age like anyone else, but in some ways their position and upbringing equips them [with the ability] to see over the fence and consider what they are witnessing with a little more clarity, perspective and dispassion than most other people”. If this is true, one wonders how so many monarchies have nevertheless destroyed themselves? “Such men are born leaders”, Millard assures us, “brought up to serve their countries and, if denied their destiny, it naturally becomes their perceived duty to serve all humanity”. This is a gross generalisation and it would be easy to point out counter-examples.
Millard stares himself blind on monarchies, even claiming that “[t]he German resistance movement did not and could not exist in any cohesive form without the unifying element of monarchy represented by the modern, Left-leaning Prince Louis Ferdinand, who was preferred future head of state following the fall of Hitler and his regime”. He assures the readers that “[m]onarchy was a potential defence against Hitler before the war [and(?)] became a focus of national unity and identity for exiles and anti-Nazis in Europe during the conflict”. These are widely exaggerated ideas; to the best of my knowledge the restoration of the Hohenzollerns was never a central aim for the German anti-Nazi movement, nor was this movement dependent on the deposed dynasties for to be able to exist.
“Their quiet defiance must have played its part in undermining the pretended authority of the dictator”, the author likes to think. He goes on to list several reasons why Hitler would never have come to power if Germany had been a monarchy, including that Prince Louis Ferdinand would not have been personally inclined to appoint him chancellor and that Hitler could not have opposed or reversed the will of the people. But Millard fails to take into account that Nazism had massive popular support in Germany and that Hitler was democratically elected.
Concerning Austria, we learn that “[r]estoration of the monarchy, there also, promised national integrity and moderate government safe from the Nazi menace”. However, the author fails to make any convincing argument for why an Austrian monarchy would have prevented the Anschluss that the Austrian republic did not manage to prevent. “There could have been no takeover of Austria without a fight and a real risk of international condemnation and foreign involvement”, we learn, without the author explaining why the Austrians themselves, who generally welcomed the German takeover, and the world, who did nothing in response to it, would have reacted differently if Austria had been a monarchy rather than a republic. Indeed this seems to be little but fanciful fantasies and wishful thinking by the author.
“Democracy is not automatically representative and what is representative is not always democratic”, the author explains, “but sensibly there was general agreement among the princes featured in this book – and there is agreement among their heirs [!] – that democracy should be the principal element of government[,] guided, assisted and defended by other constitutional elements, such as the hereditary principle and the rule of law as enshrined constitutionally”.
But how does he imagine that individuals such an Emperor Otto or Emperor Louis Ferdinand would have managed to stop a mass movement like Nazism? And how is this fundamental democratic spirit reconcilable with the idea that Louis Ferdinand would have refused to appoint the winner of democratic elections chancellor? And what about Italy, one may ask? The existence of a monarchy did not exactly prevent the rise of Mussolini.
To make things worse, the book is not well written. Sometimes the author jumps back and forth in time in a way that makes it almost impossible to follow events, for instance making it seem as though King Carol II of Romania was deposed twice and leaving one wondering where Prince Napoléon had been before “his return to Switzerland”.
There are many and long quotes in this book, indeed it seems sometimes to consist of little but quotes, which gives the impression that the author does not feel confident enough to stand on his own feet. Not all of the quotes are very relevant or well-chosen. For instance, most of what he has to say about the British royal family during World War II deals with the relationship between King George VI and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt until 1941. Having said that King George wanted to be present during D Day, the author suddenly quotes a long and seemingly random passage from an article in a 2011 issue of Time magazine about the royal visit to the USA in 1939, all of it information which could have found many other places. The passage about Britain’s royal family suddenly ends with an unexpected list of some random royals from various countries and various ages who were awarded the Garter, which the author imagines “was a sign of diplomatic if not military alliance from its inception when applied to foreign heads of state”.
“There will, no doubt, be errors (all mine), but hopefully none of substance”, the author writes in the foreword, before going on to tell us that Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was married to her son-in-law Prince Bernhard, that King Haakon VII of Norway was the brother of his adversary King Gustaf V of Sweden, that Sovereign Prince Louis II of Monaco was the father of his grandson “Rainer” (indeed names tend to be misspelt throughout) and so on. When Marshal Antonescu shows disrespect towards “his sovereign”, King Mihai of Romania, he has suddenly become the “dictator of Hungary”.
One also wonders about the author’s choice of sources. There are two German books, one Czech book and a German book about the Hohenbergs listed in the bibliography; everything else is in English. The author says in the foreword that he has “used a lot of English and American sources because this book is aimed primarily at an English-speaking audience”. But surely that is no reason to leave out the relevant literature from other countries and I can hardly imagine that English-speaking readers would find any reason to object to the use of relevant sources even if originally written in a foreign language. Was there for instance nothing of interest or relevance about ex-Crown Prince Rupprecht to find in Dieter J. Weiß’s monumental political biography from 2007, so that the author had to try to piece together his story from what little has been written about him in English?
The overall impression is of a book written by an author whose insufficient knowledge of Nazi Germany and World War II coupled with his blind faith in monarchy make him fail to see the things he write about in their proper context and grossly exaggerate the importance of his subjects. As it is this book might as well not have been published.
Monday, 10 September 2012
New books: Jubilee diamonds
While Roberts’s volume is the definite account, de Guitaut’s book aims at a more general audience. While Roberts’s book gives the detailed history of 74 items of jewellery, there are only 22 included in this book, but the selection is varied and representative of many different sort of diamonds, types of jewellery and historical epochs. The items included in de Guitaut’s book are those which are also included in the exhibition.
de Guitaut’s book also includes some items from the diamond exhibition which are not included in Roberts’s book, most of them not Queen Elizabeth’s personal property: Queen Victoria’s small diamond crown, Queen Alexandra’s coronation fan, a snuff box once belonging to King Friedrich II of Prussia and two jewelled swords.
It opens with a short general introduction to the history of diamonds and their association with the English/British royal family. Like Roberts’s book it is well illustrated, both with close-ups of the jewels and photos of them being used. However, there are some mistakes in the captions which appear unnecessary: Lord Snowdon is certainly not 119 years old, although a caption says he is born in 1893; the King of Norway’s name is not Harold, but Harald; and a photo of Queen Mary wearing the tiara and necklace made for the Dehli Durbar in 1911 cannot possibly show her “as Princess of Wales” in 1910, as the jewellery had not yet been created by then.
Caroline de Guitaut’s book can well be read on its own as an introduction to the British royal diamonds, but also as a useful supplement to Roberts’s larger book.
Monday, 3 September 2012
New books: British royal diamonds
However, Roberts’s monumental book, The Queen’s Diamonds, is not a complete account of all the jewels in the possession of Queen Elizabeth II. Such a work would surely require volumes, and this book is restricted to jewellery consisting entirely or primarily of diamonds, leaving out the emeralds, the sapphires, the rubies and so on. But this seems a fitting choice not only given the occasion of the diamond jubilee, but also because diamonds are arguably the stones most worn by and most associated with Queen Elizabeth. (Britain is also one of the few countries where the crown jewels are still worn by the Queen, but these are not included in the book as they are state property and not personal possessions of the monarch).
The book treats the selection of jewels chronologically. There are chapters devoted to Queen Adelaide, Queen Victoria, Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) and Queen Elizabeth II, and after an introduction about each queen, her jewellery and her use of it we find what is to all means and purposes a catalogue of individual pieces of jewellery acquired by the queen in question, describing their origins, their provenance and the changes made to them.
Altogether there are some 74 pieces of jewellery included in the book, among them eleven tiaras and several necklaces, brooches, earrings, bracelets, pendants, rings and other items. There are three entries for Queen Adelaide, eight for Queen Victoria, six for Queen Alexandra, 29 for Queen Mary, fourteen for the late Queen Elizabeth and fourteen for Queen Elizabeth II, reflecting that much of the jewels worn by the current Queen have been acquired during the past three generations.
The book is very richly illustrated. All the items are shown in full, but for many there are also detailed close-ups, and for most of them there are also historical photos of the jewels being worn (sometimes the captions does not say when and where, which is a minus).
Along the way, some mysteries are solved and some misunderstandings corrected, making this the definite account of the British royal diamonds. However, while reading the book I occasionally wished for more details. For instance, the footnote saying that one of the tiaras most frequently worn by Queen Alexandra was inherited by Princess Victoria and then “disposed of” begs the questions how, when and perhaps why. Sometimes a subtle difference in wording also seems to suggest what might have been spelt out. For instance, the phrase “was loaned” seems to suggest an occasional loan, while the phrase “has been loaned” appears to indicate a permanent loan.
Perhaps one might also wish for more on each queen’s use of jewels, for instance how they used their jewellery for ceremonial purposes and for the enhancement and staging of the monarchy and themselves. For instance one may note that the current Queen has worn the so-called Diamond Diadem on her arrival to every State Opening of Parliament, but apparently this was not the case with her predecessors (her mother and grandmother wore private tiaras or their coronation crowns without arches). Roberts claims that the diadem has been worn by all the queens treated in the book and notes that it was slightly altered in 1937 for George VI’s consort. But apparently there is no record of Queen Elizabeth actually having worn it, which makes one wonder what may be the reasons for this.
This being an “official” publication means that some potentially interesting issues are passed over, probably out of discretion. For instance, Roberts writes that Queen Adelaide dutifully handed over what was considered crown heirlooms to Queen Victoria within days of William IV’s death and we know from James Pope-Hennessy’s official biography of Queen Mary that it caused some tensions when Queen Alexandra after the death of Edward VII insisted on retaining some of the jewels which should by right have been handed over to the new Queen. In Roberts’s book one notes that some of these crown heirlooms, which should have passed to Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, were apparently retained by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother for a full fifty years until her own death. No point is made out of this, but one may wonder if this was by special arrangement or if the new Queen simply did not care (or thought she already had access to enough jewellery as it was).
Nevertheless, this is a well-researched and beautifully illustrated account of the diamonds in the possession of Queen Elizabeth II and the book will by its sheer existence be an inescapable work of reference for anyone with an interest in the history of royal jewels.
Monday, 20 August 2012
New books: Europe’s female monarchs
Some might perhaps object that there had been several female monarchs in between, but, Monter argues, the advent of constitutional monarchy in the early nineteenth century meant that these queens regnant were not executive heads of state. The women who reigned over European kingdoms during the preceding five centuries were, on the other hand, also heads of government.
There were thirty of them, ranging from the sixteen-year-old Jeanne II, who became Queen of Navarre in 1328, to the forty-two-year-old Maria I of Portugal, whose effective reign came to an end with her mental breakdown in 1792 and the regency of her son from 1799. Except from France, the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States, female monarchs were found all over Europe, covering the map from Oslo in the north to Palermo in the south, and from Lisbon in the west to Nicosia in the east.
There had, as her numeral alone suggest, been female monarchs even before Jeanne II, and Monter gives an overview of female rule both before 1300 and outside Europe before embarking on his main subject. In Europe, female monarchs before 1300 were mostly found in Latin countries during the twelfth century, and must then be considered anomalies. After 1300, they became a more regular, although still rare occurrence, and, Monter points out, “centered in Christian Europe”, while vanishing from most Asian monarchies. The author identifies two ways through which most female monarchs acceded to their thrones: inheritance from fathers and usurpation by regents.
Monter shows how his list of thirty female monarchs through five centuries might meaningfully be split into two halves to find that most of the fifteen rulers during the first 250 years “were younger women who generally ruled in close association with and often politically subordinated to their husbands”. After 1550, on the other hand, the majority of the female monarchs “governed her kingdom autonomously for at least part of her reign”, while husbands as co-rulers became rarer and were eventually reduced to subordinated positions – if the female monarchs were married at all.
Fernando of Aragón and Isabel of Castile are without doubt the most famous – and arguably the most successful – couple to have served as joint monarchs, but the author highlights the pioneering role of the now mostly forgotten Kingdom of Navarre, which saw unusually many female monarchs, for the concept of joint rule between a queen regnant and her husband (Danish readers might well note that the part of France from which hails the family of Henrik the Prince Consort, who has often voiced the idea that he ought to be King Consort, was subject to the monarchs of Navarre).
When Jeanne II became Queen of Navarre in 1328, she and her husband insisted on a joint coronation, despite official Navarrese opposition, and the reins of power were thereafter left in the hands of the King Consort, Philippe of Evreux. This, which Monter calls “the Navarrese solution to female inheritance”, became the norm throughout Europe for most of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – although there were of course exceptions. But, the author points out, this solution failed everywhere but in Navarre, and in Navarre itself it eventually unravelled following the death in 1441 of Queen Blanche, whose widower clung on to the throne until his death 38 years later, preventing their son from ascending the throne.
Female regents are not included in this book; although rulers, they held power only temporarily and were not monarchs in their own rights. Nevertheless Monter chooses to take a closer look at some female regents which he considers of great importance for the development whereby it was gradually accepted that women ruled on their own even while married. This, Monter considers, was “greatly assisted by various printed, painted, sculpted, and engraved endorsements of women’s capacities for ruling, [...] the most audacious of these [...] sponsored or commissioned not by female monarchs (whose sovereignty was permanent and divinely ordained) but by eight female regents, each of whom governed a major state for at least five years between 1507 and 1633”.
1550 marks the turning point in Monter’s book. The six queens regnant between 1550 and 1700 were married for a total of only 20 % of their reigns (nineteen of eighty-eight years), and two of them (Elizabeth I of England and Christina of Sweden) never married at all. In England, the husband of Mary I, Philip II of Spain, was accorded the title of King, but a prenuptial agreement left him no independent powers, an act which Monter considers “a watershed in the history of marriages of royal heiresses”.
While the first husband of Mary Queen of Scots was given the crown matrimonial, her second husband received the title of king, but without the right to act on his own, and her third husband did not receive the royal title. At the same time, the Navarrese pattern “broke down in Navarre itself”, where Jeanne III d’Albret, despite strong opposition from the estates, insisted on a joint role with her husband and got her way. But the Queen’s conversion to the Reformed church caused the marriage to break down, and Queen Jeanne and King Antoine found themselves on opposing sides in the religious wars (in which the King was killed).
There were two notable exceptions to the general trend at this time. The joint rule of William III and Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland was in reality William III’s sole rule, and when the Swedish estates refused to agree to a joint rule, Queen Ulrika Eleonora abdicated in favour of her husband, who became King Fredrik I. But, as the author points out, “England after 1688 looks less like the dawn of modern liberalism than the last gasp of the Middle Ages”. And when William III died and Queen Anne came to the throne, her husband received neither title nor powers.
Like Queen Anne, Western Europe’s two other female monarchs of the eighteenth century – Maria Theresia of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia and Maria I of Portugal – “exercised power while finding various ways to keep their husbands in politically useful but subordinate roles”. And none of the four Russian empresses of the eighteenth century was married at any stage of her reign. So within five centuries, Europe moved from a situation where female monarchs were generally dependent on their husbands to a situation where male consorts, if they existed at all, were generally sidelined and the female monarch exercised her powers on her own. Thus it seems quite ironic that, after the 1790s, 180 years would pass before a woman again became the actual rather than merely symbolic head of a European government.
Monter finds that women did not generally rule very differently from men; “for all the talk about female inferiority and frailty, having a woman as divine-right sovereign made very little practical difference in the way governments actually operated”. However, the reigns of female monarchs were much likelier than those of male monarchs to be prematurely or dramatically terminated. The statistics also show that only 40 % of female monarchs, as opposed to 70 % of male monarchs, were succeeded by their direct descendants.
Monter’s analytical powers seem to be at their sharpest in the earlier parts of the book; towards the end it tends to read too much like a collection of short biographies of female monarchs. The book also suffers from its lack of a final and concluding chapter where the author might have summed up his findings; instead he treats the readers to an epilogue about how female monarchs have been represented in twentieth century films, pointing out that while “[s]uccessful women rulers from Hatsheput to Thatcher have been rulers first and women second [...], popular representations of them have always reversed these aspects because romance sells infinitely better than political power in female hands”.
There are some factual mistakes to be found and, when attempting to cover such a vast field, the author cannot possibly have as sure a grasp on all countries and persons involved. There are, obviously, also some language barriers to struggle with. A Norwegian historian like myself might notice that this colours some of what he writes about the Scandinavian female monarchs. And when covering such a vast topic in little more than 200 pages, there will necessarily be some summarising and generalising which causes some nuances to be lost – for instance one might argue that there were certain variances in Navarre which are lost and that the author’s view of “the Navarrese solution” is somewhat too static.
But although one may occasionally disagree with some of the author’s view, the main impression is that this is a significant contribution to the historiography of European monarchies as well as of female rule. There have in recent years been several studies devoted to female monarchs – among them Charles Beem’s The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History (2006) and Karin Tegenborg Falkdalen’s Kungen är en kvinna – Retorik och praktik kring kvinnliga monarker under tidigmodern tid (2003), both of them excellent – but William Monter’s book is the first study to cover all Europe and such a large time span. This enables him to see individual queens regnant in an international context and to describe general trends which have until now not been clearly identified. That alone makes this book a study of great value which might well inspire many future works on the challenges which arose when women were kings.
Monday, 13 August 2012
New books: The all too familiar story of the early years of Elizabeth II
Now the historian Kate Williams has attempted to do the same with the subject of Prince Philip’s wife. Sadly Young Elizabeth: The Making of Our Queen, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in June, is the very opposite of Eade’s study: a book which adds nothing to our understanding of Queen Elizabeth II.
The book is well-written and an easy read (326 pages in a small format), and traces the story from the births of Queen Elizabeth’s parents to how Princess Margaret dealt with the Peter Townsend crisis in the mid-1950s. The starting and ending points themselves say something about one of the book’s weaknesses, namely that the choice of what to include sometimes seems rather random and that the author appears to struggle to see what is relevant and significant and what is not.
The very well-known story of Elizabeth II’s early years is told strictly chronologically and Williams has no new facts or insight to add, nor does she offer any new perspectives. Except for the abdication of Edward VIII we hear very little about who or what influenced the young Elizabeth and shaped her character and attitudes.
Carelessness about facts, which also ruined her contribution to last year’s book about English royal weddings, seems to be characteristic of Kate Williams’s writings.
A list of all the factual mistakes of this book would fill pages. On the first page following the prologue, we learn that George VI was “the second son and third child of King George V”, but we hear no more about who this mystery elder sister might have been. His elder brother, the future Edward VIII, is said to have been born in 1893 rather than in 1894, while the birth of the future George VI in 1895 is said to have taken place on the 35th anniversary of Prince Albert’s death in 1861.
The child born on the anniversary was named Albert and only later took the name George VI, which causes Williams to mix up Albert with his younger brother George. Of the third brother, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who seems to have been dull and has been called dim-witted, but was duty-conscious and hard-working, we learn the startling new fact that he “grew up to be as dishonest and greedy as the sons of George III”.
Queen Victoria’s daughters Louise (died 1939) and Beatrice (died 1944) would certainly have been surprised to learn that, at the time of Princess Elizabeth’s birth in 1926, their brother Arthur was “[the] last surviving child of Queen Victoria”. Perhaps the author has a soft spot for Prince Arthur, for he is also accorded the honour of having been wanted for Greek King in 1863, although it was in fact his brother Alfred the Greeks desired.
There were certainly much more than twenty reigning monarchs in Europe in 1895; Emperor Wilhelm II did not agree to abdicate on 9 November 1918 but was deposed against his will; Prince George did not marry “Princess Marina of Kent”, but Princess Marina of Greece, in 1934; it was Queen Mary’s grandparents, not her parents, who made a morganatic marriage; the Sudetenland and the Sudeten Germans are consistently called “Sudatenland” and “Sudaten”; Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, not 1 May; King Haakon did not attend Prince Charles’s christening; Queen Mary did in fact not leave absolutely nothing in her will to the Queen Mother (who actually inherited several pieces of jewellery); Edward VII was not the grandfather, but the great-grandfather of Princess Margaret; and Queen Elizabeth II did not walk in her father’s funeral procession, which also did not take place on 16, but on 15, February 1952.
Prince Philip was not born second in line to the Greek throne and his grandfather did not come to the Greek throne in 1863 “after a long and bitter war for independence with the Ottoman Empire” (that was Otto of Bavaria three decades before). And when will British writers stop repeating the utter nonsense that Prince Philip, the son of a Greek father and a British mother, “was German”? The practice whereby one acquires the nationality of one’s brothers-in-law seems to be limited to the case of Prince Philip. But then again, Williams also wants us to believe that Queen Mary was indeed a German citizen and “might, theoretically, have qualified for interning [during World War II], had she not been too old”.
To claim that Princess Elizabeth was destined to be the “most powerful woman in Europe” surely grossly overestimates the powers of the constitutional monarch of Britain. On the other hand it is also quite surprising to learn on the penultimate page that the Commonwealth is currently breaking up (it has in fact more members than ever) and that Jamaica “has expressed its desire to depart”. Republican voices have indeed been heard in Jamaica recently, but this is not at all the same as leaving the Commonwealth.
Here we have Louis Mountbatten rather than his father resigning as First Sea Lord in 1914 and it seems the author wants us to believe that Winston Churchill resigned voluntarily at the end of World War II while he was in fact, rather surprisingly, ousted by a general election. When World War II comes to an end (Williams seem to think that it ended on VE Day, forgetting that the war outside Europe went on for several more months) the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret suffers the sudden death the following Christmas of their nanny Clara Knight, who had by that time in fact already been dead for four years. By 1948, Williams has the Duke and Duchess of Windsor living serenely in Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace. And so on and so forth.
To add to this, titles are often wrong. Princess Mary is again and again referred to as “the Princess Royal” at times when the title still belonged to Princess Louise; Queen Mary is referred to as “the Queen” in the reign of George VI; Queen Elizabeth as “the Queen Mother” in the reign of her husband and Elizabeth II herself as “the Queen” on her wedding day, several years before the death of her father made her so. The wife of Edward VII fares worse; she is consistently referred to as “Princess Alexandra” in the reign of her husband.
There are also several contradictions. To name just one example, we learn that the Duke of Windsor was the only European royal not invited to the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, but later hear that Prince Philip’s three surviving sisters were not invited either.
The author is surely the person primarily responsible for these failures, but the publishers also seem to have neglected their duty to ensure the quality of the books they offer for sale. The publishers are probably also the ones to blame for the decision not to include the endnotes in the book itself, but to relegate them to a website. This solution is surely worthless, unless the reader sits in front of his or her computer screen while reading the book. And given that no website lasts forever, this also means that those who may pick up this book in say twenty or two hundred years will most likely not be able to find the endnotes. But perhaps the publishers realised that this book will have a short life.
Of the vast amount of literature about Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, some books, such as Ben Pimlott’s biography The Queen (1996) and Robert Hardman’s Our Queen (2011), stand out because of their original and significant contributions to the understanding of the second longest reigning British monarch. Kate Williams’s Young Elizabeth, on the other hand, will take its place among the many insignificant and easily forgotten books about Elizabeth II.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
New books: A stunning book on the British crown jewels
When Queen Elizabeth II of Britain recently visited Westminster Abbey she was shown the Coronation Chair, which was being restored, and remarked that she had not actually seen it since sitting in it on 2 June 1953. With Elizabeth II in the second half of her eighties, the Coronation Chair being restored is of course a sign of the fact that the next British coronation is approaching. Perhaps this is also the context in which one should see the publication of a two-volume, scholarly work on the British crown jewels in 2008 and now another book on the same topic aiming at a more general public. The Crown Jewels by historian Anna Keay, who is curatorial director of English Heritage, was published by Thames & Hudson in cooperation with the Royal Collection and Historic Royal Palaces at the end of last year and is a stunningly beautiful book in its design and choice of high-quality illustrations.
They include many paintings showing the splendours of past state occasions, but also other historical illustrations as well as close-up photographs of the items in the crown jewels collection, whole pieces as well as details. A clever touch has been to bring together several items of regalia to be photographed together for comparison, for instance the crowns of Queens Alexandra, Mary and Elizabeth, or the Imperial State Crown from 1937 alongside the now empty frames of the state crowns from 1838 and 1714.
The well-written text takes the reader on a chronological journey through the history of British crown jewels and regalia, starting with the so-called “Mill Hill warrior”, the body of an Iron Age king dating to 200-150 BC who was found by archaeologists in 1988, wearing on his head the earliest known English crown.
Three chapters are dedicated to early English regalia, but it is a sad fact that the 12th century coronation spoon is the only medieval item in the collection. The other older crown jewels were melted down when the country became a republic following the execution of Charles I in 1649.
New regalia thus had to be made when his son Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 and Keay points out how one was so keen to link these new regalia to their lost medieval predecessors that one recreated even pieces one did not know what were supposed to be used for.
Several pieces have been added also in the centuries following the restoration and they are all covered by this book. Sadly, several grand pieces are no longer in existence or survive simply as empty frames, such as the dazzling all-diamond crown commissioned by George IV for his coronation in 1821, which was set with hired jewels subsequently returned to the jeweller.
Other pieces have fallen into disuse, such as the crown made for James II’s wife, Mary of Modena, which William IV’s Queen Adelaide thought unsuitable for use. Every queen consort since then has had a new crown made for her, although Queen Mary had intended that the exquisite crown she had made in 1911 should be the permanent crown of queens consort. However, when it became clear that she intended to attend the coronation of her son George VI in 1937 and wear that crown (without its arches), a new crown had to be made for her daughter-in-law Elizabeth.
The book also deals with the items which are not strictly speaking regalia, but are kept with them in the Tower and thus counted as crown jewels, such as the splendid tableware used for the coronation banquets, baptismal fonts and other items intended for the royal chapels, processional swords and maces. Thus the book also serves as some sort of splendid catalogue of the items one will see on a visit to the Tower of London.
“While the Crown Jewels are unquestionably impressive in their own right [...] it is their use at great ceremonial occasions that gives them their real power. The objects in the collection were not designed to be viewed in the solitary splendour of a glass case, but to play in the ensemble orchestra of royal ritual”, the author observes on the penultimate page of the book. My only objection to this book is precisely that it does not say much about the actual use of the crown jewels.
For instance, Keay does note that St Edward’s crown, until then used for the actual crowning but replaced with the state crown before the monarch left the Abbey, ceased to be used by the early eighteenth century, a practice which was only revived by George V in 1911. But otherwise we hear little about the regalia’s use for other occasions than coronations.
My first “personal acquaintance” with the British regalia was seeing the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother resting on top of her coffin at her lying-in-state in Westminster Hall. But although Keay tells us that St Edward’s crown was placed on the coffin of Edward VII, Queen Victoria’s small diamond crown on hers and a replica of the state crown on Charles II’s the reader is left to wonder if crowns being placed on royal coffins have been a common practice and if so for how long.
Similarly one may wonder how old the tradition of wearing the crown at state openings of parliament is. The current practice dates only to George V and 1913, but was this the invention of a tradition or had crowns been worn to Parliament by earlier monarchs?
A more thorough treatment of the use of the regalia than just a word here and there would have served to bring the regalia to life, so to speak, and also give a fuller picture of their symbolical and ceremonial meaning.
Monday, 21 May 2012
New books: Swedish royal births and christenings
I was quite critical of her book on weddings and am happy to say that her new book is much more satisfactory. Indeed the author has managed to avoid most of those weaknesses which spoilt her previous book.
The wedding book was chronologically arranged, allocating each wedding a chapter of its own and losing itself in endless tedious details. This book, on the contrary, is arranged thematically, which makes it far more readable and gives the author the opportunity to draw the long lines, show the development of traditions and identify when and how traditions changed (and this, rather than the accumulation of facts, is what history is really about). This time the book is not only more to the point, but there is also a useful chapter summing up the book’s findings.
There is no clearly defined timeframe to this book, but most of it deals with the Palatine, Holstein-Gottorp and Bernadotte dynasties (there were no children born to the short-lived House of Hesse). The author explores the ceremonial related to royal births and christenings, baby clothes, christening robes, wet-nurses, cradles, orders, regalia and the choice of names.
As a Norwegian historian I am naturally pleased to note that Rangström this time mostly remembers that the Bernadottes were also kings of Norway for nearly a century and that there were therefore Norwegian concerns to be taken into consideration.
The illustrations are many and well chosen and thus in themselves form part of the book’s attraction. Apart from some factual mistakes (for instance, 11 November 1882 is twice given as the date of Gustaf VI Adolf’s christening, although it was in fact his birthday) the greatest weaknesses of this book are the absence of some information of interest which Rangström would have found had she delved deeper into the source material, and that the author looks only at the main line of the royal family.
By excluding the junior branches she misses out on some developments which lead her to wrong conclusions. For instance, she states that Crown Princess Margareta was the first royal mother to attend her children’s christening, but overlooks the fact that Princess Ingeborg had done so some years earlier. She also wrongly states that Crown Princess Margareta was the first royal mother to breastfeed her children, which Queen Sophia had also done, although briefly, two generations earlier.
Thus, when Rangström reaches the concluding chapter, she ascribes too much importance to Crown Princess Margareta, whom she identifies as some sort of watershed as Margareta, unlike previous generations, gave birth in private, was the first royal mother to breastfeed her children and to attend their christenings, and (in 1910) the first to hold her own child at the font. But two of these four examples are in fact wrong, making Rangström’s assessment of Margareta seem somewhat overrated.
But despite these reservations, Kanonsalut och vaggor is a useful introduction to the traditions related to Swedish royal births and christenings and seems able to appeal to a wide readership.
Friday, 13 April 2012
New books: Norway’s darkest day
In a couple of decades it is well possible that the same sentiment may be shared by Norwegian MPs and ministers feeling that they would not have been in their positions if others had not been killed on the terrible day of 22 July 2011, when the right wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, driven by a hatred of the multicultural society and the Labour Party, first blew up the government building before continuing to the Labour youth movement’s summer camp at Utøya to carry out his massacre, leaving a total of 77 dead, most of them teenagers and young adults representing the future of the Labour Party.
This most dramatic day in the postwar history of Norway is the subject of journalist Kjetil Stormark’s book Da terroren rammet Norge – 189 minutter som rystet verden, which was published by Kagge Forlag in December and is now already out in paperback. It is one of those rare books which are excellent and terrible at the same time, in other words so dreadful that it is hard to put down.
Stormark follows the events from the hours before the bombing on 22 July until the enormous flower manifestation in Oslo three days later. The author does not dwell on the ideas that drove Breivik to commit his unspeakable crimes, which might have served to put the drama into a context, but would at the same time have made it a very different and much longer book.
The story is told mostly chronologically and made up of many individual stories. At first this seems somewhat chaotic as the author seems to try to tell too many stories at the same time and thus makes the book too crowded.
But eventually it comes to work very well when he reaches the massacre at Utøya, which lasted for an interminable hour. While charting the actions of the political leadership and the emergency services, Stormark also recounts the stories of individual victims, some of whom survived, some of whom did not.
Here are also the stories of the victims’ families, who in many cases were in touch with them on the telephone, but endured the heartbreak of not really being able to do anything to help their children except calling the emergency services, mostly in vain.
The many detailed accounts make it seem that the nightmare will never end and that help will never come, which must have been a feeling shared by those present as the drama unfolded. Only when he is captured is the name of Anders Behring Breivik mentioned for the first time.
The author uses his pen to paint vivid pictures, such as the bereaved family being comforted by a man with a tear-washed face whom a government official suddenly recognised as the King, or the sight after nightfall from the landside of all the cell phones abandoned on the island lighting up in the dark as families and friends desperately and in vain kept on ringing.
It is a heartbreaking story told in the present tense which shows the chaos, the desperation, the uncertainties, the shock, the relief, the despair, the ineffectiveness, the shortcomings and the heroism of that terrible day.
The trial of Anders Behring Breivik starts on Monday. Inevitably there will be many books written on the events of 22 July for many years to come, but Kjetil Stormark’s book seems likely to take its rightful place as an instant classic.
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
New books: Versailles
Needless to say there is a vast literature on Versailles, yet Valérie Bajou’s splendid new book Versailles, published in France last year and now in an English translation by Abrams of New York, is a valuable addition to the bibliography on Versailles.
Through nearly 500 abundantly illustrated pages the book tells the story of the palace, the artworks, the gardens, the park, the Trianons and the museum – and the changing faces of Versailles. In doing so, the book also reminds the reader how little one actually gets to see when visiting Versailles as a tourist. The texts are rather short, but there are hundreds of mostly good photos and the captions provide details about the artworks pictured.
As such this is a book which can be heartily recommended both as a supplement to a visit to Versailles and as a consolation to those unable to go there.
Thursday, 29 March 2012
New books: The history of Paris in photos
This book thus offers a unique photographic account of the development of Paris from 1839 to 2011 and of life in the metropolis through 172 years. There is something almost breathtaking about seeing street views from as far back as 1839, but also photos of daily life and major events, such as the revolution of 1848, pictures which may well be regarded the first press photos.
Here is the changing of the guard at the now lost Tuileries Palace in the reign of Louis-Philippe, the proclamation of the Second Empire in 1852, the troops returning from Italy in 1859, Baron Haussman’s turning Paris upside down, the revolutionaries, politicians, writers, artists, actors and models who have helped create the myth of Paris, but also the destinies of the ordinary man, woman and child.
The book, which is trilingual (French, English and German), is divided into five parts (1830-1871, 1871-1914, 1914-1939, 1939-1959 and 1959-2011). It is only towards the end that the pace is perhaps a bit too hasty as the book moves quite fast from the events of 1968 to the present day.
This is a great book in all meanings of that word, and may almost be considered a must have for all lovers of Paris as well as those interested in the history of photography.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
New books: To dress a queen
The answers to such riddles are to be found in the new book Dronningens kjoler, published by Gyldendal in January, which has been put together for Queen Margrethe’s fortieth jubilee as monarch by Katia Johansen, since 1980 curator of textiles at the Royal Collections, in close cooperation with the Queen herself. Johansen explains that she, in her work, has often longed for contemporary sources to how the Danish monarchs dressed and this book is her way of making sure that her successors in a distant future will not have to guess why Margrethe II dressed as she did. The main audience of the book is thus not present readers, but the future.
In an introductory interview the Queen talks about such topics as her “philosophy of dressing”, what clothes mean to her and her own involvement in the design of her dresses. The crucial question is perhaps if the way she dresses is part of some sort of personal and professional scenography. To this Queen Margrethe answers, somewhat ungrammatically: “It is well possible that I see myself at some particularly great events, that it would look good with such a dress. I probably do that more as I have eventually become older and more shameless!”
Most of the book is chronologically divided into three parts – Princess, Heiress to the Throne and Queen – followed by gala dresses and dressing up and a short epilogue on the clothes’ preservation. Each of the chronological chapters begin with a summary of major fashion trends of the various decades, and one cannot help notice that this becomes less and less relevant as the years progress.
While the Margrethe of the sixties and seventies wore clothes which fit well in with the fashion of the day, Queen Margrethe of today is far from trendy. However, this does far from mean that Queen Margrethe now does not dress the part. Rather one becomes aware of how the Queen’s style has become ever more individualistic with the passing of time.
The book is lavishly illustrated and throughout the Queen herself comments on the clothes – and sometimes of other things, such as the poor entertainment and food offered by the President of Greece during his recent state visit to Denmark – and Johansen fills in what the curator has to add. All sorts of clothes are included, from simple summer dresses to grand dresses for major state events.
I suspect that I am not alone in finding the latter more interesting than the former, as it is when dressed up to the nines that the Queen and the amateur scenographer merge into a higher unit. The prime example of this is perhaps the dress first worn by Queen Margrethe for the 400th anniversary of Rosenborg Palace in 2006, which was in itself almost a renaissance costume (the fabric was originally a sari found among Queen Ingrid’s belongings after her death, the Queen explains).
The book is also an introduction to the designers who have made the Queen’s dresses, among whom the late Jørgen Bender stands out (Queen Margrethe herself is sometimes involved in the design). It is only rarely that the Queen does not remember an outfit; mostly she will explain how and why it came about and relate some memories attached to it. Sometimes the fate of the dress is also recorded – some end up in the Royal Collections, some are still in use, some are dramatically altered, some are in storage, some have been given away and some have been thrown away when worn out. Others may be expected to reappear, such as the rather dramatic dress and coat worn for Prince Joachim’s first wedding and for Thomas Kluge’s imposing portrait, which the Queen hints will become her “uniform” for the New Year receptions from next year on.
What I would perhaps have wanted something more about is accessories and the Queen’s thoughts about this. It is for instance quite obvious that Queen Margrethe, like her mother, is very conscious about her choice of jewellery. Of course it was no coincidence that she on 15 January this year wore a small horseshoe-shaped ruby brooch; indeed she wore that brooch when she was proclaimed Queen on 15 January 1972 and had chosen it then as it was given to her by her father on 5 June 1953, the day she became Heiress to the Throne.
The author occasionally says something about the jewels (those interested in the history of royal jewels will also be able to find some interesting pieces of information, such as a very interesting provenance which family tradition ascribes to her turquoise tiara), but there is little about the “philosophy” of their wearing.
One must also regret that the book tends to make a mess of names and dates. The name of the Crown Prince of Norway is spelt in three different ways, mostly incorrect; the name of the current King of Sweden is sometimes spelt Carl Gustaf, sometimes Carl Gustav, while his mother is erroneously called “Sibylle” and so on, while the dates and years for several events mentioned are unfortunately wrong, which is regrettable considering the author’s express wish that this book should be a historical record for posterity.
It seems a safe guess to say that, when long gone, Margrethe II will stand out as one of the most interesting characters in the long line of Danish monarchs. The Royal Collections curators of the 25th century will surely be immensely grateful to their predecessor Katia Johansen for having sat down with Queen Margrethe to record her words on how she dressed and why. Furthermore, Dronningens kjoler will, together with Thyge Christian Fønss’s recent book on the portraits of the Queen, serve as indispensible contemporary guides to the image of Margrethe II and its perception.
Sunday, 29 January 2012
New books: Europe’s lost states
It is, obviously, a vast subject and Davies, an historian known for books such as Europe: A History, Europe at War, The Isles: A History and God’s Playground: A History of Poland, has had to restrict his book of 830 pages to some of those vanished states. Each chapter begins with a visit to a present-day remnant of the relevant state, followed by the history of its rise and fall and an epilogue on its afterlife. The time span stretches from the fifth century to the present.
Among the states included are Aragon, the many Burgundian states, the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, Prussia, Savoy, Montenegro, Galicia, Etruria, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the USSR and Ireland. Some of the states included, such as the Byzantine Empire, existed for a very long time, others only very briefly, such as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, which lived for a single day in 1939.
Thus the book covers a wide range of European history, but it is also quite uneven. Most of it is well-written and ought to be easily accessible also for those who are not themselves historians, but some chapters are not as clear as one would wish for. It is hard to get through the chapter on the ancient Scottish “Kingdom of the Rock” and while struggling through one often wonders where the author is actually heading.
Other chapters offer clear and concise analyses of the emergence and disappearance of states, and the most successful chapters also offer some fresh perspectives. Sometimes these set the spotlight upon a lesser known part of history, such as the chapter on the Kingdom of Etruria (and the Napoleonic Grand Duchy of Tuscany), which charts the oft-overlooked history of Florence during the revolutionary and Napoleonic age.
Some of author’s choices of states to include in the book may seem surprising, but mostly one finds that there is a good reason behind it. One example is Montenegro, which does indeed exist as a state today, but which was alone among the victorious allies in disappearing from the map following World War I, something which happened in a rather dubious way.
If one wonders why Ireland is included in the book, one will eventually find that Davies considers the history of Ireland’s struggle against the British crown as simply the first part of the ongoing and, in his view, inevitable dissolution of the United Kingdom. The developments concerning a referendum on Scottish independence since the book was published have thus only made it more relevant to the present.
Its diversity is one of the book’s strengths, but also one of its weaknesses. With such a vast subject one can hardly avoid finding some mistakes, but more disturbing than this is the fact that several of the genealogical tables, which one may assume have been included to help the reader keep track of the people and relationship which have influenced the rise and fall of these states, are so flawed that they are in fact useless.
The two rival Serbian royal families, Obrenovic and Karadjordjevic, are for instance presented as one big family; King Petar I (of the House of Karadjordjevic) is in fact shown to be the son of King Aleksandar and Queen Drage (of the House of Obrenovic), whose assassination in 1903 brought him to the throne. Students of the First Empire will also be surprised to learn that Empress Joséphine’s first husband was not Alexandre de Beauharnais, but his brother, and even more astonished to find out that she and Napoléon did in fact have a son.
The book is a tour de force through some of those vanished European states which most people do not normally spare a thought for. It ends beautifully with William Wordsworth’s 1802 poem “On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic”, concluding: “Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade / Of that which once was great is passed away”.
Thursday, 19 January 2012
New books: The iconography of Margrethe II
The author has chosen to include painted portraits, tapestries and busts, but only those for which the Queen has sat and/or which have been acquired by the monarch herself or by public institutions. He states his reasons for excluding photography, caricature and other art forms, but does not explained why miniature paintings are not included (the “family orders” worn by Queen Margrethe’s daughters-in-law are examples of the now rather rare technique of miniature painting). Some of the portraits show the Queen together with the Prince Consort, one shows her in a group and another is more a history painting than a portrait, but such distinctions are not made here.
While some reigns are almost defined by the works of one artist – such as the reign of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein – or at least strongly identified with one artist – such as Christian IX with Laurits Tuxen or Carl XIV Johan with Fredric Westin – no artist has stood out as The Court Painter of Margrethe II. The individual with the greatest influence on the iconography of Margrethe II is probably the late photographer Rigmor Mydtskov.
The twenty or so portraits of Queen Margrethe are thus rather diverse in style. However, there are some painters who have been commissioned to paint the Queen on several occasions, among them Preben Hornung and Niels Strøbek – the latter’s fourth portrait was unveiled at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Palace on the occasion of the jubilee. There are some famous international names among the artists – Pietro Annigoni and Andy Warhol stand out – but the majority are Danes, of various generations, most of them male.
Following an introduction about the history of royal portraits, which may be enlightening to many, the author treats each portrait chronologically. There are large reproductions of the artworks and often also of details. Some are also shown in the milieu where they hang and earlier or alternative sketches for some of them are also included. Fønss analyses the composition of the portrait, the references it contains and frequently he also gives the readers the background history of each portrait and some glimpses of the process leading to the picture’s completion. The author has obviously benefited from the assistance offered him by the artists (or their heirs).
Fønss has done a good job in identifying other artworks of relevance to the portraits he discusses and the historical references they contain. For instance he points out how the Queen’s pose in Thomas Kluge’s second portrait of her is obviously inspired by that of Christian II’s daughter Christina, Duchess of Milan, in Holbein’s portrait of her, painted when she was considered as a possible fourth wife for Henry VIII of England.
Each portrait is thus given a thorough consideration in a chapter of its own, but the book might have benefited from the portraits being seen more in the context of each other. This might perhaps have been solved by including a summarising chapter towards the end, where the author could also have made some concluding remarks about the development of royal portraiture in Denmark through the last four decades. Nevertheless he makes the reader fully aware of the fact that the reign of Margrethe II has been a golden age for portraiture, particularly considering the low standing of this genre in Denmark forty years ago, and that the many portraits of the Queen have been hugely significant for the positive development in this regard.
The author appears quite diplomatic in that he very rarely has anything remotely critical to say about any of the portraits, although it must be admitted that a few of them are not very good. But it seems to me that sometimes, between the lines, one may just sense that some of the portraits are more the author’s cup of tea than others.
Given the absence of critical remarks about the portraits of Queen Margrethe it is altogether more notable that Fønss is generally dismissive of the portraits of other current monarchs. His rather negative view of Lucian Freud’s famous portrait of Elizabeth II comes as something of a surprise, while Håkon Gullvåg’s portraits of the King and Queen of Norway are written off with some remarks about their not being well-received by a tabloid newspaper, which is certainly a very un-nuanced version of the story. And should contemporary art necessarily be uncontroversial?
I am also not sure I agree entirely with Fønss when he states that “English [sic] royal portraiture of the twentieth century has been extraordinarily retrospective and unoriginal”. One may in my opinion well argue that some of the portraits of Elizabeth II or the state portraits of King Harald V and Queen Sonja are more artistically daring than the portraits of Margrethe II, most of which could be described as rather conventional paintings which have not really moved artistic boundaries within the genre.
The book, which is in large format, is beautifully produced, but unfortunately it has been very badly proof-read. As a result there are many grammatical errors, particularly when it comes to punctuation, capitalisation, words being split into two and the difference between “hans/hendes” and “sin”. The author generally writes “England” and “English” where “Britain” and “British” would have been correct, the name of Frederik VIII’s consort is mistakenly given as “Louisa” (she was born Princess Lovisa of Sweden and of Norway and became Queen Louise of Denmark, but she never used the name Louisa), Lucian Freud has become “Lucien Freud” etc.
One also wonders why the author refers to King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland as a parvenu, given that he belonged to a dynasty which had been reigning for some 300 years at the time. The pearl tiara which Queen Margrethe wears in several portraits is erroneously said to have been a wedding present to “Louisa” in 1869, although primary sources show clearly that it was in the possession of her mother at the time of the latter’s death in 1871 (consequently, Louise must have inherited it after her mother’s death).
While Mikael Melbye’s recent portrait of the Queen surrounded by the three silver lions from Rosenborg is the last to be included in the book, the iconography of Margrethe II keeps evolving. A portrait of her with her two heirs, by Niels Strøbek, who also painted the first portrait of her as Queen, was, as mentioned above, unveiled last week, while Thomas Kluge, the artist behind two of her more significant portraits, is currently working on a group portrait of the Queen and Prince Consort with their sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, which will hang at Fredensborg Palace and mirror Laurits Tuxen’s famous painting of King Christian IX and Queen Louise with their descendants. I am told that the latter painting will be the subject of Fønss’s next book.
For an art historian of the younger generation this is book is an impressive and convincing debut which makes one look forward to his future publications.
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