Lately, we’ve gotten several emails and tweets from Fug Nationals who are looking for any number of the following: books about royalty; books that people who are enjoying The Crown might also enjoy (so, related to request the first); biographies of crazy historical Brits; books specifically about Princess Margaret; and novels about People Having Romantical Troubles During Wartimes (my own personal #1 favorite genre). While I have lots of thoughts myself, I thought I’d also throw this open to the room, as I know many of you are very widely read in the above. Let’s trade juicy book recommendations!
Here are some of mine, all of which I’ve mentioned here before and several of which were originally recommended to me by Fug Nation, I think — but no reason not to recommend again:
- Daughter of Empire by Pamela Hicks is about one of QE2’s ladies-in-waiting/cousins, whose father was the last Viceroy of India and whose mother may or may not have cheated on him with Nehru. This is very juicy and feels like a book-long Wiki Deep Dive, in part because people keep having affairs that are No Big Deal, forgetting their children in the Alps for A REALLY long time, there’s a sassy granny, and sometimes Gandhi shows up.
- I haven’t read Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor by Anne Edwards, but several of you have recommended it. It’s about Mary of Teck, QE2’s grandmother (so recently seen being deliciously snarky in The Crown).
- Likewise, I’ve heard only good things about Princes at War, which is (non-fiction) about the British abdication crisis.
- I HAVE read and really enjoyed Wait For Me!, which is Deborah Mitford’s autobiography.
- I also always recommend Michelle Collins’s Fitzosborne trilogy, which is one of the rare trilogies where I actually think the first book is the weakest (it’s very good; it’s just that the final book is GREAT). Lots of romantical issues during wartimes.
- Speaking of trilogies featuring romantical issues during wartime that I recommend over and over again, I ALWAYS tell people to read the Penny Vincenzi trilogy that begins with No Angel. If you love books where people just barely avoid going down on the Titanic, someone decides Hitler is a great idea, there’s a bad-ass lady boss who makes terrible life choices, and there’s tons of people longingly gazing at each other during the Blitz, you will dig these.
- If you’re into books wherein you learn who AWFUL Queen Victoria was to all of her children, The Heir Apparent is for you.
- (Finally, I feel like our publisher will be displeased if I don’t also note that our own novel has crazy British royalty in it, but you knew that already. Okay bye. Stay sexy.)
