Sorry, Harry and Meghan, but this is what we really want from a royal biography

One has to possess a certain type of myopia to complain about how hard done by one has been, living an extremely privileged life at a moment of acute global suffering; not least for a woman keen to be celebrated for her emotional intelligence. And, yet, the Duchess of Sussex is apparently keen to speed the release of a biography focusing on the agonies of her brief royal run-in.

The book previously boasted the title Thoroughly Modern Royals: The Real World of Meghan and Harry, before becoming the altogether more sensational: Finding Freedom: The Making of a Modern Royal Family.

The Sussexes are believed to have collaborated closely with authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, royal writers for glossy American magazines, who will set about “dispelling the many rumours and misconceptions that plague the couple,” according to promotional material. The duchess is said to want publication brought forward from August to July, to explain why the pair felt they had no choice but to “abdicate” as senior royals back in March.

“Finding Freedom is an honest, up-close, and disarming portrait of a confident, influential, and forward-thinking couple,” runs the book’s Amazon blurb, “dedicated to building a humanitarian legacy that will make a profound difference in the world”.

Short of an ability to cure Covid-19 as royals of old cured scrofula, it is unclear what this difference may be. But like all biographies, the aim of Finding Freedom will be to “set the record straight,” as if there were ever a straight where our royal dynasties are concerned.

A.N. Wilson, who has written brilliantly not only about our own Queen, but Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, points to 9th and 19th century examples: “I suppose the best two royal biogs are Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Queen Victoria’s Leaves from Our Journal of our Life in the Highlands.”

The latter, extracts from the queen’s own diary, published in 1868, became a bestseller, he believes, “because people could not believe a monarch a. could write at all and b. was prepared to spill the beans about a life which was almost by definition concealed and hidden.

“Crawfie’s The Little Princesses pulls off the same trick of giving you a glimpse of life behind the arras. It is sycophantic and flattering in tone, but she was cast into utter outer d. by the merciless Queen Mother because it was doing the one thing you are not meant to do: tell the truth about life behind the scenes.”

Since then, he notes, spilling the beans has become an oeuvre in its own right, from Andrew Morton’s Diana - Her True Story (“written at Di’s behest”) to Wendy Berry’s The Housekeeper’s Diary (“riveting to this day”). Indeed, the high court injunction Prince Charles took out against his former member of Highgrove staff gave her book a “banned in Britain” status that guaranteed 100,000 copies sold in the US back in 1995.

“In a way there is no mystery left,” Wilson laments. “Meghan will tell us nothing we could not have made up for ourselves; unlike Queen Victoria or Alfred the Great, there is nothing mysterious about her. Nothing at all!”

Despite this, many of us crave royal narratives as we crave nothing else, as the 73 million households that have sat rapt over Netflix’s blockbuster The Crown – and the 64 tomes on my own bookshelves – will attest. Only last year, Anne Glenconner’s Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, an enthralling account of her life and friendship with Princess Margaret, made for surprise publishing hit, selling 170,525 copies for some £2.4m in the United Kingdom, and granting her appearances on the Today programme and The Graham Norton Show alike.

“What is the fascination?” asks royal historian Hugo Vickers, who has penned masterly accounts of the Queen Mother and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. “Learning about the real-life people we watch from afar. And unlike politicians and stars, you can follow them from cradle to grave.

“There has been a habit of writing royal memoirs – people like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor did it, helped by ghostwriters – aiming to tell their version. And some, such as those of Princess Marie Louise, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester are very readable, without being sensational.”

As for the Sussexes, he notes: “This Harry and Meghan book is presumptuously entitled The Making of a Modern Royal Family. I look forward to the Private Eye spoof – The Unmaking…

“I haven’t read it or seen anything of its contents, but I suspect it will be more in the genre of Morton’s – settling scores. You won’t be surprised to hear that I dread it. But then I am old-fashioned enough to think it is better for members of the Royal family to work within the system – supporting The Queen – rather than competing and setting themselves up individually. I wonder how it will play out?”

Royal biographies: a potted guide

Official

Asser, a Welsh monk, was asked to join Alfred the Great’s Anglo-Saxon Brains Trust in the mid-880s. In 893, he wrote a rose-tinted, if factually detailed biography of his monarch, the Life of King Alfred. Compare, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography, published by William Shawcross in 2009, described by Tristram Hunt as “an on-message account of the modern ‘welfare monarchy’.”

Eye-opening

Everyone will have their favourite: Janice Hadlow’s gripping The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians, say, or Anne Somerset’s redemptive Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion. Josephine Wilkinson’s Katherine Howard: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII’s Fifth Queen offers a tale of child abuse fit for the #MeToo era. Victoria by AN Wilson is loved for its wit and originality, not least the conviction that our heroine became more, not less, interesting as she grew older, sunk into “diurnal idleness”.

Scurrilous

Having had a pop at Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan, American scandalmonger/fantasist Kitty Kelley chose the House of Windsor as her subject in 1997. Prince Philip was declared to be modishly bisexual, Princess Diana a bad-breathed nymphomaniac. Diana herself had famously conspired with Andrew Morton on his 1992 best-seller, Diana: Her True Story. More recently, Tom Bower’s Rebel Prince made it clear that, despite Prince Charles’s observation that “Nobody knows what utter hell it is to be the Prince of Wales,” nothing compares to the hell of having him visit, with his personal lavatory seats and 43 pieces of luggage.

Behind the scenes

Royal governess Marion “Crawfie” Crawford was named as the author of The Little Princesses, published in 1950, after which she was ostracised by The Firm. In fact, as Hugo Vickers explains: “Crawfie was tricked, found herself tied up in contracts, and never wrote a word of those books herself.” Prince Charles took a similarly dim view of The Housekeeper’s Diary by former member of staff Wendy Berry. These days, Angela Kelly, the Queen’s beloved dresser, pens books with her employer’s blessing, while Lady in Waiting Anne Glenconner rushed to defend HM’s late sister.

The brilliantly new broom

For legions of readers, Craig Brown’s panto-tragedy Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, proved as haunting as it was hilarious; despite enraging Anne Glenconner such that she produced her own bestseller. Fans should seek out The Quest for Queen Mary, edited by Hugo Vickers, a gloriously indiscreet cracker about the Queen’s granny. To read it is to yearn to re-read it.