Ma’am Darling: : The hilarious, bestselling royal biography, perfect for fans of The Crown: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

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I have loved previous books that I have read by Craig Brown, so, when I learnt he was writing a book about my favourite band of all time, it was a must-read. Over the years, I have read hundreds of books about The Beatles and so I always wonder whether another book will provide anything new. This follows the format of his book about Princess Margaret, and, in this entertaining volume, the author takes lots of moments in time, which reflect what the Beatles meant and how people reacted to them. Her camp followers – never was that phrase more apt – scarcely waited till she had left the room before they started bitching about her, usually in snobbish terms. The snobbery is equally distributed between left and right. Christopher Isherwood called her ‘quite a common little thing’. Richard Eyre said that ‘if it weren’t for the sharp English upper-class voice, you’d say she looks like a Maltese landlady.’ Cecil Beaton described her as vulgar and later as ‘a poor midgety brute’ who had ‘gone to pot … her complexion now a dirty negligee pink satin’. Only matched by Alan Clark’s diary entry: ‘fat, ugly, dwarflike, lecherous and revoltingly tastelessly behaved’ (from a master of deportment). The emphasis on her small stature was almost universal. It was the cruellest thrust, and one suspects a deliberate one, when her husband (himself no giant) made a TV documentary about midgets, which Margaret gamely described as ‘not my cup of tea at all. Bit too near home, I’m afraid.’ Yet they all went on angling and wangling. Her presence lured every star in Hollywood to the party Tynan threw for her. At her funeral and memorial service, the camp followers were out in force, scurrying home to their diaries to confide afterwards how awful she had been. The war is almost over, the Russians are getting nearer and two young men join the SS. A bad career move, but To Die in Spring is a wonderful, precise, very moving novel by German author Ralf Rothmann (Picador, translated by Shaun Whiteside). Anything Is Possible (Viking) is predictably great because it’s written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable – because it’s written by Elizabeth Strout. I like most of the books I read but, now and again, I read one I wish I’d written myself. This year it’s Reservoir 13 (4th Estate), by Jon McGregor. Its structure, pace, detail, tone, humanity – it’s a quiet masterpiece. Jennifer Egan A lot of the information here is not new, some are people's reflections so are new to us. But if, rather than play the annoying "I knew all this stuff already" game, you just read and reflect from whatever your connections to them were/are, I think you'll enjoy this. Don't make this a "I'm a bigger fan than you" thing either, there is no single "biggest fan" so get over it. Just remember the joy and happiness you experienced when you were living the moments in your life that they and their music touched. If you want to play a game, play the what if game, what if they had... So many wonderful possibilities but the flip of the coin might have had them tarnishing their legacy. But the disappointment (for fans and music lovers) of an early break up, relatively early deaths, feuds that might not have had to be so enduring, what if...

Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret – review

For the very first time,Finding Freedom goes beyond the headlines to reveal unknown details of Harry and Meghan’s life together, dispelling the many rumours and misconceptions that plague the couple on both sides of the pond. As members of the select group of reporters that cover the British Royal Family and their engagements, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand have witnessed the young couple’s lives as few outsiders can. Together, these things conjure Margaret in all her dubious glory. Nancy Mitford likened her to a “hedgehog covered in primroses”, but the reader will come to feel this is unfair to hedgehogs. The relationship with Group Captain Townsend is deliciously done: Brown doesn’t buy the schmaltz, lining himself up instead with Prince Philip, who said sarcastically, when the Queen Mother worried about where a future Mrs Townsend might live, that it was “still possible, even nowadays, to buy a house”.Though this is an extensive collection of scandals starting from the earliest Kings and Queens, it goes up to and includes 20th-century stories too. It is a far cry from harrowing biographies, so perfect for a bit of fun reading to kill time. She had been a wilful and mischievous child, unlike her dutiful elder sister. In that notorious book The Little Princesses, their nanny Marion Crawford, ‘Crawfie’, who looked after them for 15 years, described how she would mimic Lilibet’s methodical preparations for going to bed. Crawfie was never forgiven for the book. There was no royal wreath at her funeral. Margaret said simply: ‘she sneaked.’ Who wants these days to sound posher than the family they were born into? One man at least: Jacob Rees-Mogg

Flattening in England, resurgent in Scotland: accents still Flattening in England, resurgent in Scotland: accents still

Hugely entertaining … brilliantly written, with a wonderful sardonic edge but also a thoughtful, at times even moving tone” - Spectator The title captures pretty well what we have here - 150 short chapters, of moments in the Beatles' lives, in the lives of people around the Beatles, in the lives of the millions who loved their music. Some stories you will have heard before, although probably not as detailed, and if you're like me, most will be completely new to you. His reading has been prodigious: not only the diaries of everyone from Chips Channon to AL Rowse, but dozens of gruesome royal biographies and memoirs, up to and including My Life With Princess Margaret by her former footman, the slithering David John Payne. Oh, how the sinister Payne loathes the arrival in Ma’am’s life of the slugabed snapper Armstrong-Jones – a character whom Brown introduces, incidentally, with a list of the contents of his Rotherhithe bachelor pad (golden cage containing three lovebirds; miniature brass catafalque; stand in the shape of a Nubian boy).

Did it keep my interest? 4. 150 chapters, which are little beautiful Beatle blurbs. Twenty engaging hours of stories In a chapter of The Atrocity Exhibition called “Princess Margaret’s Facelift”, JG Ballard reflected on the paradox of modern fame and the psychology of the public who sustain it. The stars we elect and revere are both infinitely remote and yet scrutinised in their smallest gesture. “Somewhere in this paradoxical space our imaginations are free to range, and we find ourselves experimenting like impresarios with all the possibilities that these magnified figures seem to offer us.” Cawthorne details the biggest royal troubles to have hit the media, without much pomp, just in-depth summaries to inform and engage any reader, royal-followers or not.