The Royals [Audiobook, Abridged] [Audio Cassette]

Kitty Kelley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 1997

They are the most chronicled family on the face of the globe. Their every move attracts headlines. Scores of books have tried and failed to penetrate the royal facade. Now Kitty Kelley has gone behind palace walls to provide the first three-dimensional, comprehensive, and evenhanded portrait of the men and women who make up the British Royal family.

Kelley spent more than four years investigating the royal family. In addition to meticulous research into documented sources, she conducted hundreds of exclusive interviews with past and present employees of the royal household, royal friends and relations, courtiers, members of Parliament, and other intimate observers, raising the curtain on this most secretive family.

Here are lonely royal children brought up without a proper education in isolated and artificial surroundings, twentieth-century adolescents with nineteenth-century touchstones. Here are the sexual ambiguities, the alcoholism, gambling, and womanizing that were common in the House of Windsor long before Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. No one is spared; here are the scandals of the last decades: the doomed marriages, and the husbands, wives, lovers and children caught in their wake and damaged beyond repair.

Illuminating the Windsors' arrogance, naïveté, and lusts as well as hard work, dedication, and ability to survive the most humiliating disclosures, The Royals is Kitty Kelley's richest, most iconoclastic, historically significant, and compelling work.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The audiocassette version of Kitty Kelley's The Royals is abridged, which means you just get the good stuff. Kelley herself reads, purring cattily along, narrating the downstairs gossip about the upstairs Windsors. Here's Queen Elizabeth insisting her 17 Welsh corgis appear on a TV special, and Prince Charles snatching one last rendezvous with Camilla Parker-Bowles on the eve of his marriage to Diana Spencer. The dish is delish, but after listening too long, it gets harder to sneer along with Kitty as the Royal Family takes on more tragic dimensions. The greatest crime a Windsor can commit is not infidelity, drunkenness, or unusual sexual practices. No, the worst sin is going before the public, as both Diana and Charles did in the aftermath of their stormy marriage, and telling people about it. For the Windsors, it seems, anything goes. Anything that is, but indiscretion.

From Library Journal

Gossipmonger Kelly narrates her latest unauthorized biography, this time targeting Britain's royal family. She has included some interesting factual information about the royals, describing the early-20th-century history of the family and its ties to Germany. But the biography is a mix of fact and tawdry, unsubstantiated innuendo (Phillip may be bisexual, one son may not be his, etc.). Wherever possible, Kelley's inflections as narrator make events seem naughtier still. There are two obvious flaws: not once are sources cited clearly, and most of the slurs are based on what someone says without scrutiny of motives. Of the family, the Queen comes out of the fray best, and Charles definitely gets the worst of it. Throughout, schlock rules over scholarship. Not recommended.?Mark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, N.C.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Audioworks; Abridged edition (September 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671578987
• ISBN-13: 978-0671578985
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,412,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Books on Cassette > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National

More About the Author

Among the awards that Kitty Kelley has been honored with by her professional peers are the Outstanding Author Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors for her "courageous writing on popular culture," the Philip M. Stern Award for her "outstanding service to writers and the writing profession," the Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club in New York City, and the 2005 PEN Oakland Literary Censorship Award. She has also been selected as a member of Vanity Fair magazine's Hall of Fame. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, People, Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why are the British people not allowed to read this book?, August 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Royals (Mass Market Paperback)

I tried to purchase this book through Amazon, but I was told that it could not be shipped to UK addresses. This is apparently due to an official ban imposed by the British Government. By chance, I then found a copy when browsing in a local 'bargain' bookshop; the book cannot be obtained from large bookstore chains in the UK such as Waterstones etc. I found it to be reasonably well researched, and far more intelligently written than articles one might read about 'the royals' in the British tabloids. Ms Kelley rightly indicates throughout her book the huge amounts of money that the various post- war debacles of the Mountbatten- Windsor family have cost the British people. How ironic, then, that we are the only people in the world who are officially not allowed to read this book! What do the international community think about this? Opinions please!

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A positive review, October 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Royals (Hardcover)

Having read this book I feel that it has been unfairly maligned. It is neither a trashing of the individuals in the house of Windsor nor is it a tabloid-esque scandal sheet. Ms. Kelly paints a complex psychological portrait of the members of the royal family in a way that does not excuse their well documented ill-behavior but rather allows the reader to have insight into their personal motivations. In a way the royal family of Britain are painted as very real and human characters with flaws and many emotional injuries. I wonder if the negative reaction to this book is due to the timing of its release and the fact that the narrative humanizes characters that Britain, for the sake of its history and system of governance, needs to be more that human. And for the rest of the world to serve as a mirror for our fantasies. For me this book elicited pathos for this family--the queen's coldness and inhumanity caused by the early death of her father and the trauma of the second world war with all of the incipient pressures that would befall her. (what a potentially terrifying childhood knowing that your destiny may require you to "save the nation" though the strength of your character). As for Charles (for whom I personally had a storng antipathy towards prior to reading this book) the childhood he had left him quite incapable of being a loving sympathetic man despite the fact that he apparently has a tremendous need to be so. Diana was bound to be crushed by the institution of royalty and the monarchy. Her "loony' behavior makes perfect sense when you consider that she as a 19 year old girl had just steeped though the looking glass and into a world with no allies. Also, don't kid yourself, while there some epistemological problems and some quotes must clearly be fabricated, a technique of historians going back to Herodotous, this is an exceedingly well crafted book.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delicious gossip, served with a silver spoon., December 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Royals (Hardcover)

The outraged royalists crying "shame" on Kitty should take a reality check- particularly the reviewer from Dublin who expressed such contempt for Miss Kelly. Is Princess Margaret to be defended after issuing such public statements as "The Irish are all pigs?" Yes, this book was a cold, hard slap in the face of the house of Windsor- and this reader has no sympathy. I felt that Miss Kelly's book showed the house of Windsor to be what it is- a crumbling institution that serves no purpose, except for the amusement of the tabloids. Miss Kelly presented a portrait of self serving parasites out of touch with their land and people, and she did it with skill. It was a fast paced, entertaining read, not always unsympathetic, but always fascinating. A revealing portrait of those who consider themselves our "betters," but, sadly and obviously, are not.