Word: royalities
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Perhaps because royal marriages begin so grandly, their endings always seem a bit pathetic, more fizz than bang. So it was that last Wednesday, 27 reporters and a civilian were the only ones present when the names of SARAH FERGUSON, Duchess of York, and PRINCE ANDREW, Duke of York, were on the list of 29 couples granted a decree nisi (a.k.a. a "quickie divorce") in a three-minute ceremony. The prince was holed up in his navy barracks, and the duchess was smothering her sadness in the snows of Switzerland, accompanied by daughters BEATRICE, 7 and EUGENIE, 6. "Of course...
Writers in those days found nothing wrong with a little embellishment to dress up a story. But as an archaeologist, Schliemann committed an even greater sin: he claimed to have found together within what he called a royal palace some objects that were almost certainly discovered separately and outside the nearby city wall. Why did he twist the facts? Probably, says Traill, because his obsession with verifying the Iliad--quite real, even if it didn't date from childhood--demanded proof that King Priam, Helen's father-in-law, existed. What better proof than a royal treasure...
THAT, OF COURSE, IS AN OVERsimplification. The book offers myriad fascinating examples of the fragility of the royal world. Bradford previously wrote a biography of George VI, and the strongest chapters of this book deal with Elizabeth's first 30 years, where Bradford's sources are strongest. The pages teem with hardy secondary players--the spoiled, resentful Duke of Windsor; the Queen Mother, tough as tacks but effervescently charming; the ambitious, meddling Lord Louis Mountbatten...
...Margaret Mead Litter Chairs; our World War I Turkish Cavalry Helmets (wonderful as planters); and our Lord Kitchener Lawn Furniture, made entirely of distressed, vintage cricket paddles. A new favorite of Jan's dad, who's very particular when it comes to comfort, is our hand-rubbed rhino-skin Royal Bengalese Club Chair. Sink into this overstuffed beauty, and try not to imagine yourself in the highest echelons of the Raj, ordering a vodka tonic or dispatching 1,000 Gurkhas to certain death in the Khyber Pass...
Camaraderie is swell, but the play's the thing, and this year Humana had the goods. The big find was Naomi Wallace, a Kentucky native whose work has been produced by Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company but virtually not at all in the U.S. Her luxuriously poetic One Flea Spare is set during the London plague of 1665, when "at night the rats came out in twos and threes to drink the sweat from our faces." The stage is a canvas of convulsive emotions and pristine images of four tortured refugees from the pestilence. Only a 12-year-old girl...