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Queen Mary
History of Queen Mary
252 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 22, 2025
This book would get zero stars if that was allowed. It is practically useless for two reasons: Duff is an incredibly mean-spirited author, and all pertinent information is covered in further depth and with greater humanity in James Pope-Hennessy's earlier biography of Queen Mary.
Duff writes with gleeful venom about Mary's mother, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Duchess of Teck. Pope-Hennessy presented Mary Adelaide as an eccentric, complex, and sometimes foolish (with money) but genuinely clever, kind and lovable woman who happened to be obese in an era where obesity was shameful. Duff presents her as shamefully, embarrassingly fat first and foremost, but also stupid, gluttonous, vain, covetous, self-aggrandizing, and without any interiority beyond her basest impulses, while managing the neat trick of pulling from Pope-Hennesy liberally (some sections are little more than Pope-Hennessy run through a thesaurus) but removing all the compassion and context that elevated the earlier volume. It is exceptionally bad scholarship.
Here is an example so you can judge for yourselves the quality of this book:
On page 25, Duff writes:
When [Mary Adelaide was] asked out to meals, hostesses were embarrassed by the demand for further helpings and the consequent length of the repast. She would criticize the cooking.
On being served with wild boar's head with Cambridge sauce, she commented, "The sauce which we have here is wrongly made. A real Cambridge sauce is made of nothing more than red currant jelly, red wine and the hottest possible English mustard, which must all be stirred together as long as possible.
But this sauce is made up of raspberry jelly, port, orange peel and the mildest mustard."
The source of the anecdote begins on page 72 of Baron Von Eckhartstine's "Ten Years at the Court of St. James":
I once had the honour to sit next the Duchess of Teck at a little lunch given by Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the old English Field-Marshal. On my remarking to the Duchess how excellent the Cumberland sauce was that was being served with the wild-boar's head, she said with emphasis and some excitement: "In the first place the calling it 'Cumberland sauce is all wrong. The fact is that my father invented this sauce, and my uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, was only passionately fond of it.
Therefore by all right and title it ought to be called
'Cambridge sauce.' Besides, the sauce which we have here is wrongly made. A real Cambridge sauce, such as my father invented, is made of nothing more than red currant jelly, red wine and the hottest possible English mustard, which must all be stirred up together as long as possible. But this sauce is made up of raspberry jelly, port, orange peel and the mildest mustard. It not only tastes differently, but is quite different."
See the difference? Duff takes an anecdote written by a man who liked Mary Adelaide a good deal (he earlier describes her and her husband Francis as "cheerful, kindly characters" and notes that the British public particularly adored her) and transforms it into a story of a rude, demanding guest. Notice how she was asked about the sauce before saying anything? (Also I have yet to find the corroborating evidence that Mary did actually embarrass hostesses by prolonging dinners. I suspect that is Duff editorializing and not understanding how huge Victorian dinner parties were, especially when entertaining a royal.)
Every appearance Mary Adelaide makes in Duff's book is like that. An anecdote about her enjoying a dinner party on holiday is transformed by Duff into how she "would prolong meals by as much as three hours as she devoured helping after helping." (pg 42) She is cast as too frivolous when she continued socializing after her husband had a stroke, too smothering when she regularly visited her daughter after her marriage, too much, too loud, too fat, too everything.
And as if that isn't enough to dissuade you? Duff's book is out of print and goes for hundreds of dollars on Amazon. Pope-Hennessy's book? As of this writing, $4.99 on kindle.
A later biography should be an improvement upon what came before, not markedly worse.
And yes. Mary Adelaide is not the subject of the book. Her daughter is. But when you can see how poorly Duff distorted and reframed the truth about Mary Adelaide, how can anything he says be trusted?
Duff writes with gleeful venom about Mary's mother, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Duchess of Teck. Pope-Hennessy presented Mary Adelaide as an eccentric, complex, and sometimes foolish (with money) but genuinely clever, kind and lovable woman who happened to be obese in an era where obesity was shameful. Duff presents her as shamefully, embarrassingly fat first and foremost, but also stupid, gluttonous, vain, covetous, self-aggrandizing, and without any interiority beyond her basest impulses, while managing the neat trick of pulling from Pope-Hennesy liberally (some sections are little more than Pope-Hennessy run through a thesaurus) but removing all the compassion and context that elevated the earlier volume. It is exceptionally bad scholarship.
Here is an example so you can judge for yourselves the quality of this book:
On page 25, Duff writes:
When [Mary Adelaide was] asked out to meals, hostesses were embarrassed by the demand for further helpings and the consequent length of the repast. She would criticize the cooking.
On being served with wild boar's head with Cambridge sauce, she commented, "The sauce which we have here is wrongly made. A real Cambridge sauce is made of nothing more than red currant jelly, red wine and the hottest possible English mustard, which must all be stirred together as long as possible.
But this sauce is made up of raspberry jelly, port, orange peel and the mildest mustard."
The source of the anecdote begins on page 72 of Baron Von Eckhartstine's "Ten Years at the Court of St. James":
I once had the honour to sit next the Duchess of Teck at a little lunch given by Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the old English Field-Marshal. On my remarking to the Duchess how excellent the Cumberland sauce was that was being served with the wild-boar's head, she said with emphasis and some excitement: "In the first place the calling it 'Cumberland sauce is all wrong. The fact is that my father invented this sauce, and my uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, was only passionately fond of it.
Therefore by all right and title it ought to be called
'Cambridge sauce.' Besides, the sauce which we have here is wrongly made. A real Cambridge sauce, such as my father invented, is made of nothing more than red currant jelly, red wine and the hottest possible English mustard, which must all be stirred up together as long as possible. But this sauce is made up of raspberry jelly, port, orange peel and the mildest mustard. It not only tastes differently, but is quite different."
See the difference? Duff takes an anecdote written by a man who liked Mary Adelaide a good deal (he earlier describes her and her husband Francis as "cheerful, kindly characters" and notes that the British public particularly adored her) and transforms it into a story of a rude, demanding guest. Notice how she was asked about the sauce before saying anything? (Also I have yet to find the corroborating evidence that Mary did actually embarrass hostesses by prolonging dinners. I suspect that is Duff editorializing and not understanding how huge Victorian dinner parties were, especially when entertaining a royal.)
Every appearance Mary Adelaide makes in Duff's book is like that. An anecdote about her enjoying a dinner party on holiday is transformed by Duff into how she "would prolong meals by as much as three hours as she devoured helping after helping." (pg 42) She is cast as too frivolous when she continued socializing after her husband had a stroke, too smothering when she regularly visited her daughter after her marriage, too much, too loud, too fat, too everything.
And as if that isn't enough to dissuade you? Duff's book is out of print and goes for hundreds of dollars on Amazon. Pope-Hennessy's book? As of this writing, $4.99 on kindle.
A later biography should be an improvement upon what came before, not markedly worse.
And yes. Mary Adelaide is not the subject of the book. Her daughter is. But when you can see how poorly Duff distorted and reframed the truth about Mary Adelaide, how can anything he says be trusted?
August 14, 2021
Thoroughly enjoyed this book & highly recommend it to anyone who is fan of the British Royal family as I am.
July 24, 2025
As a follower of the Royal Family I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A very regal woman.
July 22, 2011
I fell in love with May reading this. It may be a bit simplistic, and quite a bit biased, but it's a good one all the same.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews