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Princess
"Princess" 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 Paperback – 1983 by Robert Lacey 1982
128 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1983
56 people want to read
About the author
Robert Lacey
83 books323 followersRobert Lacey is a British historian noted for his original research, which gets him close to - and often living alongside - his subjects. He is the author of numerous international bestsellers.
After writing his first works of historical biography, Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert wrote Majesty, his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II. Published in 1977, Majesty remains
acknowledged as the definitive study of British monarchy - a subject on which the author continues to write and lecture around the world, appearing regularly on ABC's Good Morning America and on CNN's Larry King Live.
The Kingdom, a study of Saudi Arabia published in 1981, is similarly acknowledged as required reading for businessmen, diplomats and students all over the world. To research The Kingdom, Robert and his wife Sandi took their family to live for eighteen months beside the Red Sea in Jeddah. Going out into the desert, this was when Robert earned his title as the "method actor" of contemporary biographers.
In March 1984 Robert Lacey took his family to live in Detroit, Michigan, to write Ford: the Men and the Machine, a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic which formed the basis for the TV mini-series of the same title, starring Cliff Robertson.
Robert's other books include biographies of the gangster Meyer Lansky, Princess Grace of Monaco and a study of Sotheby's auction house. He co- authored The Year 1000 - An Englishman's World, a description of life at the turn of the last millennium. In 2002, the Golden Jubilee Year of Queen Elizabeth II, he published Royal (Monarch in America), hailed by Andrew Roberts in London's Sunday Telegraph as "compulsively readable", and by Martin Amis in The New Yorker as "definitive".
With the publication of his Great Tales Robert Lacey returns to his first love - history. Robert Lacey is currently the historical consultant to the award-winning Netflix series "The Crown".
After writing his first works of historical biography, Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert wrote Majesty, his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II. Published in 1977, Majesty remains
acknowledged as the definitive study of British monarchy - a subject on which the author continues to write and lecture around the world, appearing regularly on ABC's Good Morning America and on CNN's Larry King Live.
The Kingdom, a study of Saudi Arabia published in 1981, is similarly acknowledged as required reading for businessmen, diplomats and students all over the world. To research The Kingdom, Robert and his wife Sandi took their family to live for eighteen months beside the Red Sea in Jeddah. Going out into the desert, this was when Robert earned his title as the "method actor" of contemporary biographers.
In March 1984 Robert Lacey took his family to live in Detroit, Michigan, to write Ford: the Men and the Machine, a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic which formed the basis for the TV mini-series of the same title, starring Cliff Robertson.
Robert's other books include biographies of the gangster Meyer Lansky, Princess Grace of Monaco and a study of Sotheby's auction house. He co- authored The Year 1000 - An Englishman's World, a description of life at the turn of the last millennium. In 2002, the Golden Jubilee Year of Queen Elizabeth II, he published Royal (Monarch in America), hailed by Andrew Roberts in London's Sunday Telegraph as "compulsively readable", and by Martin Amis in The New Yorker as "definitive".
With the publication of his Great Tales Robert Lacey returns to his first love - history. Robert Lacey is currently the historical consultant to the award-winning Netflix series "The Crown".
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 23, 2009
I got this book as a gift shortly after the marriage of Diana and Charles. I was in high school and was fascinated by English royalty and their pomp and ceremony. Mr. Lacey's writing was very precise, but filled with details. He is an expert on royalty, and is a highly respected author. This book was a joy to read as the reader learns a lot about Diana (when much was not known about her) and has stunning photography. An elegant book about a beloved lady, even a few short years after her marriage to Prince Charles. You will find none of that 'tabloid' nonsense in this book. Just facts from someone who is an expert on the topics of which he writes.
May 31, 2013
"The British monarchy has been described as 'a fragile mystery that works', and the Princess of Wales has brought a new twist to its old magic."
Oh, my, this is a beautiful book. I just want to hold it, to stroke it. And I think what makes it so beautiful is not the fact that there are more pages of photographs (glossy, full-page photographs) than there are pages with words, but the fact that, with its 1982 publication year, it presents a blushing, not-yet-self-assured twenty-year-old. Back when Diana, Princess of Wales, was still just a person - barely a wife, not yet a mother (although she was a few months pregnant by the final pages), and far from becoming a legend, complicated and extraordinary. More than anything, this book - the shortest the author has ever written - is a historical document, capturing a moment in time that will never be repeated. A moment when people believed in true love, and weren't cynical enough to think that behind the harmony and the adoring glances in public was tacit, tearful tumult. A moment when Diana was the future Queen, and saying so (as Robert Lacey does) was not expressing a wish but merely stating a fact. A moment when people believed in fairy tales (because, after all, at the heart of it, it is called Princess, and said Princess does marry a prince) - and this book is written as such, in the most delicate and lovely way possible.
Take this passage, for example, from the last page.
Which is one of the many reasons I am so grateful for this book. I am so grateful for having been provided with a way to understand Diana when she was barely 21 - a way that is not musty with sentiment or salaciousness. As I said, I want nothing more than to hold this book, to sleep with it under my pillow, to pretend that the things Mr. Lacey wrote about still exist (and that believing in them does not make one naive). The 1980s were hard and tense (or so I imagine, my image fed mostly by television and history books), but she must have imbued them with life and enchantment. And it is this life and enchantment that Mr. Lacey captures so magnificently.
"'Both individually and nationally,' [anthropologist Sir Edmund Leach] wrote, 'we need constant reassurance that, despite the certainty of death, we are immortal. It is no good saying that it is "irrational" to believe in immortality; of course it is; but the psychological need to feel some assurance of survival goes very deep...."
Oh, my, this is a beautiful book. I just want to hold it, to stroke it. And I think what makes it so beautiful is not the fact that there are more pages of photographs (glossy, full-page photographs) than there are pages with words, but the fact that, with its 1982 publication year, it presents a blushing, not-yet-self-assured twenty-year-old. Back when Diana, Princess of Wales, was still just a person - barely a wife, not yet a mother (although she was a few months pregnant by the final pages), and far from becoming a legend, complicated and extraordinary. More than anything, this book - the shortest the author has ever written - is a historical document, capturing a moment in time that will never be repeated. A moment when people believed in true love, and weren't cynical enough to think that behind the harmony and the adoring glances in public was tacit, tearful tumult. A moment when Diana was the future Queen, and saying so (as Robert Lacey does) was not expressing a wish but merely stating a fact. A moment when people believed in fairy tales (because, after all, at the heart of it, it is called Princess, and said Princess does marry a prince) - and this book is written as such, in the most delicate and lovely way possible.
Take this passage, for example, from the last page.
This naturalness [with people] is a quality that the new Princess shares with her grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and this may have something to do with the fact that neither of them grew up in palaces. Well born though they were, both women started out their lives as one of us, not one of them, and perhaps it is twenty years spent reading the papers, rather than being in them, that leads to gestures like taking round slices of your wedding cake to the ladies who sew up your clothes.And if we, as readers, get choked up over those lines which close out the book, it is surely not because we don't want to believe in the exquisite magic, but because we know the chilling details of how the story ends.
It also makes for a literally enchanting transformation when you are the one plucked out of millions to dance at the ball. The glass slipper was missing, but the youngest sister from a broken home did get the gown, the glass coach and, of course, the charming prince. The wand was waved by us because we want her to carry and keep alive our hopes and dreams and fantasies.
It is important to us that the magic does not die - and that is why we have a special reason for hoping that Diana, Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, may truly live happily ever after.
Which is one of the many reasons I am so grateful for this book. I am so grateful for having been provided with a way to understand Diana when she was barely 21 - a way that is not musty with sentiment or salaciousness. As I said, I want nothing more than to hold this book, to sleep with it under my pillow, to pretend that the things Mr. Lacey wrote about still exist (and that believing in them does not make one naive). The 1980s were hard and tense (or so I imagine, my image fed mostly by television and history books), but she must have imbued them with life and enchantment. And it is this life and enchantment that Mr. Lacey captures so magnificently.
"'Both individually and nationally,' [anthropologist Sir Edmund Leach] wrote, 'we need constant reassurance that, despite the certainty of death, we are immortal. It is no good saying that it is "irrational" to believe in immortality; of course it is; but the psychological need to feel some assurance of survival goes very deep...."
July 3, 2014
I have read this book countless times since I was 13 years old. I used to borrow and renew and return with late fees from my local library for, at least, a decade. Princess Diana was my heroine; she was everything I always wanted to be. Mostly I really wanted to believe in the fairy tale. For some reason I never bought this book for my own library and now I finally did. It arrived on July 1 which would have been Diana's 52nd birthday. Re-reading the book was somewhat bittersweet because it was so hopeful and so happy by what was perceived to be a real royal romance. The last line of the book was especially poignant as it states that she deserved a happy ending. We all know now that it wasn't to be.
The pictures are wonderful!
The pictures are wonderful!
March 3, 2018
Of course I loved it. Loved the pictures, some I had never seen before. Awesome book sale find.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews