A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

Couldn't put it down!, 07 Nov 2008
This is an amazing book and I just couldn't put it down. Mary Gilliatt, the interior designer, is just so funny as she recounts stories about her friends who used to come to dinner. And we're not just talking any friends but the likes of Princess Margaret, Spike Milligan and even Margot Fonteyn. I loved the story about the woman who couldn't decide what to wear and quickly jumped into a taxi when her husband, the playwright, Sean O'Casey, got impatient with her - only to realise when she got to the dinner party that she wasn't wearing a dress under her coat! You'll laugh out loud, I know I did! I'm buying a copy for my mum and one of my friends as it's the best book I've read for ages - and I read about 4 books a week.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

Couldn't put it down!, 07 Nov 2008
This is an amazing book and I just couldn't put it down. Mary Gilliatt, the interior designer, is just so funny as she recounts stories about her friends who used to come to dinner. And we're not just talking any friends but the likes of Princess Margaret, Spike Milligan and even Margot Fonteyn. I loved the story about the woman who couldn't decide what to wear and quickly jumped into a taxi when her husband, the playwright, Sean O'Casey, got impatient with her - only to realise when she got to the dinner party that she wasn't wearing a dress under her coat! You'll laugh out loud, I know I did! I'm buying a copy for my mum and one of my friends as it's the best book I've read for ages - and I read about 4 books a week.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

Couldn't put it down!, 07 Nov 2008
This is an amazing book and I just couldn't put it down. Mary Gilliatt, the interior designer, is just so funny as she recounts stories about her friends who used to come to dinner. And we're not just talking any friends but the likes of Princess Margaret, Spike Milligan and even Margot Fonteyn. I loved the story about the woman who couldn't decide what to wear and quickly jumped into a taxi when her husband, the playwright, Sean O'Casey, got impatient with her - only to realise when she got to the dinner party that she wasn't wearing a dress under her coat! You'll laugh out loud, I know I did! I'm buying a copy for my mum and one of my friends as it's the best book I've read for ages - and I read about 4 books a week.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed over. Why? It's as though she died once the Townsend thing was finished. The rest feels like a post- mortem. Her older years should be the more important part of her life, a time of growing up, reflection and maturity, but the author shies away from this. There are brief mentions of her 'spirituality' but one almost gets the idea it's when she was too sick to party that she settled down and pulled out the Bible for lack of anything else to do. There is only a glossing over of the 40 or so years of her life after Townsend and it's as though the author was told in no uncertain term, "Hands Off!"
This approach is what is so disappointing about the biography and it shows up in the others previously written. Is the mythos of royalty so powerful that no one can write an honest assessment of the Princess' life?
In any case, the facts of her life are so well known that newer insights would have been appreciated. She lead, ultimately, a very sad sort of existence. Heir to her uncle's weaknesses, her behavior in addition to that of the the more 'modern' royals throughout the years has brought the monarchy down. For almost 30 years after the Townsend affair she became a shadow figure, providing endless entertainment for gossipy newspapers. What happened to her, what did she go through? None of this is explained, no interviews from currently living relatives or friends shed any light on this part of her life.
What's tragic is that she never really seemed to find her place, what her special 'calling' might haver been other than as tabloid fodder. Even with his overly conservative text, the author makes it very clear with what isn't said.
To top off all of this, the recent auction held by her children is unutterably sad and in poor taste. Couldn't they have sold the items in question through private channels? After all the years with their mother, etc, they fling yet more mud on her even in death. It's so pathetic.

not close enough , 29 Aug 2007
I was really looking forward to reading this book mainly because like the song 'who danced with the Prince of Wales'I knew someone who knew her well in her Roddy days. I think the author just didn't not get close enough to prime sources. By the way was John Wayne really only as tall as PM?

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing , 07 Aug 2007
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

A book badly knitted., 10 Apr 2008
I have to agree with the other reviewers - this is an incredibly disappointing book on all levels. Tim Heald is, apparently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On the basis of this particular book, one wonders how he was ever granted such an honour. The prose is appalling - full of endless repetitions, clichés, badly-constructed sentences and (frankly) boring irrelevancies. The insight is nil. No biographer should impose himself on the text, at the expense of the subject, in the way that Heald does. At times (especially in the self-important and utterly pointless "Notes" at the end), the biography seems more about Heald's thought processes and (questionable) research than about Princess Margaret. He complains far too often about how he was not allowed to quote the entire text of letters from Princess Margaret, which he then proceeds to paraphrase (probably at greater length than the original letter!). The letters quoted are, however, of little or no interest or relevance at all. There is far too much of his own opinion of people's behaviour, a huge amount of gossip and tittle-tattle (disapproved of, but then quoted and discussed at length) and far too little of any insight into a complex character. He is far too keen to speak about how he met Royalty, how he had lunch with the Queen Mother and visited Glamis Castle with Lady Strathmore and so on. The apparent purpose is to demonstrate how good his sources are. However, if the product of these sources is utterly trivial, what does it matter? And as for the endless quotations from other people and other books.... Trivial to the nth degree.
The footnotes are absurd, and often wrong (for example, the late Duke of Devonshire is treated as the late Duke some of the time, but held out to be alive at other times, often the footnote simply repeats the main text it is supposed to illuminate, and so on). Names are misspelled - often given different spellings in the same sentence. His use of names and titles is inconsistent.
All in all, a very cheap, shoddy, sloppy, frankly tedious work of no scholarship, insight or interest whatsoever.
I cannot recommend it too little.

Virtually unreadable, 06 Nov 2007
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states , for example, that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!


Probably one of the saddest royals . . ., 27 Oct 2007
A few weeks ago, I saw online a copy of the auction catalog for the estate of Princess Margaret. Bemused, I bought it to look at and only gradually did the sadness of the whole thing start to sink in. I was moved to buy a legitimate biography of the Princess in an attempt to gain some insight.
This particular biography spends a great deal of time chronicling the childhood, war years and the Townsend affair, but the last forty years of the Princess' life after that is glossed o