Princesses by Flora Fraser, 0719561094, Lowest Book Price Finder

Customer Reviews:

A frustrating read

This should be a terrific book -- the subject is extremely interesting. Unfortunately, the writing is rather poor. It's full of run-on sentences and indirect language that detracts from the story. For example:

"What made more of an impression on eleven-year-old Princess Royal and her sisters than some rooms furnished with the Queen's familiar elegance, or even the state rooms within the castle - which had a tendency to admit rain - furnished by their Stuart kinsman King Charles II, were the festivities arranged for their brother's birthday."

Ugh! Who edited this thing?

A good read

I enjoyed this book. It was not too heavy on the historical facts and the hardest part was keeping up with who was whom. So many of the family have the same name. Just as well there is a family tree at the start, i referred to it a hundred times. A good holiday book, easy to pick up and put down without losing the thread.

disappointed

The six daughters of (mad) King George III and his Queen Charlotte are not as well known as their flamboyant brothers. The King George regarded all six of his daughters as paragons of virtue. On the surface they certainly were. However, they had their secrets too - love affaires and at least an illegitimate child by one of the princesses. Usually they were rather dutiful daughters and only after their father's final madness did they demand some kind of freedom from the rather oppressive regime of their mother. They are to be pitied as they were cheated of the chance of letting their own lives or only got this chance very late in life by shelfish parents.

In another review I read that the princesses "secretly led scandalous and subversive lives of sexual licence and covert rebellion against royal repression". I suppose that statement is made to raise interest in the book and evokes association to more recent royal lives. However, that is very far from the truth.

Flora Fraser's credentials as a biographer are impeccable, but her new book is too be honest very boring. She does not present the interest reader with any new information or insite. She just repeats what had been written before and gets rather vague when the "scandalous" aspects come up. I am very disappointed by her work, especially as her presentation of the lives of the princesses is not very nice, kind of confused, jumping from one to the other princess. In fairness it gets better if one gets on with the book, but it is a drag. Maybe for those who read for the first time about the princessses it is more interesting.

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