Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

Full disclosure here: I’ve always been fascinated by Britain’s Royal Family. At one point in the not too distant past I had an entire shelf of biographies of members of this family, dating all the way back to Henry VIII and coming forward to multiple books on the Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis, the thrice-married American. So, when I saw this newish book (published 12/5/23) on Libby, I downloaded it. I thought this would be an in depth look at the raising of children in the Royal Family. What I didn’t think I would find is large sections of other books, albeit with the proper citations and credit to the original authors, pasted into the text.

First of all, I try really hard to be positive in my book reviews, because, as a writer, I admire greatly anyone who has the wherewithal to come up with an idea, buckle down and write an entire book, go through numerous redrafts and edits, and be fortunate enough to find an agent and a publisher, and well, just because I don’t enjoy that book, why should I write a negative review? With this book, however, I have found this to be challenging.

To be fair, this piece of nonfiction covered a lot of ground, going back to the children of the Plantagenets and concluding with Meghan and Harry’s children. However, perhaps a more detailed edit of the manuscript might have eliminated some of the repetition of information and less of the quoted text from other published works. The bibliography for Quinn’s book was 17 pages long!

Did I learn anything new from reading Quinn’s book? Yes, of course, however, much of the book detailed things I have read before, whether in biographies or magazine articles, or heard in television interviews surrounding major events of the Royal Family. A lot of the information seemed to be angled against certain members of the Royal Family, so I didn’t feel it was entirely balanced.

Author Tom Quinn is a prolific writer; Goodreads documents 117 different books written by him, many of which deal with the Royal Family specifically and England in general. Perhaps this is a case of a publishing contract deadline and the compilation of information this author has amassed over his long career. One of the books listed in Goodreads documents the life of William Tallon, the favored servant of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. I actually think I will try to locate this 2015 release to see if I enjoy some of Quinn’s earlier work a bit more than this particular one.