Tag: Britain

• Book Review: The Windsor Affair by Melanie Benjamin

  There’s almost constant chatter about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but long before there was a Harry and Meghan, there was a David and Wallis. While the severity of what happened during what will forever be known as the Abdication Crisis does not compare to the “spare” and his wife stepping back from royal…

  michardillo

  April 23, 2026

  books

  Abdication Crisis, ARC, Baltimore, Bertie, book-review, book-reviews, books, Britain, British, British Royal Family, David, Delacorte Press, Duchess of Windsor, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Duke of Windsor, Edward VIII, Elizabeth II, England, fiction, Fort Belvedere, France, George V, George VI, Goodreads, Great Britain, Harry and Meghan, historical fiction, Kindle, Libby, literature, London, Melanie Benjamin, Mountbatten-Windsor, NetGalley, nonfiction, novel, Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, reading, The King’s Speech, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Windsor Affair, Wallis Simpson, WE, Windsor Castle, writing

• Book Review: The Accidental Rewrite by Milly Johnson

  First of all, since this was an offering on NetGalley I assumed this was a brand new, yet to be published book, perhaps by a debut author. Silly me, wrong on all accounts. The Accidental Rewrite was first published in February of 2024 in the UK under the title The Happiest Ever After. And, Milly…

  michardillo

  September 12, 2025

  books

  ARC, author, BBC, book-review, book-reviews, books, Britain, British, cat, debut novel, England, fiction, Fredrik Backman, Goodreads, Harper Muse, literature, Milly Johnson, My Friends, NetGalley, novel, PBS, publishing, reading, The Accidental Rewrite, The Daily Trumpet, The Happiest Ever After, UK, writer, writing, Yorkshire Cat Rescue

• Book Review: Gilded Youth: A History of Growing Up In the Royal Family: From the Plantagenets to the Cambridges by Tom Quinn

  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,…

  michardillo

  September 22, 2024

  books, Essay

  book-review, books, Britain, England, Goodreads, Libby, nonfiction, Royal Family, Tom Quinn, writing

• Girl Power

  It’s mid-third quarter of this school year and I am knee-deep teaching two novels set in England nearly six hundred years apart. The 7th grade is reading Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman, the diary of a girl in medieval times during the reign of Edward I, covering the span of one year of her…

  michardillo

  February 28, 2016

  Essay

  Britain, Catherine Called Birdy, Downton Abbey, Edward I, election year, England, girl power, Great Rebellion, Hillary Clinton, Karen Cushman, Lady Mary, law school, Lord Grantham, LSU, medieval times, middle ages, Newberry Honor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, teaching, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Victorian Era