Queen Consort: The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller: the Biography of Queen Consort Camilla
£7.60£9.50 (-20%)
THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘A gripping story of human frailty, love, loss, sadness, and tragedy’ Daily Mail
She is the most public and least understood woman in Britain. Diana called her a Rottweiler. Prince Harry said she was a villain. But spend two minutes with Camilla and you understand why Charles fell for her.
The relationship between King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort, is one of the most extraordinary, star-crossed love stories of the past fifty years. It has endured against all the odds, and in the process nearly destroyed the British monarchy.
In this compelling biography, Britain’s top royal author paints an intimate portrait of the Queen Consort, revealing for the first time why the King went against his mother and risked everything to have Camilla by his side.
Previously published as The Duchess.
Read more
Additional information
| Publisher | William Collins (8 Mar. 2018) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 352 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0008211035 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0008211035 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 2.24 x 19.8 cm |
by jc
Really not much new here if you’ve been an avid british royalty follower for the last thirty years like I have. Nonetheless, I hardly put it down, reading it voraciously over three days, so I would recommend anyone getting it who is curious about what kind of person Camilla is. Quite a few mentions of her “bees around a honeypot” attractiveness to men from the time she was a teenager with her smiling blue eyes and sexiness, certainly doesn’t come across in photographs.
Mentions Camilla’s “ruthlessness’; how she hurt her family by the affair with Charles; how totally and completely without empathy or conscience she was in being outraged by Diana “causing a scene” by confronting her about the affair at Camilla’s sister’s party; and her total coldness with regard to how she couldn’t have cared less about Diana’s death except in how it affected she and Charles. Describes how she buries her head in the sand when she doesn’t want to face something; how she loved philandering Andrew P.B. more than Charles initially and just used Charles to pay Andrew back for his infidelity; how she ran away from the car accident she had a few years ago where she hit a woman’s car – and Charles’ team took care of it and put a p.r. slant on it to avoid how disgraceful the hit and run really was. Camilla smokes despite Charles’ dislike of smoking and forbidding it at Highgrove – very selfish/deceptive/inconsiderate of her to smoke inside Highgrove and think he is so stupid he and staff won’t smell the lingering stench. Camilla prefers her own messy Raymill house to living at “tickety’boo” magazine tidy Highgrove. Shows how standoffish and emotionally detached the Queen and Prince Philip are when it comes to Charles – utterly stingy with praise or attention, even now. No wonder he turned to Camilla for mothering and warmth! Bashing Diana in this book didn’t make me like Camilla any better, even if every word of it was true. Junor seems to make it clear that Charles’ sons William and Harry still have some (well justified) antipathy towards Camilla and always will, well covered up for public consumption so as to not ruffle their father’s feathers. Pushes way too hard the last few chapters about how fabulous Camilla is with her charity work. Hundreds of wealthy women – if not thousands – also do charity work. It’s just that Camilla’s position married to Prince Charles gives her more publicity than they get. Camilla will be Queen, and this book is just the first of many that will follow about she & Charles when the Queen passes away. . Junor’s well written biography, that while seemingly heaping the Duchess with praise – isn’t anywhere near as laudatory of the Rottweiler as one might believe.
by Lizzie R. west yorkshire
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and, I believe, it is a book which needed to be written.
Yes, we all adored the public persona of Diana, and yes I too cried buckets at her tragically untimely death, but each and every one of us has to live through the personal cycle of life, love, loss, pain and survival – and in all our lives we somehow pick ourselves up and get through whatever life throws at us.
It’s hard enough doing it privately, so imagine how much harder it must be doing all of it in the full glare of the public and with a million cameras thrust in your face.
It’s now time to move on! We can’t expect Charles to live frozen in time, under a glass dome, in 1997. He deserves his private life to be as rewarding as his successful public life. He deserves to feel loved..
We should be glad that Charles and Camilla are finally together and happy! And when you read this fascinating book it shows just how lucky the Royal Family are to now have Camilla amongst them.
And I really MEAN lucky! Camilla was a hands on mum doing all the normal day to day things in life for over 50 years before joining The Firm – none of the Royals can bring to the table her normal life experiences – and this is invaluable in bringing some normalcy to Charles’s life which he wasn’t allowed to do simply because by accident of birth he was born Royal.
Camilla is doing some wonderful things, she is proud of her husband for having the imagination to start the Prince’s Trust at such a young age and the path she has decided to walk down are on hugely pertinent subjects which other Royals have walked past, so huge congratulations to her for choosing to let her new position make a difference simply by bringing them all together.
During the official service of Thanksgiving earlier this year for the Sapphire Anniversary of our beloved Queen, the Rev Richard Charteris said from the “No one knew what life lay ahead for Elizabeth as a yet unborn baby in her mother’s womb – only God knew, only God knew the life he had mapped out for her” – her mother was the Duchess of York at the time of Elizabeth’s birth, she wasn’t born to be Queen – only God knew. None of US know what life has in store for US, we simply have to live our lives to find out – and so have Charles and Camilla!
So, I for one say to all her detractors “Move on! Let her live her life to the full. We can’t live continuously looking back at what might have been, we all only have the future to look forward to, so be generous to Charles and Camilla and allow them both to carry on their good works and be happy”.
And to those who didn’t like the book I say Why on earth buy a biography on someone you don’t like?????????