The royal family

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

don't know which makes me more apoplectic with rage...

 

The royal wedding of the century - the novel

 

Recently, I received an email from a PR agency, which I think you will enjoy reading in full:

 

"Hi Sam,

 

I hope you are well.

 

We are the publicity agency for The Golden Prince which is the latest book by Romantic Novelist Rebecca Dean, published by Harper.

 

The book has been shortlisted for both the Romantic Novel Of The Year Award and Historical Novel Of The Year Awards to be announced first week of March.

 

As the countdown to the 'Royal Wedding of the Century' begins, the book has many parallels to Wills and Kate... though sadly, does not have the happy ending we are all enjoying at the moment..

 

The Golden Prince is the thwarted love story of William's great-grand-uncle Prince Edward (the future Edward VIII) and Lily Houghton: the woman he really wanted to marry years before he met Wallis Simpson.

 

He comes face to face with the iron will of his parents, the stern disciplinarians George V and Queen Mary who will not allow him to marry a commoner.

 

Its a poignant contrast to the happiness and public acceptance of William and Kate's betrothal.

 

We have attached a summary of the book below and if you would like review copies for you or your readers, please do… [blah, blah, blah]."

 

Pretty impressive, is it not? It may even be the greatest single piece of royal exploitation prose I've seen since I discovered a book called The Celestial Voice of Diana on a trip to an esoteric bookshop in the remote hippy colony of Findhorn. This astonishing purple-covered volume was written by Rita Eide in 1997, immediately after the People's Princess met her high-octane end. I read the whole book, amazed. Eide had some pretty startling revelations: like the facts that Diana was the mother of the Virgin Mary in a past life and that her death as the Princess of Wales was not brought about by plotters in the Royal Family but was actually the idea of some "higher entities" on the spiritual plain. Shockingly, the voice also revealed that aliens are on their way to revisit humanity. And that they will probe us.

 

Dean's book doesn't sound quite so egregious as Eide's. I don't really want to attack it. Okay, I do, but I must get in a proviso first. I've never had a yearning to read romantic fiction, but plenty of people love it and that's fine. Or would be fine, if there weren't books like this one presenting a man who was – please let's not forget – a Nazi, as a fairytale prince.

 

Which brings me round to the current fairytale prince. It's not that William seems particularly bad – so far. There isn't much to hold against him, beyond the natural animus that must be felt for anyone who gets to trouser millions of pounds of taxpayer's money for doing nothing beyond being part of a very odd breeding experiment. Come the glorious day, William won't be the first against the wall. He will have to queue (for the first time in his life) behind the bankers, Nick Clegg and the b******s who invented inkjet printer refill cartridges. Before then, we should also wish William and Kate Middleton every happiness in their marriage – because happiness is nice and because we could do without any more shipwrecks like Prince Andrew.

 

Inoffensive as William may be (so far as representatives of feudal oppression go), I remain confused about the "happiness and public acceptance of William and Kate's betrothal" and the purported "happy ending" the nation and I are due to enjoy in the summer. Are we really all going to be bathing in the sticky joy the PR people suggest? Weddings are bad enough when you know the bride and groom – but when they're total strangers and the thing is going to be inflicted on you whether you're invited or not, it starts to seem a bit much. At least you can tuck into the free booze and food while suffering the embarrassment of your real friends pledging their troth.

 

Even so, the idea that I might want to mark the royal wedding by picking up a slushy book isn't entirely daft. It can only be better than watching the wall-to-wall wedding news binges on the TV, after all. The right book might even act as a palliative to frayed nerves and serve as a welcome reminder that the whole world isn't made up of fawning lick-spittles and mad old flag-waving, cat-strangling women. I'm thinking that A Tale of Two Cities might strike a few of the right chords. Voltaire's Candide and Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man should quench my thirst for sanity.

 

Best of all though, will be laughing along with Kitty Kelley's The Royals. This is a book containing so many truth bombs that higher authorities decided that it might explode the minds of we loyal subjects and it was banned. Yes, that's right. A banned book. Remind me of which century we're living in? Oh yes, the one where PRs can still send emails that assume we're all about to have a gleegasm because Prince William is marrying some posh girl with expensive hair…

[matty]

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[Nathan Explosion]

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[Cobs]

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