The Royals
Kelley, Kitty
Kitty's Crowning Work The Royals Kitty Kelley Warner Books 1547 pages /$27 REVIEWED BY Florence King W hen Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 he was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of York, a...
...Editorial writers were churning out ecstatic paeans to a "New Elizabethan Age," but she quickly dampened errant visions of Merrie England and aligned herself with the bland fifties: "I do not myself feel at all like my Tudor forebear, who was blessed with neither husband nor children, who ruled as a despot and was never able to leave her shores...
...In one place she writes that the Duchess of York could not "conceive," and in another that her husband could not "impregnate" her...
...The Queen's only advice to her was to wave more slowly, a style Fergie described as "screwing in light-bulbs...
...24,000 hair...
...ordered her maid to unpack everything and put it in plastic garbage bags, then Charles Spencer kicked the bags down the stairs...
...Too gooey about children,' Anne averred...
...Prince Philip exploded...
...Only once does Kelley go too far...
...to Fergie, throwing rolls at Princess Anne was the first member of the family to see through Diana...
...Tony's delight in dressing up in Margaret's clothes shocked her footman, who quit and wrote a book that was published in Paris after the Palace warned British publishers that they would never get a knighthood if they touched it...
...Charles celelion —to invest for Harry," he said, and dis- brated the separation by giving the newsclosed Diana's concern about her second papers an annual accounting of what he son's future...
...ar H not But B . lth 4,300 colonic irrigation...
...Tony was only a "Mister," but any hint that he was not good enough to marry royalty would have damNovember 19 9 7 • The American Spectator K elley has come under fire for bringing out The Royals two weeks after Diana's death, but she may have solved the mystery of who was at fault...
...Whenever Charles saw her eat he would ask, "Is that going to reappear later...
...Kelley's favorite Windsor is the Queen's only daughter, Princess Anne — "blunt as a bullet"—who was the first member of the family to see through Diana...
...They were divorced in 1976...
...Asked by a hostess how the Queen was, Margaret said, "Which Queen...
...Meanwhile, Major Ferguson was arrested in a massage parlor...
...Thereafter she wore what she "I have given Diana a hell of a lot of called "tart trotters" —spike heels with money—between $750,000 and $1.5 mil- ankle straps and open toes...
...There were no constitutional impediments to the marriage...
...68 aged the monarchy...
...K elley does a boffo job on Sarah Ferguson, ex-wife of Prince Andrew...
...In a footnote, Kelley states: "The nude photos of Diana were offered for sale in 1993 by a German magazine but were withdrawn and given to her...
...Margaret gave Townsend up, which cleared the way for Antony Armstrong-Jones, an arty photographer who was rumored to be gay until a friend explained helpfully, "Oh, no, he's bi...
...never do find out whether it was willy or nilly, but we are off to a wonderful start...
...Fergie's parents were divorced...
...She's always there...
...Margaret pleaded but the Queen was adamant...
...and $20,000 psychotherapy...
...Otherwise, Diana the Humanitarian: When Earl the passage is written like a scene in a Spencer died and his widow had to vacate novel and we cannot tell from her brief Althorp to make way for the new earl, cluster of unnumbered notes where she Diana and her brother accused their step-got her information...
...She had also done the laundry of another beau, Rory Scott, a Scots Guards officer...
...Diana demanded that Prince Charles fire the homosexuals on his staff whom she called the "pink mafia," saying she didn't want them around her sons...
...that would damage the monarchy too...
...Her story about Princess Margaret, Ann Landers, the mayor of Chicago, and Schindler's List is unbelievable at any speed, but other than that she has written an irresistible book...
...She provides some documentation for the most serious question she raises: the paternity of Prince Harry, born in 1984...
...At first the royal family liked her, probably because she enjoyed the charades and parlor games beloved by non-readers like the Queen Mum...
...70 November 1997 • The American Spectator...
...Kelley shares their unerring instinct for history with its pomp down, and she turns out some of the wittiest one-liners in the business...
...the wedding could not take place in England, and the couple would have to live abroad—exiled like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor...
...Nor could she say no to Margaret, now 3o, a second time...
...Diana had also done the laundry of another beau, Rory Scott, a Scots Guards officer...
...Answer: Father's Day in Brixton...
...The marriage produced two children, lots of partying, cross-dressing, and kinky sex, but then the fun stopped...
...Asked what she had for breakfast, she said, "Sausages and a migraine," adding that the migraines came from falling off horses...
...Her mother is thought to have had an affair with Prince Philip, who was with her at her polo pony farm in Argentina while the Queen was helping the fire brigade run pails at Windsor Castle...
...They had gagged on a gnat and swallowed an elephant, and they would do it again in 1981 when they rejected girls with a past and chose a virgin without a brain...
...Fergie, says Kelley, "acted like the only dame dealt into the poker game...
...Countess Spencer doubted her stepdaughter's much-touted virginity, suspecting an affair in 1978 with gin scion James Gilbey, whose clothes Diana had washed and ironed...
...According to an old rumor that Kitty Kelley recycles in The Royals, the princesses were conceived by artificial insemination, but the way Kelley tells the story makes it difficult to figure out the exact nature of the problem...
...When her bodyguard was killed in a motorcycle accident she accused Prince Charles of ordering his assassination...
...Her boast, "I'd rather ride than read," explains why the Queen initially liked her...
...To a Scottish driving instructor: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them to pass the test...
...If Margaret married Townsend she would lose her title, her allowance, and her place in the succession (third at this time...
...We FLORENCE KING'S latest book is The Florence King Reader (St...
...They also enjoyed food fights...
...Diana and Fergie met at a polo match and became instant soul mates...
...A figure like a Jurassic monster," "the Duchess of Pork," "a royal bike—ridden by everyone...
...Diana thought Fergie and Andy would hit it off and she was right...
...reporters roughed up and photographers driven off the road...
...She's driving me mad...
...Tony's first choice for best man had been convicted of homosexual offenses eight years earlier...
...As a child she got out of bed several times a night to make sure her shoes were lined up exactly even...
...The Sun ran a poll asking "Who would you rather dateFergie or a goat...
...During discussions of the divorce settlement she asked that any future children she might have by another man be given hereditary titles...
...Low sperm count and impotence are two different things, so which was it...
...She writes "The Misanthrope's Corner" column for National Review...
...She was hurt when she saw London street vendors selling chocolate toes, but worse was to come...
...Martin's...
...A handsome, well-bred RAF hero and former Palace equerry, Townsend was eligible in every way but one: He was divorced...
...Her description of the Duke of Windsor "looking like a forlorn little man who had fallen off a charm bracelet" is worthy of Noel Coward...
...Fergie "mirrored modern Britain, its gaudiness, its bounciness, its rumbustious lack of mystery," wrote the Sunday Times...
...Diana the Clotheshorse: It took six rooms in Kensington Palace to hold her wardrobe, with one room reserved for 320 pairs of shoes...
...Offended by the unflattering reflection she presented, the countryturned on her with a vengeance...
...Brixton is a heavily black London =`, district...
...Going up the aisle, she made faces at guests and gave the thumbs-up sign...
...Fergie's father was a major in the elite Life Guards cavalry, and the Fergusons, who are landed gentry, are direct descendants of the sixth Duke of Buccleugh, but blood doesn't always tell...
...Elizabeth II prizes order above all else...
...Kelley got this from the late Duke's son-in-law, Nigel Dempster, the Daily Mail gossip columnist...
...Both were into astrologers, clairvoyants, and tarot cards, and Fergie was a regular client of Madame Vasso, a faith healer who placed her under a blue plastic pyramid and chanted...
...65,000 astrologers and psydollars, but we can allow that Kelley con- chics...
...Tearing through Harrod's, the upper-class store, she saw a biscuit tin with the Queen Mum's picture on it, knocked on the lid and sang out, "Are you in there, dear...
...True, she dishes up a lot of third-hand dirt, but so did Pepys and Saint-Simon...
...To a Cairo official on the city's traffic jams: "The trouble with you Egyptians is that you breed too much...
...After they separated she got rid of all the low-heeled shoes she had worn to keep from towering over and describes his response in this drama- him, saying, "You can throw out those tized paragraph: dwarfers, I won't be needing them anymore...
...The Westminster Abbey wedding was attended by a host of Tony's friends—fashion designers, hairdressers, interior decorators—as well as his divorced parents and both of his father's former wives and their husbands, but the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were not invited because they had damaged the monarchy...
...Countess Spencer was sufficiently worried about rumors that nude photos from this period would appear in the tabloids that she consulted a lawyer at the time of the royal wedding preparations...
...The only valid objection to Tony was the one that dared not speak its name for fear of damaging the monarchy, so the Queen Mum announced the engagement...
...Unable to think of anyone else, he let the Palace choose for him and ended up with a best man he hardly knew: the son of the Queen's gynecologist...
...verted for American readers...
...Prince Philip's is the mouth that roars once too often in the opinion of Kelley's most livid critics, who are incensed over her "Insatiable Liz" quotation...
...My sister, my mother, or my husband...
...But, she adds: "Private Eye stated that Hewitt met her at a polo match in 1981 before her marriage...
...Kelley herself calls it a "fertility problem," which seems to absolve the willy, but then she quotes a cryptic pun by the childless Duchess of Windsor, who said that her own Duke was not "heir-conditioned...
...After Diana's affair with James Hewitt was revealed, "some royal biographers noticed a startling resemblance between the copper-haired Hewitt and rusty-haired Prince Harry...
...By refusing to let Margaret marry a divorced man, the Windsors brought about the first royal divorce since Henry VIII shed Anne of Cleves in 1540...
...She tried to push her stepmother down the stairs at Althorp and told the Bishop of Norwich that she was a reincarnated spirit who was gifted with a healing touch...
...Choose your flavor...
...A member of the Dangerous Sports Club, she competed in a midnight steeplechase and won the DSC's Golden Crutches badge...
...Not exactly in the pristine footnote league, perhaps, but the story rings true when weighed against some of Philip's public gaffes...
...each other in public was what "humanizing the monarchy" meant...
...Tony did a striptease on the table at Sandringham, put a bag over his head at dinner so he would not have to look at Margaret, and left a list on her dresser: "Twenty Reasons Why I Hate You...
...On her wedding day, finding herself suddenly immobilized as she mounted the steps of Westminster Abbey, she turned around and yelled, "Who the hell is standing on my train...
...They things: the fact that Diana's concern for Harry's financial future was widely reported in Ill...
...and the goat won...
...American media, and the sentence "But not Harry...
...Kelley claims she asked her father to help, Documented or not, Kelley's Diana stories are a welcome antidote to the lachrymose news coverage of her death and funeral, as refreshing as sherbet between heavy courses...
...Her firstborn, William, descalled her "grooming expenses": $25,000 tined to become Prince of Wales and even- in manicures and pedicures...
...2,000 hypno- tisms...
...barricades thrown up and borders closed to the press...
...Every time Fergie visited the royal household she brought all her dirty laundry for the palace staff to do...
...She shopped to take her mind off her bulimic hunger...
...In another attempt to humanize the monarchy she announced on television that "My knickers are from Marks and Sparks"—Marks & Spencer, the middle-class store...
...He'd never limit himself...
...Does "her" refer to Diana or the stepmother...
...The specter of divorce had haunted the royal family ever since the Abdication...
...Who is the German source...
...The same dedication to conformity emerged when she became Queen in 1952...
...4,290 reflexology...
...wea $tually King, was guaranteed immense i Harry...
...3,800 aroSurely Spencer spoke of pounds, not matherapy...
...All in all, an emi- mother of packing her things in Vuitton nently suspect story—except for two luggage that did not belong to her...
...All that ghastly winking," said the wife of the Queen's cousin, "so common...
...But Hewitt denied he was the father and staunchly maintained he did not meet Diana until two years after the birth of her second son...
...Too gooey about children," Anne averred, sounding just like her father...
...To British exchange students in China: "If you stay here much longer, you'll get slitty eyes...
...Bored by her public engagements, she told a Palace staffer, "Maybe the Queen Mum will die and we'll have to cancel everything for the mourning...
...Her description of an Austrian ski trip is electrifying: Photographs of the sulking Princess and her forlorn husband appeared in the British press with daily stories about the commotion she was causing: there were reports of one-hundred-mile-an-hour car chases of the Princess trying to dodge photographers and blond decoys she sent out to distract photographers...
...We wanted a silk purse and we got a sow's ear," wrote one London journalist...
...Her first family crisis erupted the following year when Princess Margaret announced that she wanted to many Peter Townsend...
...During the first year of his marriage to the Queen, Philip supposedly told the Duke of Leeds, "I can't get her out of my bed...
...Is it possible that Diana knew he was not Charles's son and feared he would be cut off...
...The American Spectator • November 1997 69 Diana the Nut Case: Convinced that Palace courtiers were out to get her, she bought a portable shredder and took it everywhere...
...In a related story she addresses Diana's concern for Harry's financial future...
...Diana had trouble learning to read but she did well enough to send her stepmother poison-pen letters...
...In any case, the Queen could hardly object to his having no title when the power to bestow one was hers...
...She doesn't say...
...During an intense discussion of inner-city problems between Charles and a South African philosopher, she broke in and said, "What's the definition of mass .nnfusion...
...Kitty's Crowning Work The Royals Kitty Kelley Warner Books 1547 pages /$27 REVIEWED BY Florence King W hen Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 he was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of York, a consummate family man who had married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923 and produced two daughters, Princess Elizabeth, now Elizabeth II, born in 1926, and Princess Margaret Rose, born in 1930...
...She whooped and hollered at all his fart jokes," said a waiter at Windsor Castle...
...Enter the primary source, identified only as "a royal family friend whose mother was a goddaughter of Queen Victoria," who told Kelley that "the Duke had a slight problem with his `willy.'" That would seem to settle the matter, but then Kelley's second source, identified only as "a relative of the Earl of Arran," assures her that the princesses "were born by artificial means," but says nothing about the willy...
...His future wealth may not equal William's but his Civil List income and his private inheritance from Charles and the Queen will leave him far from poor...
...Tony chose another, but Scotland Yard advised that the second man was susceptible to blackmail...
...Both loved burping contests and any witticism involving bowels...
...Why not Harry...
...She was the first member of the royal family to say "prick" on television...
Vol. 30 • November 1997 • No. 11
