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2nd December 2008

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Most reviewed: Snowdon

23.06.08 Anna Richardson

Anne de Courcy’s official biography of Lord Snowdon, Snowdon: The Biography (Weidenfeld), was the most reviewed last weekend, capitalising on promises of new revelations about his royal marriage to Princess Margaret. Reviewers paid the book much attention, but the jury was out on Snowdon as a subject and de Courcy as his biographer.

Where Valerie Grove assessed in the Times that “Snowdon is a more worthwhile subject than most”, the Mail on Sunday’s Craig Brown, for example, found that “for most of us, he will always be the camp little chap with the bouffant hair and the monkey-face who was briefly married to the Queen’s stroppy sister”; and where Grove found that de Courcy maintains “a robust even-handedness” despite “a breathless Daily Mail tendency to describe social events as ‘glittering’”, Brown believed “de Courcy seems to have convinced herself that she is writing a paean to a brilliant, charming, attractive, etc, etc subject” and finds Snowdon a “strange, misguided book”.

Jan Moir in the Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, asked: “Did [de Courcy] write this in a swoon, with the back of her hand pressed to her forehead?” She added, however, that “despite de Courcy’s gush and the red carpet fever-burns on her knees, she still manages to include the darker aspects of her subject’s nature.”

The Observer’s Rachel Cooke stated that “it is impossible to convey here the combination of high society and low morals, of frightfully good taste and awful cheese, that de Courcy has skilfully managed to dish up”.

“In a different time, such a book, fat with revelations, would have given a severe prick to the dignity of the silly, profligate, Dubonnet-swigging royals,” added Cooke. “Now we barely raise an eyebrow.”

MOST REVIEWED (20th to 22nd June)

Snowdon: The Biography by Anne De Courcy
(Weidenfeld 9780297852759 £20)
“Entertaining” Daily Express
“Juicy” Observer
“De Courcy maintains a robust even-handedness” Times
“There are many moments when [Courcy’s] affection for the old goat overwhelms” Sunday Telegraph
“De Courcy seems to have convinced herself that she is writing a paean to a brilliant, charming, attractive etc subject” Mail on Sunday

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
(Heinemann 9780434018420 £17.99)
“The missing, but somehow logical, link between David Mitchell and Terry Pratchett” Independent
“He tends to lose sight of the plot... Nevertheless, The Gone-Away World is an impressive feat of imagination and a wildly exuberant ride” Sunday Telegraph

Casanova by Ian Kelly
(Hodder 9780340922149 £20)
“A great blast of a book, packed with energy and information, marinated in sympathy and understanding, and rippling with enthusiasm right down to the final footnote” Sunday Telegraph
"Provides a surprisingly intimate sense of what Casanova was like” Times

Human Love by Andreï Makine
(Sceptre 9780340936771 £12.99)
“One of the best novels about Africa in a long time” Guardian
“His reputation as one of the significant novelists of our age is only strengthened by this book” Observer

Media Anna Richardson Most Reviewed Anne de Courcy