“Versailles: A Biography of a Palace”, by Tony Spawforth

320 pages, St. Martin's Press, ISBN-13: 978-0312357856

I like to recommend books I have greatly enjoyed or from which I've learned a lot. But I find that is not quite possible with Versailles: A Biography of a Palace. This is not a coffee table picture book of Versailles; there are plenty of those to be had. What's been missing from the literature on this subject has been a book that explains the workings of the palace, its social and political context and the routines and rhythms of day-to-day life in what was, essentially, an enormous gilded cage for the French nobility. I was looking for a more human history than what this book presents. It would have been interesting to learn about all the artisans, chefs and gardeners that were hired to work at the palace. There are chunks of this book that are so dry it is hard to plough through. In the early chapters, the author describes at length the process of building the palace, but lacking illustrations or maps of the palace, I found it difficult to follow. The palace was always intended as a showcase to promote all things French: from the lace on the sleeve to the china on the table to the high tech engineering of the fountains, and although the tapestries and porcelains are mentioned, I would have liked to have learned more about how important these were and how things were acquired for the palace (hell, the mirrors alone deserve a book of their own). I expected to come out of reading this book with a feeling of how this palace and home came together and how humans (including kings) lived their daily and private lives there, with the everyday niceties and problems, but this is not what this book is about.

The expansive title and good press that accompanied this book promised an interesting history of the palace of Versailles, but, unfortunately, it reads more along the lines of an abridged version of the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. While there are numerous anecdotes of the various people that lived at Versailles, they can be read elsewhere in greater detail with more relevance to their significance to society and history. There is no order to what is written, and while the author jumps back and forth across decades, the focus is primarily that of the reign of Louis XIV. There is little or no mention of Marley or the evolution of the Trianon’s under Louis XIV, the petites apartments of Louis XV, the Petit Trianon, Hamlet, and gardens of Marie Antoinette much less the inventiveness that accompanied their creation. There is little history post revolution that could include fascinating stories from Napoleon through the end of WWI. The history that would complement and illustrate the lives of the people that made Versailles the center of European culture for decades is lacking. Surely there are better books that capture these details and tell a more complete story of Versailles. Unfortunately this is not one of them as it never appears to aspire to be more than what the Duc de Saint-Simon saw and wrote about in his lifetime.

 

“Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country”, by Joe Queenan

256 pages, Henry Holt & Co., ISBN-13: 978-0805069808

Joe Queenan, the acerbic satirist on everything from Hollywood films to sports fandom, takes a crack at travel literature with his new book, Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country. Ever the sly wordsmith, a look at the dust jacket depicts the author (four of him actually) crossing a road (Abbey, perhaps?) in a homage to one of England's greatest exports, the Beatles. Four poses? A nod to the Royals? Four Queenan Country?

Queenan Country doesn't just discuss the difficulties in traveling around this ancient civilization. The Philadelphia-born and raised Irishman decries the necessity of torturing American schoolchildren with the works of Thomas Hardy, the Bronte’s, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray and Jane Austen, among others: “At a very early age, I became aware that Great British Literature breaks down into three broad groups: books that are very depressing, books in which nothing happens, and books that are incomprehensible.” Sacrilege purveyors of fine fiction might bellow, but this is what Queenan does best: pull the rug out from under those he deems to be pulling the wool over our eyes, be it traditionally important writings, cinema, or history. For example: Why, he posits, does a nation that prides itself on civility seem to have so many historical characters that have employed the most horrid examples of torture (see Braveheart, aka William Wallace)? Along the way, he also pokes fun at British cuisine, entertainment, soccer thugs, and the unfathomable logic of public transportation.

Queenan makes no bones about his avocation as a curmudgeon: “I am a crass American and I rather enjoy being one,” he proudly declares. At one point, he compares his latest work to that of Paul Theroux: “During his travels, [he] visited an almost unbroken chain of comatose little towns, and seems to have encountered every bigoted, stupid, parsimonious, or boorish person in the United Kingdom…Congenitally miserable myself, a writer whose sole source of income derives from shooting large, evil fish in a small, morally neutral barrel, this was my kind of reading.” To be sure, Queenan meets various cheap, mean, or clueless citizens. Were they the only ones he encountered? Probably not, but he has always been the sort whose philosophy seems to be, “If you don't have anything nice to say, say it anyway because readers love to hear that kind of stuff.” One potentially charming story, in which he finds himself searching for the Beatles' old residence, turns out to be a tale of deception at the hand of a duplicitous cab driver.

Queenan's wife is English-born, so he travels back to the motherland on occasion and sees things from a non-touristy point of view. The small town where his in-laws reside is described in the dreariest terms (as is most of the country, except on the rare occasion where the sun shines for several consecutive seconds). For all his tough-guy posturing, he does show small pieces of sensitivity. At the conclusion of Queenan Country he describes the sadness he felt as he witnessed the funeral of the Queen Mother, shortly before his return stateside: “Standing in the park as the drone of bagpipes receded into the distance, I was reassured by the thought that there would always be Highlanders, there would always be Coldstream Guards, there would always be the queen, there would always be an England. The alternative was simply not acceptable.”

Maybe he's not such a tough guy after all.

“The Kings & Queens of Scotland”, by Richard Oram

336 pages, Tempus Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-0752438146

The history of the Scottish monarchy can be presented as a long tale of triumph over adversity, characterized by the personal achievements of its truly remarkable rulers who transformed their fragile kingdom into the master of northern Britain. The Kings & Queens of Scotland charts this process, tracing it through the lives of the men and women whose ambitions drove it forward on the often rocky path from its semi-mythical foundations to its integration into the Stewart kingdom of Great Britain. It is a route filled with such towering personalities as Macbeth, Robert the Bruce, and Mary Queen of Scots, whose lives have made an indelible imprint in world history, but directed also by a host of less well-known figures, such as Causantin mac Aeda, who challenged the heirs of Alfred for the mastery of Britain; David I, who extended his kingdom almost to the gates of York; and James IV, builder of the finest navy in northern Europe. Their will and ambition, successes, and failures not only shaped modern Scotland, but have left their mark throughout the British Isles and the wider world.

The collection of biographical essays on Scottish monarchs, edited by Richard Oram, offers the reader a unique opportunity to learn Scottish history through the lives of her kings and queens. Due to scarcity of available materials, the early Scottish kings are presented in one chapter. Starting with Malcolm III, each of the monarchs is given a brief separate presentation of their lives and achievements both before their ascension and during their reigns. The book clearly concentrates of the medieval history (the reigns of “The British Stuarts” from Charles I to Anne comprise less than 10% of the volume) but I can hardly object as the early Scottish kings are quite obviously the least known and, probably, the most interesting. The essays are illustrated with photographs of coins, seals, and portraits of the monarchs, adding to the value of the book.