Whether or not you recall my promise back in September to give a review of The Little Princesses after I had reread it, I remember, and you get it today. The book was written by Marion Crawford, who was the governess to Elizabeth and Margaret, and published in serial fashion in magazines in the 1950s where I read it in Mama’s Ladies Home Journal. The girls already had a nanny, and quickly assigned Marion the nickname “Crawfie.” It was Crawfie’s job to educate them with little structure as to how that was done.
Crawfie gives an account of the daily lives of the family beginning with her arrival at a time when they expected to be nothing more than fringe royals with the father as Duke of York since their Uncle David was slated to become the King of England. She ends her account with the birth of Prince Charles in Buckingham Palace. Her portrayal of the child Elizabeth foreshadows the person she became as queen.
In this edition, BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond adds insight into the furor that the book caused with the royal family. It created such indignation with the royal family that none of them would speak to Crawfie ever again. They were infuriated that Crawfie went public with her story, even though the worst thing she betrays is that the princesses sometimes acted like normal children and got into a bit of fisticuffs when they were angry with each other. Bond goes on to give an insight into Crawfie’s life after her time with the princesses and to the changes that have come in current times as to how royalty is portrayed by the media. Some of them would be glad to get by with the glorified picture that Crawfie painted,
The book will be interesting to any anglophile or royal watcher. The writing is satisfactory and readable but not literary.