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Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret
by Craig Brown
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Oh, my gosh, yes—there seems to be endless fascination with royals even on this side of the pond, from the tabloids and gossip magazine to The Crown and the naughty sister Margaret. Even apart from this endless preoccupation with the royals, Brown tapped into the universal appeal of a woman’s public downfall. In theatre, literature and art, there’s an endless fascination with a woman teetering on the precipice of public disaster, or even embarrassment. “What characters read, what they ate and how they dressed can be revealing, but my personal rule is to avoid conjecture on what characters think ” Brown makes Margaret an interesting, complex figure, and pushes the traditional form of biography by contending with both a life and the spectacle of a life. In many ways, Brown’s book is about perceptions and how human life resists narrative boundaries and suggests that the subject and record are in an ongoing conversation with one another. It raises fascinating questions about the formation of public impressions and somehow, in creating this multi-faceted form, is also profoundly empathic. Beyond the delicious details, Brown’s biography is a fascinating perspective on celebrity and media. I should note that I personally like biographies that push the form beyond the dutiful cradle-to-crave and are more kaleidoscopic. That’s a very interesting thought. I do think imagination is an underrated skill in biography. That isn’t to say that there should be anything less than a fidelity to fact, but rather that facts are the foundation from which biographers can imagine a life.
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"Oh, my gosh, yes—there seems to be endless fascination with royals even on this side of the pond, from the tabloids and gossip magazine to The Crown and the naughty sister Margaret. Even apart from this endless preoccupation with the royals, Brown tapped into the universal appeal of a woman’s public downfall. In theatre, literature and art, there’s an endless fascination with a woman teetering on the precipice of public disaster, or even embarrassment. “What characters read, what they ate and how they dressed can be revealing, but my personal rule is to avoid conjecture on what characters think ” Brown makes Margaret an interesting, complex figure, and pushes the traditional form of biography by contending with both a life and the spectacle of a life. In many ways, Brown’s book is about perceptions and how human life resists narrative boundaries and suggests that the subject and record are in an ongoing conversation with one another. It raises fascinating questions about the formation of public impressions and somehow, in creating this multi-faceted form, is also profoundly empathic. Beyond the delicious details, Brown’s biography is a fascinating perspective on celebrity and media. I should note that I personally like biographies that push the form beyond the dutiful cradle-to-crave and are more kaleidoscopic. That’s a very interesting thought. I do think imagination is an underrated skill in biography. That isn’t to say that there should be anything less than a fidelity to fact, but rather that facts are the foundation from which biographers can imagine a life."
"She was the Princess who would not be Queen. Margaret was glamorous where her older sister, Elizabeth, was sensible; acid-tongued and downright rude, where Elizabeth was unfailingly, royally polite; scandalous and wild, where Elizabeth could never dream of it. For many years, Margaret seemed to be everywhere, enticing admirers from Pablo Picasso to Peter Sellers. She was easily caricatured, and famously unlucky in love. In this breezy series of vignettes – some real, some hilariously imagined – author and satirist Craig Brown gives us intimate glimpses of her intriguing life."
"It blew me away. It was a completely unique way of writing a biography, and it changed my way of thinking about writing Vanderbilt."