5 comments about Diana and the Paparazzi.

1. I really don't know why I purchased this book. I have the author's previous book, 'Dicing with Di' (which has become a collector's item) that I purchased shortly after her death on ebay. After reading the first book, I was somewhat shocked at the attitude of the paparazzi towards the Princess. Very snide and unsympathetic. I couldn't help feeling great sympathy for her, what with these hounds after her day and night. I will be selling the second book on ebay, not worth hanging on to.



2. For all intents and purposes, this IS "Dicing With Di", the book written by these same idiots a decade ago. My guess is that they're trying to ride the wave of publicity the 10 Year Anniversary of her death brings and tried to update their old, sorry book. Shame on them. The first one wasn't good . . . why they bothered with updating it is more than I can understand.



3. I was disappointed to find that this book, promoted as new, is basically an updated version of "Dicing with Di", written in the late '90s. As I was reading it I thought it sounded really familiar, so I sat down with the new book and "Dicing with Di" and found many of the same stories. Yes, there were a few different pictures, but nothing to be able to say Wow!! about. And adding a note written 10 years after the first book to the end of the new book doesn't constitute "new". Knowing the amount of time these guys spent chasing Diana, you'd think they'd have enough stories and pictures for a totally new book. Save your money and just re-read "Dicing with Di."



4. This book appears to be a different version of events than the book these two men wrote whilst the Princess was still alive. (Dicing with Di) Their first book was much better, and probably more honest. For somebody with thousands of unpublished photos of the Princess they should have just made a photo book - it would have been more interesting and sold more copies. I was disappointed.



5. I rated this one star because zero wasn't an option. I'm not quite sure what exactly the authors were attempting to accomplish with this book. Well, apart from continuing to make money off the very person that to this day, try to blame for her own untimely death. These two Gentlemen, and I use the term Gentlemen loosely, do not acknowledge nor do they accept any personal responsibility for their contribution to the upset and ultimate death of Diana. The bottom line is, Diana Windsor and Dodi Fayed were victims. Victims of the media's need to take photos and make money off them, victims of our need to buy them and victims of a drunk driver. Was the driver of her car drunk? Yes. Should he have been driving? No. Would he have been if they had been left alone that evening? No. Would Dodi Fayed have allegedly told his driver to speed away from the Paparazzi? No. There wouldn't have been a reason to. No chase! No Crash! We are to blame. The media for chasing them to get pictures and us for buying them. One criticism that really bothered me in this book was the "How Dare She" attitude of the authors, that Diana thought she should be allowed to walk down the street or shop in a store without harassment from the media or public. Well, she should have been able to. Despite the fact that she was famous. She was always willing to oblige when on public display. That should have been enough. Any one of us would have reached the point of hysteria and began acting out if we were constantly hounded as she was. Anyone who says differently is a liar. The authors also state that the Diana "Paparazzi Years" had ended six months prior to her death. This is an obvious attempt to step away from blame. They ended the night the Paparazzi played a part in killing her by chasing her car at a high rate of speed until it crashed.
   This book reads as if to invoke sympathy from the public for the paparazzi who hounded Diana for her verbal attacks on them. They received none from me. Nothing really new to this book. Maybe some previously unpublished photos. They all look like photos I've seen before.

2 comments about King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire.

1. I write this review from the perspective of one who is interested in reading about the history and documentation of same-sex love, but who is not an academic, a linguist, or has any special interest in the history of literary styles. I offer this explanation because while this book is tremendously fascinating in its historic and biographical material, it at times lost my interest when going deeply into literary interpretation and syntactic analysis. For example, the first chapter on the history and style of writing love letters, or "letters of desire" as the author coins it, I found uninspiring and difficult. However, it does lay the groundwork for the author's study of James' letters.

   Having said that, I nonetheless found the book extremely informative, both about James' life and how his contemporaries viewed his life.

   The first section covers James' association with Esme Stuart who became the Duke of Lennox. What was of particular interest to me was the fact James was just 13 years old and Stuart 37 when they first met. The description of their first meeting makes it unmistakeable to the reader that the two had indeed fallen in love. The biographical information on how the church leaders and other politicos involved in James' life broke up the relationship was extremely interesting and saddening. But the reader shouldn't interpret these actions as purely coming from the realm of the church's "condemnation of homosexuality." Because there was no such thing at the time as "homosexuality." That was a term and a concept that wouldn't be coined for another 200 years. Rather, the condemnation was over "lying with a man as though a woman." Because of James' young age, it is quite possible that he had taken the submissive role, or that his advisors presumed that he was taking the submissive role. What really happened we don't know. But if the king were in a submissive role, then Stuart was having an undo influence over the young king. Having the king taking the role of a woman would have been blasphemous.

   This notion is given further support during the chapter discussing the king's relationship with George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. In one of the king's letters, he refers to Buckingham as not only his "dear son" and the king the father, but also as "wife" and the king being "husband." In one letter, Buckingham writes: "my thoughts are only bent of having my dear Dad and master's legs soon in my arms." This phrase also suggests that Buckingham took the submissive role in his relationship with the king.

   Which fits in naturally with the culture of the times. Both James and his "favorites" married and sired children, as the king saw marriage and raising a family an obligation to be joyfully fulfilled. And throughout Renaissance Europe, it was acceptable for a man to play the dominate (top) role during sexual relations with another male, with the submissive generally being younger because it was then excusable for the youth to be a bottom because he was in a submissive role anyway because of age.

   It is also made clear in the book that James' other advisors disapproved of his relationships with his favorites not so much because they viewed the physical relationship as being immoral, but because of James' lavish endowment of titles and gifts, and consequently power to his favorites. The book does reveal critics, both contemporary and later, of the king's behavior who found the intimacy of these relationships unseemly and even "disgusting." And it is amusing to read how some of these critics eschewed discussing in detail the nature of the relationships.

   In all it is a good book, but for the general reader of the history of same-sex relationships, it may be a bit troublesome and slow to plod through. For example, if I read the book at night while in bed, I usually fell asleep after just one page. If I read it in the morning, then I could read upward of a dozen or so pages.




2. First and foremost, the letters between King James and his three male "favorites" are fascinating. Even the little, unintended cultural insights are interesting, for instance, that "gossip" meant godfather, that "Steenie" is short for Stephen, or that the king of Spain had given James an elephant as a gift.

   With the author's help in establishing the king's difficult passage into manhood, and his piety as a Christian primitivist, as well as his love of literature--ditto for the gripping biographical sketches of the king's "sweet hearts"-- one cannot read some of the more beautiful passages without being profoundly touched. There is the time James wrote to George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, that "for protest to God I rode this afternoon a great way in the park without speaking to anybody and the tears trickling down my cheeks, as now they do that I can scarcely see to write. But alas, what shall I do at our parting?" Or on another occasion, "I had rather live banished in any part of the earth with you than live a sorrowful widow's life without you."

   Other times the content is more "saucy," to use Villiers's term. A good example is his own letter to the king: "All the way hither I entertained myself your unworthy servant with this dispute, whether you loved me now ... better than at the time which I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed's head could not be found between the master and his dog. ... --Your majesty's most humble slave and dog, Steenie"

   The letters come from the manuscript collections of the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and so on, where Bergeron saw and transcribed from holographs, correcting occasional mistakes or intentional glosses from previous historians who have from time to time cited or published versions of these letters, or mentioned them in an embarrassed footnote. The letters have not been otherwise previously collected in such a topical form.

   Bergeron does careful work as a scholar; that this does not translate into equal achievement as a writer is okay. Perhaps more seriously, though, are a few puzzling lapses, such as his use of a secondary source for an important speech by King James to the Privy Council in 1617, and the fact that the abbreviated footnote does not have a corresponding bibliographic entry, but again, I'm willing to overlook minor distraction for the strengths the book demonstrates. After reading it, I only want to read more by Bergeron.

   Oh, by the way, I suppose that no one needs to point out the obvious implications for fundamentalist Christians: those who (1) use the King James Bible only, and allow no other biblical translation, and then (2) use the same Bible to theologically bludgeon homosexuals. This further reminds me that if there are any fellow Mormons out there, you will want to know that the letters refer to Apostle Boyd K. Packer's seventh-great-grandfather John Packer, who was the "patronage secretary" of King James's lover, Duke Buckingham--according to corroborative data in Donna Smith Packer's book, "On Footings from the Past: The Packers in England" (self-published by the Boyd K. Packer family, 1988, 488 pp.). Although Donna doesn't mention that Buckingham was in love with the king, but she does mentions that John Packer was forty years old when he married. What's my point? Well, maybe just that it's a small world. Enjoy the Bergeron book.

No comments about Love And Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great And Prince Grigory....

3 comments about The Voice of Silence: A Life of Love, Healing and Inspiration; The Remarkable Story of Princess Diana's Spiritual Guide.

1. What a tactfully written book about an extraordinary life of a nun and healer who served the poorest and the richest (Duke of Windsor) finding that "we are all equal in suffering."
   There is something mythic about the life of a woman who was born in Ireland's countryside, joined a convent at age 16, and winded up healing Princess Diana. On her path, Oonagh was guided by the voice of silence that kept her soul young and sensitive to beauty and art. Every page in her book is expressing her romantic and idealizing approach to the world and people whom she met.
   On a retreat of healers, I happened to enter the room, when Oonagh introduced her book to the crowed of about 50 people. Her voice was quiet. I was too far away to hear her clearly. I relaxed and instead of listening to her words, "listened" to her healer's energy that was enveloping the room. It was fine and invigorating. The book emanates the same energy. It will cleanse you and bring you peace.



2. This was a very special book about a very special lady. She may be a delicate lady physically but has a enormous heart of love, who has known pain and grown from it.
   A lady who is so spiritual within herself because she has taken the time to look within herself. Love is what makes the world go round. But sometimes people are afraid to look within themselves to find it and to be able to give and receive it, whether physically or emotionally. This book allows you to sit and think about spiritual and physical love because at the end of the day this is all you can take with you when your time is up on this physical earth. Everything else is excess baggage.



3. Voice of Silence is a treasure, a gently spiritual book about the major choices we make, often the result of some kind of pain, and how they shape our life path. Oonaugh is a gifted person and her book is a journey into people's gifts. Highly recommend.

2 comments about The Emperor Domitian.

1. The Emperor Domitian presided over a period in which many of the later New Testament texts were written, such as Revelation and the Gospel of John. Close study of the reign of Domitian provides enormous insight into these biblical texts and the situations they addressed for their own readers. Jones' biography of Domitian should be standard reading for anyone seeking to understand the world that generated such claims for Jesus as "savior of the world" (John 4) and "Lord and God" (John 20), both attributed to Domitian. One of the great strengths of Jones' book is its placing of Seutonius' own "Twelve Caesars" in historical context. Many previous interpretations of the lives of the caesars took Suetonius as a reporter, rather than as the imperial propagandist for his patron that he was.
   
   Very readable and highly recommended.



2. When it was published in 1992 this book was the first significant scholarly biography of the emperor Domitian (ruled AD 81-96) since 1894. The author is an Associate Professor and a leading specialist in Flavian political and prosopographical history, and has produced a very reliable, readable work that is a critical and valuable interpretive synthesis of the considerable modern scholarship relating to Domitian. The study is organized thematically and with a very solid prosopographical approach. The first chapter examines the social and political rise of Domitian's family, his early life and role under his father Vespasian and brother Titus (both emperors). The next two chapters provide a detailed examination of Domitian's court and his relationship with his courtiers. These are then followed by two chapters on Domitian's financial, administrative and provincial policies. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the major wars of Domitian's reign and his military and foreign policies.! After these there are two chapters on the senatorial and equestrian aristocracy during Domitian's reign, and his relationship with them and other policies and problems. The conclusion completes the study with detailed end-notes and an exhaustive bibliography. The three indices (on persons, ancient authors and general subjects) at the end of the book are very useful and effective. For serious scholars of this period this biography is an indispensable work. A more recent biography of Domitian with a psychological approach ('Domitian: Tragic tyrant') is in many ways simply based upon the present study.

2 comments about Kings & Queens: A History of British Monarchy.

1. In fact I accidentally stumbled on this book in one of my former university's bookstores as I was thumbing through some books on discount. When I came across this book, which was in that collection, it triggered my memories of my earlier informal learning of British History through the LadyBird history series. When I inquired about that series, a Ladybird representative referred me to a Department that sold either out-of-print books or books that were no longer published. That is when it dawned upon me that the series had probably been discontinued. Nonetheless, this reminded me of the "Ladybird days," of an era when British history was romanticized as being "better" than the history of other societies. However, when I came to read this book, it presented a more realistic picture of British history, whereby you get the impression that British history had similar parallels with other societies in aspects such as despotic rule, lack of respect for civil as well as human rights on the part of its monarchy through the ages as well as the trajectory development and evolution of contemporary Democracy in Britain.
   The main shortcomings in the book include the fact that the author mentions the date of the births of some monarchs, while ignoring others. Another more conspicuous inaccuracy is when he says that Henry V died in 1433, whereas all accounts I have read over the years suggest that he died in 1422. When discussing Edward II, he fails to mention that he was the first Prince of Wales. Aside from such little failings in the book, it is a book that is well illustrated, in addition to offering a less flattering outlook on British history.



2. Kings & Queens by Ronald Pearsall is without question one of the most informative and interesting pieces of work on history of any sort, and is so in a brief and entertaining fashion. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about British monarchy. Before I picked it up, I had only a marginal knowledge about the history of the throne, but after reading through the book (and reading about the interesting monarchs again), I feel like I have a very respectable amount of knowledge on the subject. Not only does Pearsall's witty style draw the reader in, but the pictures of each monarch leave as much an imprint on the mind as the text.

   This is a must buy for students of British history.

1 comments about The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont: Volume 2. The Bear Flag Revolt and the Court-Martial.

1. This is an essential book for the student of Western exploration. The editors put together three hefty volumes about the expeditions of John Charles Fremont of which this is the second.
   
   Volume one includes Fremont's official reports of his first two expeditions to Wyoming's South Pass in 1842 and to California and Oregon in 1843-1844; Volume two details his participation in the war with Mexico, including his court martial; and in volume three he writes of his later and less successful expeditions. In their day these accounts were best sellers and they made Fremont a national hero which led to him being the candidate for President of the new Republican party in 1856. Today, Fremont seems forgotten except by specialists -- and mostly scorned by them (Bernard de Voto called him "Childe Harold") -- and the fame of his mountain man guide, Kit Carson, as an American hero has eclipsed that of Fremont
   
   The heart of this book is Fremont's accounts of his expeditions. He recorded the progress of his expeditions daily in the form of a diary and he was no novice at colorful writing. Possibly his wife Jessie Benton Fremont improved upon his prose before the accounts were published. Nor was he modest, but he gave credit where credit was due to his men, mostly French voyageurs, and especially Carson whose rise to prominence was due to Fremont. Fremont's writing is very readable to this day. Along with his dairy he also collected scientific and meteorological information which may be of interest to specialists. Fremont blotted his copybook with a number of egotistical fiascos but on his first two expeditions he was an appealing young man.
   
   Supplementing Fremont's diary are a large number of letters, vouchers, and other documents related to Fremont's career and the expeditions. You can learn for example that Fremont paid his French voyageurs as little as 62 1/2 cents per day wages, but Kit Carson earned $100 per month, a hefty salary in those days for an illiterate mountain man -- and Carson was worth it. The editors provide copious notes to amplify and clarify the text. They produced a top notch multi-volume book of scholarship that's also fun to read.
   
   Smallchief

1 comments about Sir William Wallace (The Scotish Histories).

1. I found this book a good source of knoledge put together from several other accounts. I have found that every author has a slightly diffrent account of the legand of William Wallace. This book puts those accounts together in a way that it gets the facts and legands to the reader in a fairly non-predjudice manor.

1 comments about The Royal Governor.....and The Duchess: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in The Bahamas 1940-1945.

1. Anyone really interested in the Windsor's should skip this book. It is a total re-hashing of known events previously published. The events of his governorship were covered, but not in much detail. A great deal of the book was devoted to the history of the circumstances surrounding their births, courtship and abdication. The only new portion of the book was a small up-date on the island as it is now,to include new building projects, demolitions, and current usage of houses etc. No photos were included.

No comments about Elizabeth and Philip: 20 November 1947 (National Archives) (National Archives).