No comments about A Companion to Contemporary Britain: 1939-2000 (Blackwell Companions to British History).

1 comments about Philippe, Duc D'Orleans: Regent of France.

1. Knowing nothing about this historical personage or his period, I was pleasantly surprised with the intriguing, contradictory character of Philippe, the nephew of Louis XIV, and Regent for King Louis XV. The author relied heavily on primary sources to describe the Regent and his times, particularly on the letters of his mother (the second duchesse d'Orleans, Elizabeth Charlotte) and Saint Simon's writings. Since both famous writers were close to the Regent, there are lively sketches of Philippe. It is a balanced biography; the Regent's controversial personal life is addressed, too. The author establishes the background carefully, describing Louis XIV's overly long reign at its end; the old, rigid court at Versailles, the King's control of the nobility, the "liberal" movement towards Paris, the problems encountered by Louis XIV's grandson as the first Bourbon king of Spain, military and economic problems. Then, the Regency: politics and coup, social issues, and fiscal reforms. The author also presents cultural affairs (the arts) with great sensitivity. There is an excellent genealogy table and "cast of characters" preceding the text; also, a few pages of illustrations. This is an engrossing biography with useful"extras."

No comments about On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry into Some Strangely Related Families.

No comments about Zara Phillips: World Champion.

No comments about Queen Victoria: A Personal History.

5 comments about Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy.

1. I made the mistake of thinking this was just a biography on Juan Carlos but instead its a complex read on Spain during the dictatorship and how it became a democrarcy again. It was a good book and well written but a little difficult to understand.



2. If I were rating this book on content alone, Preston would get 5 stars. However, his writing style hampers him somewhat. This unique biography traces what is supposedly the life of King Juan Carlos of Spain, a man for whom I have immense respect, from the fall of Alfonso XIII to the present, but it winds up being a historical analysis of the transition of Spain out of the Franco regime, similar to Preston's Triumph of Democracy in Spain, which I read for school, only longer and with more focus on Juan Carlos. I was initially disappointed because I wanted personal information about the king, [...]Or somehow get a copy of The King by Jose Luis de Vilallonga (good luck, I had to order it used from Australia). However, this book contains more information and analysis about Francoist and post-Francoist Spain than you will ever need in your entire life. Preston tells the tale largely with a mind for the role of Juan Carlos in it (the manipulation by his father, the restoration, the initial democratic difficulties, etc.) but this winds up being so complex that he constantly goes elsewhere. I liked the book but you need to read it in small chunks, because his writing is exhausting. It's very complex and dry and full of untranslated Spanish and acronyms, so don't read this while you're tired or you won't remember a thing. Preston obviously has a lot of enthusiasm for the subject, though, which comes across in his writing and the sheer volume of the work. Buy this book if you want a long, scholarly read!



3. The complete title of Paul Preston's book on the present Spanish monarch-- "Juan Carlos, Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy"--says it all. If you want to read about the king and his love of fast cars and beautiful women, consult the tabloids. Several biographies of his wife, Queen Sofía, a woman admired and beloved by most Spaniards for her strength, humanity, and dignity, have been written in Spanish. There are also many magazine articles about her in both Spanish and English. The author does assume that the reader has some knowledge of Spanish history. For those who don't, he has written a number of other books on the subject ("The Coming of the Spanish Civil War", "The Points of Revenge", and "A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War").
   
   When I lived in Spain in the sixties, the prevailing opinion of most of my friends was that, when Franco died, the society would plunge in another civil war as Juan Carlos would never be able to stand up to the generals and lead the country toward becoming a democracy. Undoubtedly this is one of the reasons I found fascinating the abundance of details of how the king was able to do exactly that. Preston's book is a complete study of the process that does not cater to sensationalism. For that I also consider it a "masterpiece".



4. Royalty demands sycophancy from its subjects, and this is especially the case for royal biography. Notwithstanding that it doesn't take too much for people to realize that most monarchs are deeply unattractive people. Whether it is the selfish, irresponsible house of Savoy so acutely delineated in Denis Mack Smith's Italy and its Monarchy, or the houses of Hohenzollern and Romanov leading their countries to disaster, or the fundamentally mediocre British monarchy as seen in the essays of David Cannadine, or for that matter Juan Carlos' irresponsible, shallow brother-in-law, Constantine II, the last king of Greece, monarchs are people who believe the rest of the world owes them a living.
   
   In 1931 it seemed that the Spanish branch of the Bourbons had met its own well-deserved fate, as King Alfonso went into exile and his countrymen formed a democratic republic. As Preston puts it, the royal family does not take exile well. Hemophiliac uncles, morganatic marriages, adulterous affairs, a deaf and dumb uncle whose son will be used by Preston to make Juan Carlos' life even more miserable, it all looked most unpromising. One detail that comes to mind is a picture of a four year old Juan Carlos in military uniform. It was only after he had been standing in it for hours that people realized that his books were too small and his feet had been rubbed raw. But on the whole this is a picture of Juan Carlos that is fairly sympathetic to him. After he appears on the scene, there is little gossip of the Eurotrash aspect of things. (Although we do learn that Juan Carlos accidentally shot his brother to death.)
   
   Juan Carlos, born in 1938, and his father Don Juan had to find a way to restore the monarchy after the Spanish Civil war. The problem was simple. Franco at the time made monarchist sentiments and many monarchists were among his followers. The problem was that he had no desire of sharing power with anyone, and himself had little respect for the previous monarchy which had tolerated a limited parliamentarianism. He suspected Don Juan might try to reconcille his divided country, and remove it from Franco's regime of divine vindictiveness. The problem for Don Juan, who spent most of Franco's reign living in Portugal, was that he had little to offer and little power to use it. Although much of the Francoist elite would have prefered to see a monarchy, they were not going to risk their power trying to force the issue. And so for until 1968 Don Juan waited, endured Franco's condescension and lies, occasionally got angry, was separated from his son for long periods of time at considerable psychological stress for both of them, and ended up doing what Franco wanted. Franco got the idea that Juan Carlos might be more ameneable to Francoist propaganda and so in 1948 he was sent to Spain and educated under Falangist tuetalage. Finally after two decades of toying with them, Franco made Juan Carlos, not his father, his heir apparent.
   
   Juan Carlos' prospects were not promising. Being made heir was better than having to look over his shoulders at Carlist and other pretenders. But now he, although of generally liberal opinions, was stuck in a regime that was firmly reactionary. Franco had no desire to step down, and would remain in power almost until the very end. Consistently he and his entourage took the most reactionary path. Had his prime minister Carrero Blanco not been assassinated in 1973 by Basque separatists, the transition to democracy would have been much more difficult. And even when Franco grew less malevolent as old age, senility and death came upon him (the last a process that took months to complete) Juan Carlos still had to worry about the reactionary entourage of Franco's wife.
   
   And then Preston discusses how Juan Carlos managed to ease out the more reactionary Francoists from the cabinet, got the more moderate Suarez to make a transition to power, and, most dramatic of all, stopped the coup of February 1981 by making his clear his unconditional oppostion to it. For this transition to democracy Juan Carlos is beloved by his subjects and the Spanish monarchy appears as stable as Britain, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries. There are some points I would like to mention here. For a start, although there is new detail, much of the storyline can be seen in Preston's earlier books "Franco" and "The Triumph of Spanish Democracy." Second, one should point out that Juan Carlos was assisted by the Spanish Socialist and Communist parties, who agreed to let Juan Carlos remain, instead of pointing out that he had no popular mandate to do so. Third, it does seem unfair that the Spanish monarchy should get the credit for Juan Carlos' bravery, since the same crisis is not likely to be repeated again, and the absence of republicanism in contemporary Spain appears less as an act of gratitude than the whole post-socialist failure of imagination.



5. Fans of the usual kinds of biographies about kings and princes should be careful about this one. It's a very good book, but it's likely to be very far from the sort of thing you're expecting. But then, King Juan Carlos of Spain's life has been very different from that of most modern royals. In a sense, this book is hardly even "about" him at all. Rather, it's an in-depth look at a transitional era in Spanish history, as well as at the man who, in many ways, was the pivot on which that transition turned. People looking for that kind of book will be rewarded here.
   
   Let me expand a little on what this book isn't, because I think that's important. There's not really very much in these pages about Juan Carlos' life outside the political realm. For example, the author mentions in passing toward the end of the book the king's "obsession with speed and with expensive sports in which he risked his life and which frequently caused him serious accidents and injuries" (p. 511). In most royal biographies, those kinds of things would be central to the story. Here, they're barely an aside. Likewise, Queen Sophia hardly appears here except tangentially in a political context. The Infantas and Prince Felipe show up even less. Is this book a well-rounded look at Juan Carlos as a man? No.
   
   But then, it doesn't seem like it's intended to be. What this book is, as I said, is a look at the king's role in helping Spain move from the Francoist dictatorship to the current popular democracy. That role was a central one -- not only at key moments like dismantling the 1981 coup attempt, but also in slowly, quietly, and yet unrelentingly keeping in check the forces that wanted to maintain Francoism even after the Caudillo's death in 1975.
   
   In telling this story, Paul Preston has produced a well-researched and well-sourced book that at times is almost overwhelming with its depth and detail. This is a book thick with names, dates, meetings, quotations ... I frankly found it slow going at times. Around page 300, I found myself asking (as I'm sure the people of Spain asked at the time), "Isn't Franco dead YET?!" Preston's discussion of the controversy about legalizing the Communist Party of Spain similarly seemed to go on for a really long time. And how many times did he need to repeat that the adolescent Juan Carlos' wishes were not consulted in the high-level negotiations between his father and Franco over how he was to be educated?
   
   A bit of familiarity with Spanish history and government would be useful to the reader too. Perhaps Preston assumes his reader has already read his biography of Franco, since he's pretty thin on what exactly the Spanish Civil War was all about, why Alfonso XIII had to leave Spain, and what precisely the oft-mentioned principles of the *Movimiento* really were. Similarly, Preston is quick to throw out names, events, and acronyms without always taking the time to explain who or what they are, or why (or if) they matter.
   
   Yet ultimately, all the depth, all the detail, all the exhaustive documentation has produced a volume that may be, at least in English, the definitive look at King Juan Carlos and his role in the restoration of Spain's monarchy and democracy. Preston emphasizes the weight of the king's personal sacrifice throughout his life in order to put Spain back on a solid democratic footing, and the truly central role he did (and does) play in that process. As he notes on page 474, for example, if the king had chosen to support the 1981 coup, there's no question it would have succeeded. That he chose not to support it doomed it to failure.
   
   The world of royal biography -- especially biography of still-living or recently-deceased figures -- is filled with shallow puffery and fawning adulation. When something different comes along, fans of royalty as well as serious historians should snap it up. This volume definitely falls into that category -- not only for its value as a work of history, but also as proof of how monarchy can and ought to be a force for good, even in an era which has tended to turn its back on that form of government. As a noted political commentator wrote following the collapse of the 1981 coup attempt (quoted on page 488), "Whilst we Spaniards thought that we deserved something better than a king, it turns out that we have a king that we don't deserve."

No comments about King Edward VIII: The Official Biography.

No comments about Conrad II, 990-1039: Emperor of Three Kingdoms.

No comments about Otto III.

2 comments about Prince William: Born to Be King.

1. I live in England but, do you know, I've never followed the activities of the royal family. It's not always something special when you've grown up with it all your life, and they've done much to let themselves down in the past 20 years, the poor souls. So I've never followed Prince William and, really, know nothing about him. That is, I didn't until I read this book. I was at O'Hare airport in Chicago, flying back to England, when I saw it in at the bookstall. Something made me take it off the shelf - I've no idea to this day why - and it caught my interest as I flicked idly through the pages. I immediately liked the writing style - it's very descriptive, but not too much: it's artfully done. Why, for just a few bucks I got to learn more, much more than I ever thought I'd want to know about William. But I enjoyed it! It's quite a rollercoaster story, and an amusing though pretty accurate insight into British life and culture, written by one who should know - The author biography says that Mr Buskin "is a British journalist". It shows. (It also says that another of his books, about Princess Diana, was a New York Times bestseller. That must be one heck of a book - I'm already looking out for a copy.) I think Buskin must be a pretty savvy guy, and he certainly writes a witty line reminiscent of the British Carry On films. For example, I think he had tongue firmly in cheek when he wrote: "And so the stage was set: His naughtiness was about to evolve into Dreamboat Willy."



2. The author promises to let the reader know: " Why William was know as 'Billy the Basher,' How he coped with his parents' troubled marriage, What he does for fun and excitement, Why his former nanny is now his closest friend, and How he feels about being popular with girls all over the world." Richard Buskin does accomplished these things. However, if one has kept up with the Royal Family, then, one know everything in the book and much more. Princes William possesses many more nicknames than just 'Billy the Basher.'

   Despite this, the book is well-written which one can not say about many of the books written about Prince William. This book can be appreciated by adults and not just gushing teenagers who are crazy over Prince William. It's easy reading and can be easily read in an hour.

   Richard Buskin has written several books about the Royal Family - Diana in particular.

   Prince William has had to grow up rapidly considering the events which have taken place in his life. As everyone knows, the world is on the verge of a new millennium, and for William, the twenty-first century king, it appears to be there for the taking. There are many picture of Prince William from infancy to the present; however, there are no new ones.

   Since the death of his mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince William has grown into a mature young man, and whatever the future holds, the eyes of the world will certainly be on Prince William.

   This is a paperback book which contains 159 pages and measures 4x63/4 inches.