by Craig Brown
First published 2018
Princess Margaret lived as the most polarizing figure in the British royal family. Craig Brown reconstructs her life through an experimental collage of interviews, parodies, dreams, fictional diary entries, lists, and essays. The book reveals a woman who made John Lennon blush and left Marlon Brando speechless, who rejected Princess Diana while humiliating Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol captured her image. Jack Nicholson offered her drugs. Gore Vidal worshipped her while Francis Bacon mocked her openly. Peter Sellers fell hopelessly in love with her. Pablo Picasso fantasized about her sexually. During the 1950s, she represented glamour and desire across the globe. By her death in 2002, she had become a symbol of squandered potential. Friends found her clever and dignified. Enemies saw only rudeness and impossible demands. One close friend declared he had never encountered a more miserable person. Brown's kaleidoscopic approach captures both her magnetic appeal and her capacity for cruelty, revealing how fame, privilege, and unfulfilled expectations shaped a life that began like Cinderella but ended in profound disappointment.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, british-literature, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, royalty
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, experimental-narrative
Setting: Britain, United Kingdom
Period: 1950s, 2002
434 pages · Kindle Edition · Farrar, Straus and Giroux