B8


B


KLMNO Jonathan Yardley


court, Lucy Worsley takes the “portraits of forty-five royal servants that look down upon palace visitors from the walls and ceiling of the King’s Grand Staircase” in Kensington Palace, best known today as the final residence of Princess Diana. This palace was “the one royal home that George I and his son [George II] really transformed and made their own,” a place where the servants “witnessed romance and violence, intrigue and infighting, and almost unimaginable acts of hatred and cruelty between members of the same family.”


She tells the story of the two Georges and their family through sketches of several of these servants, but her focus really — and understandably — is on the royal family itself. Brought over from Hanover (a part of what is now Germany) to replace the Stuart dynasty in 1714, the family was as dysfunctional as anything portrayed in the sleaziest of reality television shows. Father and son detested each other, with ramifications that rippled from one end of the family to the other and turned the court into “a bloody battlefield,” a “world of skullduggery, politicking, wigs and beauty spots, where fans whistled open like flick knives.” This is how Worsley summarizes the family’s history: “As a child, George II had lost his own mother when she was imprisoned for adultery. Then he lost contact with his eldest son through the move to Britain in 1714. Next he effectively lost his own father through [a] quarrel that also saw his three eldest daughters taken from him. His second son was snatched and died in George I’s care, cementing the enmity between them. After a few short years of peaceful life with what was left of his family, George II lost his richly, truly, deeply beloved [wife] Caroline. His grandchildren were turned against him, and he lost his eldest son to a premature death. Death took three more daughters, Louisa, Anne and Caroline, while an ill-considered, snarling slight saw his only remaining son sink into silent enmity.” All of which is to say that “The Courtiers” is


an exercise in the higher (or, depending on one’s view of royalty, lower) gossip. Worsley, who as chief curator for a number of England’s historic royal palaces appears to be something of a court groupie, writes breezy, chatty prose marred from time to time by the misuse of “hopefully” and “like.” One does expect better of the Brits than that. Still, “The Courtiers” is amusing and, among other things, a useful reminder that, contrary to what many believe, sex was not invented in the 1960s. Presumably Worsley and/or her publisher


have put Kensington Palace in the subtitle because of its association with Princess Di, but the real focus of the book is St. James’s Palace, “a poorly designed, makeshift mansion for the monarchy since the great palace of Whitehall burned down in 1698” but one that “still provided the stage upon which the Georgia court’s most important rituals were performed.” In the early 18th century, “with the passing of greater power to Parliament the court was gradually becoming a backwater, and the ambitious no longer vied for the great


By George, it’s a royal sex comedy A


THE COURTIERS


Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace By Lucy Worsley Walker. 402 pp. $30


s inspiration for this account of life in the 18th-century Georgian


SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010


WASHINGTON BESTSELLERS HARDCOVER


FICTION 1 THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST


2 THE HELP (Amy Einhorn, $24.95) 12


(Knopf, $27.95). By Stieg Larsson. The Millennium Trilogy ends as Salander hunts for her failed assassin.


57


By Kathryn Stockett. A frank chronicle of the lives of several black maids working in a town in 1960s Miss.


3 TOUGH CUSTOMER (Simon & Schuster, $26.99) 4 THE RED QUEEN (Touchstone, $25.99) 1


By Sandra Brown. With mixed emotions, a brash P.I. goes to the aid of his daughter, whom he’s never met.


2


By Philippa Gregory. The life of the mother of Henry VII, who plots and schemes amid the War of the Roses.


5 STAR ISLAND (Knopf, $26.95). By Carl Hiaasen 3


Mayhem ensues when a washed-up pop star’s stunt double is kidnapped by mistake in South Beach.


6 THE VIGILANTES (Putnam, $26.95). By W.E.B. Griffin


and William E. Butterworth IV. A disturbing series of murders marks this new “Badge of Honor” tale.


7 VEIL OF NIGHT (Ballantine, $26) 1


By Linda Howard. A nasty, out-of-control bride is murdered, and everyone seems to be a suspect.


8 PRIVATE (Little, Brown, $27.99). By James Patterson


and Maxine Paetro. An elite P.I. firm, run by a former CIA agent, tackles a murder that hits close to home.


9 THE HOT BOX (Atria, $25.99). By Zane 1


A baseball analogy sets the stage for two women, the men they’re playing and the steamy results.


10 THE REMBRANDT AFFAIR (Putnam, $26.95) 4


By Daniel Silva. Gabriel Allon’s secluded retreat is derailed by news of murder and a stolen masterpiece.


NONFICTION/GENERAL 1 WOMEN FOOD AND GOD: AN UNEXPECTED PATH TO


ALMOST EVERYTHING (Scribner, $24) By Geneen Roth. Tackling compulsive eating.


2 SH*T MY DAD SAYS (It, $15.99). By Justin Halpern


LIFE (AND YOUR ORGANIZATION) . . . (Crown Business, $23). By Tommy Spaulding


11


A son gleans wisdom from his 73-year-old dad; the inspiration for a forthcoming sitcom.


3 IT’S NOT JUST WHO YOU KNOW: TRANSFORM YOUR 4 COMPOSED: A MEMOIR (Viking, $26.95) CHRIS PUDDEPHATT


The licentious court of George I fascinated gossipy Londoners, who reported that the king “keeps two Turks for abominable uses.”


court offices such as Groom of the Stool,” but the period saw “a last great gasp of court life and a late flowering of that strange, complex, alluring but destructive organism called the royal household.” The palace drawing room where the court assembled looked more like a zoo than the elegant salon we imagine it to have been: “In the crush people would ‘jostle and squeeze by one another,’ shouting ‘pardon’ over their shoulders; it was simply ‘impossible to hold a conversation.’ Everyone laughed when Lord Onslow tumbled ‘backward among all the crowd’ and lay sprawling, while another gentleman, ‘drunk and saucy,’ had to be ejected for throwing a punch.” First as Prince of Wales, then as king, George II “turned his backside to those he did not wish to acknowledge, a technique known as ‘rumping.’ The ‘rumped’ or spurned could console themselves with having earned membership of the exclusive ‘Rumpsteak Club.’ ”


Both as prince and as king, George II was happily married to Caroline, but he was never without one or more mistresses. The first of these, Henrietta Howard, “was living apart from her brutal, heavy-drinking husband,” simultaneously serving George’s libidinous urges and, as one of six “Women of Princess Caroline’s Bedchamber,” the sartorial demands of his wife. That everyone managed to keep a stiff upper lip through this arrangement will seem bizarre to today’s reader, but mistresses were a given of 18th-century court life, and wives did their best to tolerate them, and in some instances to befriend them. When Henrietta decided she wanted to break away from the court and retreat into quiet private life, Caroline resisted her departure as strongly as George did, though in the end they capitulated, an exceedingly rare instance of royalty giving way to the wishes of an inferior. This happened in 1731. Six years later Caroline took grievously ill, was misdiagnosed by her attending doctors — scarcely unusual for the time, but ironic considering that both she and George II strongly supported medical science — and died of complications from “a


‘mortified,’ or decayed, part of her bowel” after an agonizing decline. George was grief-stricken but quickly began scouting about for a new mistress: “The sight of the elderly king hunting for women was beginning to amuse and to horrify: observers thought he was simply getting too old for japes of this kind. He was now nearly sixty, a considerable age by the standards of his century.” What he really wanted was “sympathy, rather than sex,” and after a number of trial runs he found a measure of both. Though women were prized at court and


sometimes wielded influence beyond their status, they had few rights and were held in low esteem. Lord Chesterfield spoke for the male hierarchy when he called them “children of larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never in my life knew one that had it.” In truth, though, “the whole sumptuous and luxurious cocoon of court life was in many ways a prison,” as much for the men as for the women, since toadying was in even greater supply than rumping. The accounts Worsley gives of lords and ladies willingly sacrificing what dignity remained to them as they tried to wiggle their way upward on the court’s greased pole is not pretty, though on the other hand not really any uglier than what goes on every day in the year 2010 in the salons of Imperial Washington. To her credit, Worsley makes no attempt to underscore the parallels between the courtiers of Georgian England and those of London and Washington three centuries later, but they’re self-evident. The human capacity for self-debasement in the search for glitter by association is deeply ingrained and hasn’t changed despite the quantum leap from quill pens to iPads. The rooms in which the strivers now gather are warmer in winter and cooler in summer than was the King’s Drawing Room at Kensington Palace, and the people in those rooms now smell a good deal better than George II’s unbathed courtiers, but there’s another stench that hasn’t gone away, and won’t.


yardleyj@washpost.com


By Rosanne Cash. The daughter of a country music legend describes the journey to find her voice.


5 STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0: . . . ONLINE TEST FROM


GALLUP’S “NOW, DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS” (Gallup, $21.95). By Tom Rath


6 THE OBAMA DIARIES (Threshold, $25) 5


By Laura Ingraham. The conservative pundit tackles the Obama mystique via a set of faux diary entries.


7 THE BIG SHORT: INSIDE THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE


(Norton, $27.95). By Michael Lewis The murky world of financial derivatives.


8 DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT 9 OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS


(Little, Brown, $27.99). By Malcolm Gladwell Assumptions about success challenged.


10 THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS 10


(Crown, $26). By Rebecca Skloot. The shocking story of a stem cell theft in 1951 and the HeLa cell line.


Rankings reflect sales for the week ended Aug. 15, 2010. The charts may not be reproduced without permission from Nielsen BookScan. Copyright © 2010 by Nielsen BookScan. (The right-hand column of numbers represents weeks on this list, which premiered in Book World on Jan. 11, 2004. The bestseller lists in print alternate between hardcover and paperback.)


6


Paperback Bestsellers at voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm


12


MOTIVATES US (Riverhead, $26.95) By Daniel H. Pink. A look by the New Economy expert.


53 22 25 1 1 18 7 1


Wednesday IN STYLE: Jonathan Franzen


GREG MARTIN Bookshop BOOK FAIR McLEAN AAUW 41st


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Fri 9/10 9-7, Sat 9/11 10-6, Sun 9/12 12-4


Sunday most books are $7.00 a bag


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Free 703-356-8364 www.mcleanaauw.org Non-profit org. providing scholarships for women


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Half price when you buy 5 or more Open 7 Days, 12-5 on Antique Row 301-929-0036 10408 MontgomeryAve. Kensington,MD


ATTIC BOOKS 100Wash. Blvd. LAUREL,MD. Daily 11-7; Sun 1-5; Closed Tues. 50% OFF SALE


Bartleby’s Books Old & Rare Books We Buy Collections & Estates Autographs & Manuscripts


www.bartlebysbooks.com 1132 29th St. NW. (202) 298-0486 Mon.–Sat. 10:30–5:30, Sunday 12–4 USEDBOOKS


SECOND STORY BOOKS’ ROCKVILLEWAREHOUSE TAKE AN ADDITIONAL


10% OFF EXISTING DISCOUNTS on BOOKS and GRAPHICS only


WITH THIS AD – ONLY THIS LOCATION 12160 Parklawn Dr., Rockville,MD Sun-Wed 10-8 Thurs-Sat 10-9


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2467 18th St. NW in Adams Morgan 2 floors of quality books on all subjects. Come see our classical CD collection.


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BOOKS EDITED, E-books, Dissertations & Reports.Resumes, KSAs & ECQs Written & Typeset. Call 24 hrs. 800-721-0720


LITERARY CALENDAR AUGUST 24-28, 2010


24 TUESDAY 6:30 P.M. Manal M. Omar, program officer for the Iraq Grants


Program with the United States Institute of Peace, discusses and signs her new book, “Barefoot in Baghdad: A Story of Identity—My Own and What It Means to Be a Woman in Chaos,” at Busboys and Poets (5th & K), 1025 Fifth St. NW, 202-789-2227.


6:30 P.M. Conservative blogger Pamela Geller joins Robert Spencer for a discussion and signing of their new book, “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America,” at Borders Books-Downtown, 18th & L Sts. NW, 202-466-4999. 7 P.M. Edward Ugel, a resident blogger at the Huffington Post and the author of “Money for Nothing: One Man’s Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions,” discusses and signs his new book, “I’m With Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks,” at Barnes & Noble, 4801 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, Md., 301-986-1761. 25 WEDNESDAY 7 P.M. Broadcast journalist Kathleen Koch discusses and signs “Rising from Katrina: How My Mississippi Hometown Lost It All and Found What Mattered” at Politics and


Prose Bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202-364-1919.


28 SATURDAY 1 P.M. Anthony S. Pitch, author of “The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814” and “ ‘They Have Killed Papa Dead!’: The Road to Ford’s Theatre, Abraham Lincoln’s Murder, and the Rage for


Vengeance,” presents a lecture, “Dolley Madison as Heroine,” at Dumbarton House, 2715 Q St. NW in Georgetown. The lecture on the first lady’s acts of bravery during the British invasion of 1814, most notably the rescue of Gilbert Stuart’s iconic portrait of George Washington, will be accompanied by a special series of tours of the house, all to commemorate the anniversary of Madison’s flight from the White House to Dumbarton House on Aug. 24, 1814, ahead of British troops. Admission is $10 for the lecture and tour ($8 for the lecture alone, $5 for the tour alone), while free for members; call 202-337-2288, e-mail rsvp@dumbartonhouse.org or visit www.dumbartonhouse.org to RSVP.


For more literary events, go to washingtonpost.com/gog/ and search “book event.”


BOOK WORLD THIS WEEK


COMING IN STYLE


MONDAY | Children disappear in Helen Grant’s cunning thriller The Vanishing of Katharina Linden.


TUESDAY | As the Civil War grinds on, a young Army doctor investigates the discovery of mastodon bones on a New York farm in Bruce Murkoff’s Red Rain.


WEDNESDAY | Pristine mountains, rare birds and a


Midwestern family are threatened in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. Three generations gather for Thanksgiving in Jennifer Vanderbes’s new novel, Strangers at the Feast. And three books on the history of baseball.


THURSDAY | Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History, by Yunte Huang.


FRIDAY | Growing Up Jung: Coming of Age as the Son of Two Shrinks, a memoir by Micah Toub.


SATURDAY | Poet and former soldier Brian Turner, author


of “The Hurt Locker,” has published a new collection, Phantom Noise. voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm


Join us as we debate the issues and authors making news today.


6


Read our blog, Political Bookworm, which focuses on books that stir the national political conversation.


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