Volume 31, Number 16 · October 25, 1984
Life at the Top
By Noel Annan
King George V
by Kenneth Rose
Knopf, 514 pp., $19.95
Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor
by Anne Edwards
Morrow, 527 pp., $18.95
Posterity suspects with some justice that commemorative biographers never tell the truth about the dead. Too many people have to die before they can get at it and, even if they could, they have to avoid libel suits, appease the literary executors who can withdraw permission to quote from letters or journals; they have to wheedle other owners of copyright, placate the family, and soothe friends each of whom is convinced that he or she alone understands the 'real' person who has just died. But the official biographers of royalty are faced with an even more exacting task. To perform it they have to become morticians. Massage removes disfiguring scars and injections of Formalin waft away the unpleasant odor of a decaying reputation.
Review, 6198 words
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