The story of Britain’s royal family, in the hands of Tina Brown, is a sort of high-spirited tragedy. As its sprawling sloth and dwindling defensibility make it more vulnerable to tides of public feeling, the House of Windsor seems doomed to repeat its errors until it either unravels or assumes a new form. The tension between the dynastic demands of the crown and the mortal foibles of those charged with its survival does no one any good — royal noses are ever bloody. “Can the monarchy survive?” asks the back cover of Brown’s fifth book, “The Palace Papers.”
Brown’s bestselling “The Diana Chronicles” was an empathetic but unsentimental biography that subjected the Firm to a forensic examination of its limitations. Now, in the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee, its sequel, subtitled “Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil,” delivers an updated prognosis.
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