Book Review: Not In Front Of The Corgis by Brian Hoey

Interest in the British royal family is inexhaustible. Just take the amazing clamor over the recent wedding of William and Kate! But who are the Royals, and what do they get up to when we aren't watching them? In Not in Front of the Corgis, a veteran Royal commentator and author of more than twenty books on the Royals peeks behind the curtains to tell us what they really get up to in their spare time. The book asks questions like what the Queen watches on TV and why she does not have a driving license, and answers thousands of questions about the world's most famous family, including who are the most popular Royals to work for, and who the least? Who is the grandest of the Queen's children and why? Why do Edward and Andrew pay less than Charles' private secretary for the rent of their homes, and what records did the Queen Mother like to dance to?
 
Not in Front of the Corgis is a unique and fascinating miscellany containing everything you ever wanted to know about the Royal Family, away from the spotlight.

My Review: 
This is the first book I've read by the author and he's written quite a few, so I didn't really know what to expect. I must say that the blurb is quite misleading as it makes it sound like this is a book purely about gossip on the members of the Royal Family. It's not like that at all.

The book opens with the corgis-how they answer only to the Queen and she does not like anyone to clap them. They are not a friendly breed, having been bred to herd cattle, sheep and horses. This certainly explains their habit of nipping at the heels of humans, something that drives the footmen crazy. They might be nippy and yappy little gits but they are rather cute.

The book then goes on to a bit of Palace gossip concerning why Charles has to have his underwear handwashed instead of being sent to a laundry (frequent thefts!), why Andrew has years of TV recorded ready for him to watch, how Camilla vets the guest list for every function that she attends. It discusses who the staff most like to work for, with Philip, Margaret and Anne coming out on top for how they treated their staff and servants. Margaret once paid the private medical bills for a staff member, Philip defied protocol to personally attend his chauffer's funeral and how all three are loyal to their staff. It talks about how difficult it could be to serve Diana, Andrew and Edward for varying reasons. While the new generation of Royals aren't included, there was a bit about the minor Royals, the Queen's cousins. This whole section is the kind of thing I was interested in but there wasn't really enough of it in the book to keep me happy.

To be honest, it sounds like a dreadful environment to live and work in, and I'm not talking about the actual members of the Royal Family. Everybody seems to want to work their way through the ranks of employment to get closer access to the Royals, which will earn them better qualifications to move to a better paid job in private employment. It seems that the Palace is a hotbed of bitching, backstabbing, jealousy and resentment, and the pay isn't as high as you'd expect. It doesn't sound like the place to make friends. The accomodation with the job is basic though the standard of food sounds better than most staff canteens, and there is potential for career advancement if you do your job well. 

Where the book is a bit of a let down is that there is too much detail on things that most readers don't really want to know. It goes i nto detail about each position in the household, their duties, the names of the people who have held that job title, who answers to who, where their offices are, where they eat and live and what their rooms look like. It goes into this detail for pretty much every job in the Palace. It then tells stories of people who once held the job. There were just too many info dumps concerning the servants that wasn't what gossip hunters were looking for. I wanted more about the Royals but to be honest, there wasn't a great deal of focus on them. It was more about the servants and the running of the Palace, which wasn't really what I was looking for.

Bits of the book were interesting but there was too much description on other things that wasn't really necessary. Would I read more by the author? Maybe but I'd check out reviews first in case other blurbs turn out to be misleading.

Read February 2020
2.5 stars.