Review: "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" by Florence King

One of the strongest American stereotypes most be the Southern Belle. If you have ever read "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell, you know exactly what I mean. It is a way of life, an identity oozing overpowering feminine charm and delicately wrapped female vile. It is the exact opposite as being one of the boys.


"Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" is Florence King's tale of growing up in a Southern family, ruled by the soft and well-manicured yet steely hand of her grandmother. Granny has aspirations to be a grand lady and she dreams of raising a Southern belle - however, her own daughter is more of a man than a woman really, loving baseball and suits, so when a granddaughter comes into the world, Granny does everything in her power to turn her into a real lady. Growing up in a bohemian household with Granny, mama and a book-loving Englishman for a father means that Florence has a childhood far away from the norm. From day one the three main adults in her life has three very different agendas and Florence has to find her own identity from a young age.


I read about "Confessions..." at one of the blogs I follow and loved the sound of it. I wasn't really sure what to expect but from the first line of the first page, I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Florence King has a talent for observing the awkward and funny, the little humorous gems of an extraordinary life. Her observations on the American female of the 1950s are both disturbing and hilarious - I was appalled and fascinated at the fact that all of the other girls in her sorority at college took a marriage prep class. Homework involved washing their boyfriends socks!


To describe these girls who are forever worrying that no-one will marry them and depend on guys to give them self-esteem and self-worth, Florence and her father comes up with the word "malkin". A fantastic word that I will definitely keep in my vocabulary. Is is bound to come in handy.
Florence herself was far from a malkin - though she looked like the perfect young Southern lady, inside her there was a real academic mind hungering for books as well as a sexual creature hungering for, well, sex. The story follows her battles to study French (she ends up studying history instead) and to lose her virginity without falling pregnant. Quite rebellious pursuits in the South in the 1950s but Florence has courage and is not afraid to go after the things in life as she wants.


The book is written with intelligence and personality, it is full of anecdotes and scattered words of wisdom and it poses questions about femininity and the role of a woman that are as relevant as they were in the 1950s. Because what defines you as a lady? They way you look or sound? A ring on your finger or who you sleep with? It is probably a question that each of us have to answer for ourself just as Florence King did. And as she herself says in the book - she may have gone to bed with both men and women but she never ever smoked on the street.

Review: "Mrs Simpson: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor "

Just the title.... "Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor"... it sounds like a really bad documentary, doesn't it? However, I managed to ignore the lame title and pick up the book "Mrs Simpson" by Charles Higham. Having seen "The King's Speech", I had become very interested in Wallis Simpson, the woman whom Edward VIII loved so much that he abdicated to marry her. And that was about all I knew about Mrs. Simpson before I started the book.

The first part of the book focuses on Wallis's early life in Baltimore, her first and second marriage, her time in China and I struggled to get through every single page. I can't say exactly why but this first third of the book was dull! Like, really dull!
However, then the Prince of Wales enters the scene and everything becomes a bit more interesting. What fascinated me mostly was this early part of the relationship between the king-to-be and divorced-then-married-again American who according to the author was not even attracted to the prince but instead carried on with other men behind his back.
As the story evolves and as it is told by the author, this was a relationship where one part was more in love than the other... And where an unlikely princess became a duchess and a king became a duke. If it was because a lot of this book is substantiated by quotes from good sources and seems to be rather thoroughly researched, I would have thought that it was mostly made up.



I can't recommend this book as such though because I have to say that I found it a tad bit difficult to read. The author didn't seem to be able to separate interesting anecdotes from tedious facts and it was something that I found hindered the reading. So unless you really really want to know about Wallis Simpson, this is not a book for you.

Review: "Princess Margaret - A Life Unravelled"

While reading "Past Imperfect" by Julian Fellowes, I was intrigued by the narrator telling how the youth of the 1960s aristo milieu would flock to a nightclub if Princess Margaret was known to be there on the night. In this day and age "hunting" royalty and celebs clubbing is something the tabloid press (no names mentioned, none forgotten) seems to spend an exceptional amount of time on, however, I somehow hadn't imagined that that was already done in the 1960s. So in my curiosity I picked up Tim Heald's "Princess Margaret - A Life Unravelled" to learn more about this modern party princess, the sister of HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

First thing first: I love the cover. The look in her eyes, the crossed arms. Taking by the amazing Cecil Beaton - apparently in the loos in Kensington Palace... - the cover tells a story in itself and only encouraged me to read the biography.



Princess Margaret was born in Scotland between the wars and her father was brother to the future king. However, as you know Wallis Simpson then showed up on stage and an abdication meant that Margaret was now daughter of the king and sister of the future queen. This meant that growing up in the austere Britain during the WWII years, she was a very special girl but what Heald seeks to uncover in this book is how Margaret reacted and developed as she grew from being the spoiled daughter of a king to being on the outskirts of the royal family. Princess Margaret's life seems to have been no dance on roses - she fell in love with a man she could not marry and went on to marry and divorce Lord Snowdon. They are both alleged to have had several lovers both during and after the marriage and what I really really like about this biography is that Heald seems to pay no heed to gossip. He sometimes refers to rumours and gossip but always makes sure to underline that this is just rumours.
The biography could so easily have focussed more on the rumours and the gossip about Margaret but instead the author keeps a sober tone and distinguishes between known facts and rumour. He could probably have written a much more colourful biography but the focus is on being true to the subject of the book - Princess Margaret - and what the people around her remember about her and who includes lots of excerpts from letters and other written sources. It is a really fine biography that made me interested in reading about some of the princesses contemporaries such as John Betjeman and which gave me a glimpse into the past.

Review: "Wedlock" - I now declare you husband and prisoner

If you - like me - have an interest in womens right and the history of England then you need to read this book: "Wedlock - How Georgian Britain's Worst Husband Met His Match" by Wendy Moore.
In Georgian times matrimony was serious business - a contract that once ventured into it would almost impossible to get out of again, especially for women for whom marriage meant effectively becoming their husband's possession. When venturing into marriage, a womans possessions were transferred to her husband and from then on she lived at his mercy.

For Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heroine of "Wedlock", this was the case as for all women at the time - but not all women (luckily) were married to men like Mary Eleanor's husband... Mary Eleanor, one of the richest young heiresses of her time, married young to the Earl of Strathmore. An unhappy union and when the earl died Mary Eleanor took her life and fortune in her own hands and married a the self-styled Captain Stoney. This choice is a testament to Mary Eleanor's very flawed ability to judge characters because Stoney turned out to be a fortunehunter who speedily turned from ardent admirer into a cruel, bullying, vicious husband who specialised in both physically and mentally tormenting his wife.

I really enjoyed this book even though it was unsettling and upsetting at times. Getting a better understanding of how little rights women had in Georgian times. They were basically on par with children and some were treated with even less respect and understanding. Women were possession, trophies, things to be owned. One woman, however, stood up against her scoundrel of a husband and went to court to fight for freedom, fortune and family and that was Mary Eleanor Bowes. I was impressed by her courage and stubbornness, she really did fight like a tigress for her children and herself even though she knew that her husband was scheming to kill her.
Inspiring and impressive and very well-written. No dust lingers on these pages, I even sacrificed sleep last night to follow and cheer for Mary Eleanor as she fought for her liberty and for justice.

"Diana Mosley" - All for Love

Anne de Courcy has the gift of making history come alive on the pages of a book and she certainly uses this gift in her biography of Diana Mosley née Mitford. Diana was one of the famous Mitford sisters, part of the British acristocracy and part of a family who impacted their time. She was one of six sisters and shared her childhood home with the writer Decca Mitford, her sister Debo, now the Duchess of Devonshire, the writer Nancy Mitford plus Pamela and Unity Mitford.
Diana was acknowledged for being the most beautiful of the Mitford sister and aged just 18 she made a spectacular marriage to Bryan Guinness. However, only four years after - now a mum of two - she left Bryan for Oswals Mosley, the infamous fascist leader. Diana's abandoning the marriage made headlines, not only because left a seemingly great marriage but also because she left to become a mistress of married man with a bit of a reputation. The love affair with Mosley was to define Diana's life. Her love for him overcame everything and shaped her adult life, as she followed him into fascism becoming a close friend of Hitler and spending several years in Holloway prison.
The book tells Diana's story well, not hiding her nazi-sympathies and not defending them either. It is hard to understand how a girl from a good family ends up being more or less an enemy of the country, especially since her sister Decca who she was very close to in childhood became a devoted supporter to the communist case.
De Courcy does not ask any questions about why Diana's life went in the direction it went and she neither critises nor sympathises - mostly she just chronicles the facts. Her focus is very much on the intense love story of Diana and Mosley which is indeed a fascinating tale but I wish that she had dared diving deeper into the difficult and unpleasant questions such as how she could leave her two boys with Guinness to pursue her love of Mosley and whi she never questioned nazi Germany.


After four years, she left him for the fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, and set herself up as Mosley's mistress - a course of action that horrified her family and scandalised society. In 1933 she took her sister Unity to Germany; soon both had met the new German leader, Adolf Hitler. Diana became so close to him that when she and Mosley married in 1936 the ceremony took place in the Goebbels drawing room and Hitler was guest of honour. She continued to visit Hitler until a month before the outbreak of war; and afterwards, for many, years, refused to believe in the reality of the Holocaust. This gripping book is a portrait of both an extraordinary individual and the strange, terrible world of political extremism in the 1930s. But if you don't know the story of Diana Mitford, this biography is a good place to start - or if you want to know about all the Mitford sisters, try "The Mitford Girls" by Mary S. Lovell.