New Book, Old News Kitty Kelley’s Book, ‘The Royals,’ Doesn’t Tell Us Anything We Didn’t Already Know

“The Royals” by Kitty Kelley (Warner Books, $27, 548 pp.)

The late Evelyn Waugh would always say, when the name of the present Queen Mother was mentioned, that she could not become pregnant unless suspended by both ankles from a large chandelier.

Since this was the same Evelyn Waugh who declined to exercise his right to vote (on the grounds that it would be impertinent to advise the crown on its choice of ministers), his observation counted as brittle witticism, gossip as fresh as uncorked champagne, delicious upper-class malice.

But let Kitty Kelley tell her version, about a Queen mother subjected to the rigors of artificial insemination in order to produce the current Queen and her frightful sister Princess Margaret, and there is widespread shock and derision. How vulgar, if true!

Why, the next thing you know, authors and publishers will be writing and issuing books for ready money, just like tradesmen. Thus the unfunny snobbish side of Waugh survives as a mainstay of American book chat, and Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times can blame the royals for their own misfortunes and Kelley for writing them down all in the course of the same cute little review.

I should announce my interest and say that I am acknowledged by Kelley as having suggested people for her to interview and am quoted (in a slightly garbled fashion) in one of her anecdotes. I feel myself neither compromised by the first fact nor unduly irritated by the second. It gives me a point of vantage from which to judge the job she has done. Thus, just to take the most sensational of her suggestions - the artificial insemination story - she doesn’t mention Waugh, but she does give the name of a physician.

On the matter of Prince Philip’s boorish private life with a string of dull upper-crust mistresses, also revealed by Kelley, all I can say is that it accords with every story told by every observer and courtier since 1947.

As for the other headline assertions, it was high time that somebody put all these tales between two covers. We have long needed a handy compendium or digest of royal gunk.

In case you are wondering, nothing distressing or disagreeable is said about our newest saint and newest Madonna, the Blessed Diana Spencer. Or perhaps I should better say, nothing distressing or disagreeable that we didn’t already know. She comes across, usually in her own account, as a narcissistic borderline airhead with some personal charm and a huge need for vengeance on the lugubrious family that used her as a breeding machine and then chucked her aside.

Some have said, usually with a touch of “schadenfreude,” that Kelley was unlucky in the timing and release of her book. I don’t think so. Here is the unvarnished story of a spoiled kid way out of her depth, exploited and exploiting, written well before the moldering ramparts of flowers made all objectivity impossible.

Kelley does not claim to be a professional historian and, truth to tell, doesn’t take the royals all that seriously. But I think she is on to something when she suggests that everything can be traced to the renaming or retitling of the ruling house. When the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family, which became the Battenberg clan, changed its name to “Windsor” in 1917, it was to avoid the imputation of being German from which we get the simplistic translation of “Battenberg” to “Mountbatten.” This was for the apparently excellent reason that Britain and Germany, or rather the British and German royal houses, were at war at the time. It was thought good to distract attention from the latter aspect of the situation. H.G. Wells, in a celebrated article, had referred to the king as “alien and uninspiring.” His majesty is said to have boomed, “uninspired I may be, but alien I am not.” And so the change of name, to one more consonant with the roast beef of Old England, was made.

But ever since, a gloomy element of denial and self-hatred has hung over the Hanoverian court. Worse still, tentacles keep reaching up from beyond the grave. Several “Windsors” involved themselves on the wrong side during the battle against the Third Reich. The palace was honeycombed with appeasers and fifth columnists. Sheer luck and good public relations bought some time and goodwill.

But the nagging and oppressive sense that the family had to sacrifice itself to keep up a false front, and that nothing in dynastic life could be normal or human, helped bring us the dysfunctional and mediocre lineup that we see today.

The last time a book on this subject caused a comparable sensation was when Andrew Morton published “Diana: Her True Story.” The prime minister denounced it. The archbishop of Canterbury anathematized it. Harrods wouldn’t sell it. The non-tabloid press announced that it was just the sort of sordid, privacy-invading garbage that they didn’t choose to touch. And - what do you know? - it was all true, every word of it. And how do we know that? Because Princess Diana was the principal source. And how do we know that? Because after lying charmingly for a while, she coquettishly owned up.

So be careful not to be so fastidious that you miss Kelley’s book. Don’t you want to know who treated and counseled “Fergie,” and for what? Don’t you want to know the subject that was discussed on the missing minutes of the Princess Diana-James Gilbey “Squidgy” tapes? Don’t you want to see the pictures of Edward and Mrs. Simpson greeting Hitler with a warm clasp? (The former king gave the salute and the heil too.)

MEMO: Christopher Hitchens, author of “The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain’s Favorite Fetish,” is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Nation.