Rachel Bowie & Roberta Fiorito,
Royal Trivia: Your Guide to the Modern British Royal Family
(Ulysses Press, 2021)


Rachel Bowie and Roberta Fiorito may just be a little bit obsessed.

That's OK ... lots of people, on both sides of the Atlantic, are fascinated with the royal family, their rituals and traditions, the weight of their history, their clothes, their romances, their scandals and spats and soap opera-like dramatic upheavals.

Bowie and Fiorito are two American gals (or "ungrateful colonists," if you prefer) who have made their obsession into a career choice. They write about the royals (among other topics) for PureWow, and they are the current hosts of the Royally Obsessed podcast. Suffice it to say, they know the subject pretty well.

They share the details of the royal lives in Royal Trivia: Your Guide to the Modern British Royal Family. And by "modern" they mean Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, the late Princess Diana, the Cambridges (William and Kate), the Sussexes (Harry and Meghan) and the latter couples' offspring.

Let's be frank, I am not royalty-obsessed. I pay at best a moderate level of attention to them, but I never go out of my way to keep up with their doings. And the information gathered here is, while certainly thorough, not anything I will ever need to know.

On the other hand, the authors have a breezy, entertaining way of presenting information and, with entries mostly limited to a page or two, this was a fun book to keep in the bathroom for those moments when, you know, you only have a few brief minutes to read.

So, whether it's the things William and Kate did to honor Diana on their wedding day, or the various charitable organizations the members of the royal family support, or the place where Elizabeth lived during the happiest time of her life, or the various ways the family has broken protocol over the years ... this book will answer your questions.

(Oh, and congratulations to the authors for turning their passion into profit!)




Rambles.NET
book review by
Tom Knapp


29 January 2022


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