Changes

Something of a self-appointed royal insider, he has lunched with Wallis Simpson ('a scarecrow body in its exquisite clothes')and the Queen Mother – separately, it must be noted, and also tells of a gay night club in Covent Garden at which one of King George VI's brothers was wearing full make-up and another Queen Mary's clothes. At the same time he offers his reasons for the breakdown of Princess Margaret's marriage, and informs us that he had had affairs with Antony Armstrong-Jones and Roddy Llewellyn, future husband and boyfriend respectively of the princess.

There's a new name on almost every page. While there are several interesting, if perhaps not fully credible, stories about the rich, famous and titled in the book, it's rather akin to reading a book of gossip columns with barely a pause for breath in between. It's probably not altogether correct to call this book a memoir, because once the author gets past his early life and an attack of polio when he was only 10, there's little about him, precious little introspection. Every time he is on the verge of telling us something about himself, along comes a recollection or scandalous titbit about somebody else. Everything takes second place to the breathless social merry-go-round. He even takes to bringing in pieces of second-hand gossip, like a rumour that in the early 1970s astrologer Patric Walker killed another famous astrologer down the stairs from her top floor apartment in order to get her job on 'Queen' magazine. Whether he was indeed given the subsequent vacancy and/or whether he was charged with murder or manslaughter, we are never informed, because the next paragraph tells us eagerly about yet another person who invited him out for lunch. If he must add such stories to his tale, he might at least tell us what happened in the end. It really is that kind of book.