One Sided Account

An easy listen, but extremely one sided. The author is clearly pro royal and William can do no wrong. The impersonations were ridiculous!

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Prince William: Born To Be King

Royal biographer Penny Junor has nailed her colours to the past in books such as 'Charles: Victim or Villain?' where she seems to take Charles' side over Diana's. This book has a fairly similar first few chapters, where William's early life is picked over in the shadow of his parents' disintegrating marriage. I'm not really sure that, nearly twenty years after her death, that the late Princess can really be retrospectively diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder?

William comes across as a very single-minded individual with an underlying core of steel. He is charming in his everyday life in regard to his military and charity commitments, but there's more to him than that, which comes across quite strongly in the text. I'm not altogether sure that he's a particularly pleasant person. The sheer number of chapters concerning his extensive charity work become boring after a while.

As for the narration: author Penny Junor's plummy tones were very suitable, but the other voice actors who read the quotations were pretty awful, with special reference to some of the 'urban' accents they attempted.

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1 person found this helpful

Interesting book...terrible impersonations!

Still listening to a somewhat rehashed telling of the entire Charles and Diana story with only brief references to prince William so far. BUT I am horrified at the inclusion of various quotes read by a cast of voice over 'artists' who seem to be trying to out do each other with simply awful impersonations. The accents of people such as John major and Tiggy Legg Burke as an example are beyond imagination. Penny Junor is fine reading her own work but why the editor or publisher thought that it was a good idea to use 'actors' for the quotes is beyond me. They really spoil what is a reasonably good audio book. Message to publisher: PLEASE DONT DO IT AGAIN!!

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2 people found this helpful

Interesting book but there were sections I didn’t need to hear about

Penny Junor writes this book with an obvious bias towards prince Charles. I found her to very scathing of Princess Diana, which was not necessary. Before this book I knew nothing of the injuries that Diana had sustained in her accident in Paris nor did I want to know. The author’s description of them in this book is something i can never forget and wish I hadn’t heard.

Notwithstanding the above it was a very interesting book about William and the inner workings of the place staff.

It shows William has the strength of character to be a wonderful future king, and I only hope I’m around to see it.

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A plain and straight forward biography - excellent

By plain I do not mean dull but unadorned.

There is no enhancement and Ms Junor tells it like it is/was without sensationalism.

Included in the book for obvious reasons are passages about Diana, Princess of Wales, and these episodes are told with no punches pulled, in a truthful and believable manner.

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2 people found this helpful

pandering to the Royals

This book could be historically interesting, except for the author's loyalty to the Winsors. The author explains and justifies all royal errors and mistakes which, makes the royal story unbelieveable. The book is a good

public relations piece for the Winsors, and a poor excuse for a book of recent history.

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2 people found this helpful