Gilded Youth

A History of Growing Up in the Royal Family: From the Tudors to the Cambridges

Tom Quinn

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2023
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9781639365142
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

A colorful, fascinating look at growing up in the royal family over the centuries, from the Plantagenets and Tudors to the Windsors and Cambridges. For as long as the British royal family has existed, their children have been brought up in ways that seem bizarre and eccentric to the rest of us—the royal family's obsession with making their children tough and independent as early as possible, often by delegating their parental duties to staff, goes back centuries. Gilded Youth looks at centuries of growing up aristocratic and royal—from Edward VII smashing up his schoolroom to Prince Andrew peeing on a stable lad's shoes; from Princess Margaret putting horse manure in a footman's pockets to Diana Spencer wearing crop tops, kissing a local village boy, and drinking cider in a bus shelter; from a teenage Prince Harry throwing up in the street to Prince William becoming completely obsessed with doing the right thing regardless of the feelings of his younger brother. Even Queen Elizabeth herself reacted oddly to her upbringing, becoming in many ways obsessively compulsive—as a child she insisted her shoes should always be positioned in the same place, her lunch set out exactly the same way each day, and that for tea she have jam pennies (small rounds of bread and jam), which she was still eating every afternoon into her nineties.The younger generation seem to insist they want a normal or ordinary upbringing for their children—because that goes down well with the public—but this is just window dressing. Gilded Youth looks at how, when it comes to their children, the British royal family is still behaving much as they did in the past.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Whipping Boys and Infant Kings
• Chapter Two: Bed-Pan Babies
• Chapter Three: Mad, Bad and Sad: Royal Children from George I to William
• Chapter Four: ‘My Daughters Have Turned Into Cows’: The Children of Queen Victoria
• Chapter Five: Better Daughters than Sons: The Children of Edward
• Chapter Six: The Return of Knock Knees: The Children of George
• Chapter Seven: Pride and Joy: The Children of George
• Chapter Eight: Change and Decay: The Children of Elizabeth
• Chapter Nine: Ancient and Modern: The Children of Charles and Diana
• Chapter Ten: Modern Love: The Children of William and Kate
• Chapter Eleven: Children in Exile: The Children of Meghan and Harry
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Bibliography
• Copyright