Books Rule!
5 January 2023
Heavy lies the hand that wears the Crown. How the royals unburden themselves through writing.
Alexander Larman
Alexander Larman is the author of several historical and biographical titles including The Crown in Crisis & Byron’s Women. He is books editor of The Spectator world edition and writes regularly about literature and the arts for publications including The Observer, Prospect, The Chap and the Daily Telegraph.
This month, Prince Harry is publishing his memoir, Spare. Quite apart from the rumours about its sensational content, it is more likely than not that the Duke of Sussex will be undertaking some high-profile publicity campaigns around its launch, and that signed copies of the book will be available. It is equally likely that these will end up being valuable collectors’ items, unless the Duke signs so many that they end up being commonplace: these days, publishers often insist that their authors batch-sign their books before publication, meaning that signed copies are a good deal less sought-after than they once were.
CHARLES, Prince
A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture, 1989. Black Cat Books $1,500
Much of the controversy around Spare revolves around the much-stated belief that members (or former working members, if we’re quibbling) of the Royal Family should never publish their autobiographies. The famous motto ‘never complain, never explain’ should perhaps have as its third statement ‘never publish’. Yet this has not been true of Prince Harry, who co-wrote the book with the ghostwriter JR Moehringer, and it was not true of his great-great-uncle the Duke of Windsor, the previous member of ‘the Firm’ to have written a memoir. A King’s Story, which was published by Cassell in Britain and GP Putnam’s Sons in the United States, was released in a signed limited edition of 385 copies, which can occasionally be found on the open market. At the time of writing, one is available from the American bookseller Gerard AJ Stodolski for $2,200, in its original fine leather binding, while an ‘ordinary’ copy of the first American edition, dedicated by the Duke of Windsor to the American publisher William Roy DeWitt, retails at £550 from Burwood Books. (An unsigned first edition in its dustjacket can be had for around £20, reflecting its huge initial print run.)
VICTORIA, Queen
Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, from 1848 to 1861. Peter Harrington £1,750
In a speech that he would have given to the British Publisher’s Association upon the book’s launch in 1951, but was forbidden to do so, the Duke light-heartedly compared himself to other royal authors, including Charles I, whose Eikon Basilike – an account of his involvement in the Civil War, written while he awaited execution in 1649 – can be found for sale in a fine early 20th century De La More press binding at Sotheran’s for £3500 – and Henry VIII, of whom the Duke quipped ‘Henry VIII wrote a book, and it was a very successful book – I cannot give you the figures of its circulation, but I can tell you that the Pope was so pleased with it that he conferred upon Henry the title of Defender of the Faith’.
He also singled out his great-grandmother for note. ‘My great grandmother was also a writer. Queen Victoria did not think it beneath her dignity in what we regard as the extremely conventional period in which we lived to write and publish details of her most private life.’ The book that she produced, Leaves from the Journey of Our Life in the Highlands, may be rather less full of juicy detail than Spare or A King’s Story, but is nevertheless a sought-after item. Peter Harrington are currently selling a fully illustrated presentation copy of the 1868 edition, inscribed by Queen Victoria to her Maid of Honour Flora MacDonald, for £1750, and a volume signed to ‘dear Elizabeth Argyll’ sold recently at Bonhams for £892, showing that literary Victoriana remains a collectable field.
FERGUSON, Sarah
The Adventures of Budgie, 1992. North Star Rare Books $100
Contemporary members of the Royal Family’s books command a mixture of prices. King Charles’s treatise on architecture, A Vision of Britain, can be purchased as a first edition for less than £10 if one does a little digging, but signed copies are extremely scarce: Black Cat Books in the United States are selling a copy inscribed by the then-Prince Charles to the equestrian artist Henry Walter Koehler for $1,500. This is rather more than Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, the Duchess of York, whose many titles – ranging from children’s fiction to cookery books to Mills & Boon romantic novels - can be had for considerably less elevated prices. Colin Neville is selling three signed Budgie children’s books for £150, and a limited edition of The Adventures of Budgie can be purchased from North Star Rare Books and Manuscripts for $100.
Books about, rather than by, the Royal Family don’t tend to be vastly collectable – I say this with mild chagrin, as the author of a couple of them – but there can be some interesting rarities; Kitty Kelley’s book The Royals, which is full of scandalous and probably fabricated tales, was never published in Britain for fear of libel, and so copies are consequently scarce, if reasonably easy to obtain from the United States today. Letters written by royalty are usually collectable, and their value rises significantly if the recipient is a well-known figure in their own right or if the correspondence has any kind of personal information in it, and, of course, any signed photographs or similar memorabilia are always likely to command a good price: the more significant the member of the Royal Family, the more expensive they are.
Which brings us back to Spare. Its literary merit cannot yet be known, but unless the Duke of Sussex has signed literally tens of thousands of copies, it is likely that his signature in the memoir will, eventually, make it collectable. So if you get a chance to buy one – or, better still, you have a brief encounter with the troublesome prince in a signing queue – it seems a safe bet that its value will rise commensurately over the coming years, showing our continued fascination with the world’s most famous family.
