Telegraph: Robert Jobson’s Princess Kate biography is ‘grimly fawning’ & ‘ridiculous’

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As we’ve discussed this week, Robert Jobson has hacked out a new royal book: Catherine, the Princess of Wales: A Biography. The book was excerpted in the Daily Mail, and People Magazine and other sites have been picking up some of the stories, even though the tea is quite stale in most cases. The narrative was actually set by sources close to King Charles and Queen Camilla, and Kate mostly comes across as a dejected peacemaker, constantly trying to calm down her rageaholic husband. What is the market for this? Is anyone buying the actual book? Well, the Telegraph tasked someone with reviewing Jobson’s book and the guy HATED it. Despised it. Critic Alexander Larman even sounds like a royalist, but even he wasn’t into Jobson’s BS. The headline/subhead are: “The Princess of Wales never claimed to be perfect – this biography is ridiculous” and “Catherine, The Princess of Wales, by Robert Jobson, is grimly fawning, embarrassingly written and devoid of insight into the real woman.” Some swipes at Jobson and Kate:

Airless Kate: The difficulty faced by Robert Jobson’s new biography of Catherine, now 42 and Princess of Wales, is that it must fill its 300-odd pages with an account of a life that has been both eventful and strangely airless. Brought up in an affluent middle-class household and privately educated at Marlborough College, Catherine met her future husband in 2001, while the pair were studying at the University of St Andrews. The relationship briefly foundered, but recovered after a reconciliation at a party – “She arrived dressed as a nurse,” Jobson tells us, “and William made a beeline for her” – before they became engaged in 2010, and were married in 2011.

Kate’s one controversy: The Princess of Wales has continued to be one of the most discussed, and photographed, women in the world. She has largely avoided controversy – save what has been portrayed as an uncomfortable relationship with her sister-in-law Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Camp Sussex have levelled accusations, albeit through proxies such as the downmarket biographer Omid Scobie, that Catherine made Meghan cry during preparation for the latter’s wedding, was generally cold and aloof before the Sussexes’s self-exile to America, and even – in a tortuous development that involved a mysteriously revelatory Dutch translation of Scobie’s 2023 book Endgame – had asked what skin colour Harry and Meghan’s first child was likely to have. There has never been much evidence for any of this invective or innuendo.

A “histrionic” sermon?? Yet Catherine can’t possibly have as composed a personality as the one we see in public. You might recall her wry smile and side-eye to the now-Queen during Harry and Meghan’s wedding, as the American bishop Michael Curry delivered a histrionic sermon. (That wedding is still, somehow, only six years ago.) If there are more such human moments to share, Jobson doesn’t include them here, although he does spend plenty of time on the innumerable other occasions that Catherine has been in the public eye.

LMAO: Were it not for the events of 2024, Jobson’s book would be nothing but a desperately dull and often comically overwritten hagiography, which portrays Catherine as little less than a secular saint who was put on this earth to steady the troubled House of Windsor and to make a stuffy monarchy appear more compassionate and sensitive. Jobson clearly admires Catherine enormously, and always seeks to present her in the best possible light. (Less so her husband, who emerges as grumpy and petulant.) From the perspective of a dutiful subject, this may be admirable, but it makes his role as an impartial biographer rather suspect.

The Wales marriage: If you’re looking for gossipy detail about how loving those arms were, forget it. Jobson gives the prurient short shrift – “Catherine and William have sadly been subjected to many vile and unjust attacks and false accusations, particularly from the so-called Sussex Squad” – and instead prefers to refer to people by single-word descriptions.

[From The Telegraph]

What I’m reminded of, yet again, is the undercurrent of eagerness within the British media to finally push Prince William and Kate off their pedestals. It’s happened with more and more frequency in the past year especially: the Middletons’ business collapsing and people openly calling them frauds and liars; the constant discussion about hot, single-dad William; the catastrophic mismanagement around a missing princess, and on and on. Many people know that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes and that the images being presented are far from the reality. It feels like a vibe shift when Jobson’s sycophancy is met with disgust. Also: this reviewer is absolutely part of the problem, but hey, at least he’s pointing out that no one wants another bland hagiography.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Backgrid. Book cover courtesy of Amazon.

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  3. Telegraph: Robert Jobson’s Princess Kate biography is ‘grimly fawning’ & ‘ridiculous’

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