The book’s prologue is the story of the death of the Duke’s sister, Cecile, in 1937. From there, Eade goes back to the origin of the Greek monarchy, to give a bit of background, and to bring it out from obscurity, or so he says. He continues onto the house of Battenberg, and takes that to the point of Prince Philip’s birth.
The Final Curtsey
I am always wary when there are spelling errors as early as the family tree in the first pages of the book. True, it looks like a mere typing error, but one would have hoped that such minor trifles could have been caught prior to the book going to press. It makes me wonder how many other things I am not catching.
The last book reviewed for now in the category of books released for Haakon and Mette-Marit’s 10th anniversary is this book: Haakon og Mette-Marit i 10 år, by Liv Berit Tessem.
Unlike the other two books, this one is chronological. It has one chapter for each of the ten years they have been married.
I rather like this approach. It makes it easy to follow the changes and progress made over ten years. The thematic division in the other two books was good, but in a commemorative book like this, I do think this approach is a tad more interesting.
The drawback to it, however, is that each chapter just scratches the surface on much of what has happened over the years – and does not go into as much detail on some of the topics as the other books have done.
As I said in my review the other day – there have been three books released to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Haakon and Mette-Marit’s marriage.
This is the second one I’m reviewing. It is called Mette-Marit: Prinsesse av folket. En illustrert feiring av Norges kronprinspar, (Translation: Mette-Marit, Princess of the people. An illustrated celebration of the Norwegian Crown Prince Couple) with pictures by Aasta Børte and text by Monica Aafløy Hansen.
This is a an album of pictures from the ten years Mette-Marit has been in the spotlight as the Norwegian Crown Princess. But, it is not just a pictorial – in some of the chapters, the text also feels as though it is an integral part of the book and not an afterthought.
At 127 pages, the content and quality of pictures makes it feel like a lot more pages than it actually is.
I really enjoyed reading the anecdotes from the photographer that sometimes accompanied the text, or the pictures. It gives another dimension to the book – I might have seen the pictures before, but the photographer’s description adds an extra value to the pictures.
This August, ten years have passed since Crown Prince Haakon married Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby in Oslo Cathedral. A slew of books (okay, three, so far) are coming out, two television specials are coming later this month, and the couple are also being interviewed left and right about the past ten years, and their causes.
The first book I picked up is 10 år med Kronprinsparet by Elsebeth Danielsen. It is published on Aller forlag, and part of the proceedings from the book will go to the Crown Princely Couple’s Humanitarian Foundation.
It is not a huge book by any means; at 118 pages, most of the chapters are about 1-2 pages, and the majority of the book consist of pictures. Great pictures, but almost all of them have been seen before in some context or other. Similarly, the text feels more like a synopsis of other sources (listed in the back) than original interviews with the couple.
It starts out with that defining day in the Cathedral, a chapter on the wedding gown, and then moves on to Mette-Marit’s adaption to royal life, the causes she’s taken up, the family life, fashion, her work with the religious CD and at the end there is a list of the patronages and orders of Haakon and Mette-Marit. The focus is chiefly the beginning, the trip to Malawi in 2005 and the last years.
The book gives a neat overview of ten years in 118 pages, but for most of those pages, the person covered is Mette-Marit only. Haakon’s Wedding speech, his Dignity Day cause, and his interview about what kind of music he listens to… are the really stand out issues about him in the book, which isn’t a lot for ten years.
The one thing about the book that I actually really liked was that in a lot of the chapters, people associated with Mette-Marit’s causes (or once or twice from their common causes) had written messages to the couple on their anniversary, in conjunction with the cause/relevant picture in the book. This was published next to the picture/description of the cause.
It is a nice enough little book, but given the amount of pages, it doesn’t go into much depth. Thus, if you’ve followed them over the past ten years on forums or in the news… I think you can probably save your money for something else.
In 1996, I received my first copy of a book that would prove to give ample fruit to the interest in future investigations on the subject. The city was London, with its many bookshops, and in one of those… I received my first copy of Kings and Queens of England and Great Britain, by Eric R Delderfield.
The edition of the book, which I acquired, may not be quite up to date today – after all, Charles and Diana are no longer married; the Queen has two more grandchildren; Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother have passed away, et cetera. However, it is still an interesting book to rummage through, for the longer historic lines, and details… even if the more current history is not quite up to date.
Today, for basic information, I suspect one would just go to Wikipedia, instead of to an actual book.
