Episode #8: "Royals Are Just Like Us...Only They're Not"
On this episode, we're excited to bring you Jennifer Ryan and Melanie Benjamin
Jennifer Ryan is a nationally bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies Choir, The Spies of Shilling Lane, The Kitchen Front, The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle, and The Underground Library. Her writing has been featured in Literary Hub, Moms Don’t Have Time to Write, The Daily Mail, The Irish Times, The Express, BBC Online, YOU Magazine, The Simple Things Magazine, and Good Reading Magazine. She was previously a book editor with The Economist, DK, and the BBC. Her novels are inspired by her grandmother's tales of the war in Britain.
Melanie Benjamin is the New York Times bestselling author of nine works of historical fiction: Alice I Have Been, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, The Aviator’s Wife, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Girls in the Picture, Mistress of the Ritz, The Children’s Blizzard, California Golden, and her most recent novel The Windsor Affair. Her novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages, have been featured in national magazines such as Good Housekeeping, People, and Entertainment Weekly, and have been optioned for film.
Read Along!
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As a young Queen Elizabeth II prepares to take the throne, three women in her employ will discover where they belong in a rapidly changing world in this heartwarming novel from the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies' Choir.
London, 1953. Buckingham Palace and the many employees vital to the smooth running of the monarchy find themselves in bedlam as the Queen's coronation quickly approaches.
Caroline Brimstone, assistant dresser to the queen, watches the queen finding the strength to rule—a woman taking charge of her future. Meanwhile, Caroline’s life is worn thin by her gambler husband, and she is barely holding on as every penny she earns seems to run out the door. When a trip to Balmoral brings her face-to-face with the man she once loved, she finds herself at a crossroads between what her life is and what her life could be. Can she, like the queen, find the strength to define her own future?
Lucy Jones is a junior wardrobe assistant who positively radiates life—she's young, idealistic, and eager to become a famous singer. So when a handsome, wealthy man at the palace promises to help her on her way to stardom, she's over the moon to have such a supportive husband-to-be. And if he's asking some things of her that she's not quite sure about, isn't that just part of the glamorous life?
Miranda Miller has come over from America just in time to help with preparations as a temporary secretary in the palace. The job is a perfect way to gather information for the article she's writing about the coronation for a magazine back in New York; the article that will keep her boss from firing her because of her gender.
But as all three women discover, just because a woman will soon be sitting upon the throne, it doesn't mean that society will change overnight—and if they want to carve places for themselves in this world, they'll have to do it together.
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A scandalous affair. A power struggle for the throne. A sensational rivalry between an English queen and an American social climber. In this electrifying novel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue tells the story of the Abdication of Edward VIII—and the two women at the center of it all.
“As deliciously dishy as an English cream tea and the royal gossip whispered over it!”—Kate Quinn, author of The Astral Library
Feuding Windsor brothers and their wives—some things, it seems, never change. The Windsor Affair recreates the cataclysmic events that nearly toppled the monarchy and incited the power struggle between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Wallis Simpson. Told from the perspective of both women, the novel propels readers into the fabulous world of the debonair Prince of Wales, café society of the 1930s, and the glittering private lives of the Windsors. The first novel to be dedicated to this infamous rivalry, The Windsor Affair brings us all the gossip and intrigue between the two very different—yet perhaps more similar than they would admit—wives of royals.
As Queen, Elizabeth would become the symbol of British pluck and courage during World War II and remain a British institution the rest of her long life. Wallis would be forever forced to enact the World’s Greatest Love Story even after it sours, as she goes from being admired to vilified and, ultimately, pitied. Against the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis, World War II, coronations, funerals, births, and deaths, these two women maintain a biting, sharp-tongued feud—until age and the long arm of history bring about a kind of understanding. For the last communication between these bitter rivals was a simple, surprising message: “In friendship, Elizabeth.”
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