Wendy Leigh's True Grace

Biography is just as much about the writer of the bio as it is about the subject. Judging from the prurient, scandalous, superficial information about Grace Kelly in True Grace, I’m pretty sure Wendy Leigh started off her writing life as a gossip writer for the National Enquirer. I love biography because it is (supposed to be) intense character-driven drama, and the best biographies provide information about motivation, life-defining experiences, and behavior patterns. Leigh doesn’t really do anything like this. She gets excited when she talks about Grace’s experiences with men. There is even an undercurrent of jealousy in these passages, but there is little else. I know little about Princess Grace after reading this 200-page book, and I wonder now why I didn’t just give it the deep six half way through. Oh well, at least I know now that Jackie Kennedy was jealous of Grace Kelly because JFK was in love with her for his entire life. Hmm…or maybe not. Yeesh.

Julia Child's My Life in France

Everyone I know loves to watch cooking shows, and they all have a favorite food personality. Boys tend to like Giada de Laurentis. Girls tend to like Barefoot Contessa or sometimes Rachel Ray, though she’s a lot to take. Everyone loves Top Chef. These shows have improved cooking and food awareness. I know how to chiffonnade basil and make a roux from watching the Food Network. It’s really amazing the tips you can pick up from these shows. Little did I know, until I read Julia Child’s My Life in France, how unoriginal we all are. People have been watching food shows for decades, and it all started with Julia Child.

Julia Child paved the way for this indulgence in food and being a ‘foodie’ in the 1950s and 60s. She was the first to make food on television, and she was the first to introduce speedy-cooking-obsessed America to the virtues of taking time with food rather than pulling something out of a box.

In My Life in France, which covers much more than her actual time in France, Child explains in short, pleasant vignettes, as transposed by Alex Prud’homme, how she grew to love food. To my surprise, Child did not know much about cooking until she was 37 years old. She and her husband moved to France after the war for Paul to take a diplomatic job in Paris. After eating a beautifully composed meal in a small restaurant in Le Havre, she became obsessed with food. This meal literally opened her taste buds, and she began her journey to becoming a French chef. She took classes at the Cordon Bleu, which were sub par, but she met some great chefs who gave her private lessons. According to Julia, taking classes like these were not rare at this time. Many housewives did this to learn their way around the kitchen, but unlike many of these women, whose cooking experience stopped at the market and their home kitchen, Julia began to investigate and test all sorts of recipes because she wanted to know how they work. She tells one story of how she tested dozens of different recipes of mayonnaise before she was happy with the result. Before she got to the perfect recipe, however, she had so many batches, that she had to resort to flushing some down the toilet!

After a while, she began to teach other people how to cook. She became so energized as a result of her own discoveries with food that she wanted to share her knowledge with others. She and a few friends started cooking classes in Paris and soon after started writing a cookbook, a labor of love that eventually became Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes I and II. What made Julia Child so unique was that she was able to explain the process and chemistry of each recipe so that the home cook could understand what was happening in the kitchen. Julia made it possible for women in Iowa, who had never been to Paris and had no understanding of French cuisine, to make a beautiful coq au vin. Her cookbooks were a revelation to Americans in the 1960s who were anxious to learn about cooking. They are still classics today.

My Life in France is full of charming stories of finding ingredients at the market, living in Provence, and details about the arduous publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julia comes through the pages as a very nice, open person who was obviously a great hostess. This is a meditation on the kitchen and not a memoir of her life, though she does provide some information about her family and relationships as she goes. It is a wonderfully sensuous, nostalgic book that made me want to get into the kitchen, make myself a tart, and open a bottle of wine. Bon Appetit.

Fun Fact: Julia Child was 6 foot 2 with size 12 feet.

Brown's The Diana Chronicles

The Diana Chronicles received mixed reviews. On the one hand, Tina Brown presented Diana in a fair, balanced light, rarely resorting to gimmicky, gossipy information. Her effort to present Diana as a humanitarian was considered valiant and correct. After ten years, we are ready to put aside our view of Diana as silly and desperate for attention. On the other hand, critics argue that Brown presents Diana as just that. Plus, she provides no new information about Diana’s life According to Sarah Bradford, a Diana biographer and Royal insider, Brown did not gain access to Diana’s inner circle, so speculations about Diana’s behavior is immediately suspect.

As usual, I fall softly onto the middle ground. I think Brown’s book is a detailed and well-researched account of Diana’s life. Few other books spend as much time analyzing Diana’s childhood as this one does. Clearly, Diana was deeply traumatized by her mother’s abandonment. She fell in love with Charles far before he was ever a possible suitor because, according to her, “he is the only one that will never leave me.” Interestingly, Diana was slated for Charles younger brother, Andrew. Her 19-year old self saw security and matrimonial bliss in the heir to the throne. A more experienced woman would have left him when he famously said, after being asked if he loved her, “whatever that [love] means,” but Diana was smitten and the route to tragedy was paved.

Brown does a nice job of creating a clear picture of Diana as a modern woman caught in the ancient practices of monarchy. Charles, like nearly every other Prince of Wales before him, had a mistress. From the perspective of history this is not surprising or out of the ordinary, but Diana was a modern woman; she saw what happened in her family when love was not present and she was desperate to correct her parents’ wrongs. The true tragedy is that she was never told at the beginning what the situation was between Charles and Camilla, that no one ever pulled her aside and enlightened her about marriage practices in the British royal world. Some say that she should have known, but she was too in love with Charles to believe that she could not woo him. Brown believes that she was in love with Charles her entire life, which, if true, is sad.

Diana, however, was not completely innocent. She knew how to play dirty, and she did so to get back at Charles. Though every launch of ugliness (Andrew Morton, BBC interview) was ultimately designed to get Charles’ attention, one cannot forget how mean these attacks were. She was justified in her anger and pain, but she made the situation worse by choosing the tactics that she did. Diana understood her public, knew they loved her more than Charles, and used them to play hardball with her husband. By the time they are divorced, Charles is with Camilla, and safe behind royal protection, and Diana is alone. Her boys are at school, her HRH is gone, she has declined the royal security detail, because she believes they are spying on her, and she is a fox for the foxhunting photogs, a true Diana the Hunted from Greek myth. She turns to Dodi Fayed, not for marriage or love, but for protection.

It is unjust that Diana is treated so poorly at the end. After all, she was the honest one in the relationship. She was immature and chose to fight, though harshly, for love and recognition in a situation where most women historically go about their business, but I don’t think any woman in this day and age can fault her. The real villain of the story is Camilla. Many, both for and against Diana, both in and out of Charles camp, believe that Charles and Diana would have had a fighting shot at a happy marriage if Camilla had left well enough alone. From her perspective, I suppose, she’s glad she played ingénue. She’s the one that is HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, destined to be Consort to the King. Diana, for all her efforts, will not get the privilege.

Brown could have included more information about Diana’s relationship with her boys. This part of her life is conspicuously absent. Also, there are no insert pictures. All of the pictures of Diana and company are printed on the inside of the hard cover. The biggest and blondest picture in the book is of Tina Brown herself, which prompts the question of who Brown thinks is the real looker of the story.