The Windsor diaries, 1940-45 My childhood with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret

The WWII diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard (1923--2001), an aristocrat and childhood friend of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, provide a captivating behind-the-scenes look at the royal family. Howard, who would have become the Duke of Norfolk had she been a boy, was sent by her estranged parents at age 16 to live with her grandfather and maiden aunt at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Park. A lonely adolescent who imagined that she was Marie Antoinette reincarnated, Howard chronicled her deepening friendship with the two princesses, who spent the war years at Windsor Castle. Howard describes attending Elizabeth's 14th birthday party and taking dancing and drawing lessons with the sisters, and details her volunteer work at a home for displaced civilians. The diary entries, some only a few lines long, are intimate and endearing. Howard notes the "atmosphere of happy family life" at Windsor Castle, expresses pride in hearing Elizabeth's voice on "the wireless," and expresses approval of her friend's budding romance with Philip Mountbatten. Howard also acknowledges the "heavy nameless cloud" of depression that sometimes settles over her, and reflects on her parents' unhappiness. Royal watchers and British history buffs will cherish these frank reflections. (May)

Famous for breaking the Watergate story with Bob Woodward, Bernstein backtracks to his early-1960s experiences as a teenage reporter at the Washington Star in Chasing History.

Another facet of the British royal family emerges via the diary entries of a young, devoted Windsor Park neighbor. At the outset of World War II, Howard (1923-2001) was sent to live with her paternal grandfather and maiden aunt at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Park, a few miles from the castle. Her new home was the seat of truly aristocratic stock. As Isabella Naylor-Leyland, who is married to Howard's nephew, writes in the foreword, "Old Lord Fitzalan, a widower…was a distinguished elder statesman and leading Roman Catholic layman. Cumberland Lodge had been loaned to him for his lifetime as a grace-and-favour house by King George V in 1924." At age 16, Alathea now lived just down the road from her childhood acquaintances Elizabeth and Margaret, the two Windsor princesses, who had also been moved from London for safety during the Blitz. Their friendship grew over the years as the girls skated together, enjoyed tea with the king and queen, took dancing and drawing lessons, practiced for Christmas pantomimes, and, eventually, attended dances and balls. The author diligently chronicles the stultifying round of royal visits and duties and her grinding work as a nurse in training, none of which makes for interesting reading. But she does provide some intriguing insights into the characters of the princesses as well as her own: She was an old-fashioned girl whose mother was deeply critical and emotionally remote, leading to bouts of depression. Though Alathea was uncomfortable in her present life and obsessed with the 18th century and the world of Marie Antoinette, the Windsors offered the charm and warmth of a loving family she never experienced. Eventually, she realized that Elizabeth, the duty-bound heir to the throne, would never love or need her the way she needed the princess, and she was crushed when she was not chosen to be her lady-in-waiting. A litany of dull, dreary royal goings-on peppered with the diarist's sharp, dark observations. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.