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Still, certain elements of the recent attacks are unique to Markle. In addition to the media vitriol and lack of support from the Royal Family, Markle has also had to grapple with the United Kingdom’s racism, which the author Afua Hirsch explores in Brit(ish), a book blending memoir and history. The monarchy in particular is steeped in racism and colonialism. As K. A. Dilday observed in an article for The Atlantic about marrying into the British aristocracy, she experienced racism in the United States as well, but found the aristocratic embrace of hierarchy and birthright uniquely disturbing.
Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas.
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What We’re Reading
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“What could be more absurd, after all, more darkly funny, than being a minor royal in the mid-to-late 20th century—supremely useless, yet retaining in one’s personage, like a tribal hangover, certain faint traces and flavors of the old dispensation?”
📚 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown
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The Crown takes the shine off Queen Elizabeth’s reign
“Instead of seeing Diana as a luminous young woman who is changing the British people’s (and the world’s) impression of the royal family, Elizabeth sees her as an outsider who must either bend or break to the family’s will.”
🎥 The Crown on Netflix
HERMAN KNIPPERTZ / AP
The enduring fictions of Princess Diana
“Twenty years after she died, chased down by paparazzi who were chasing the images the people craved, many of these new takes look at Diana’s life and see not just a princess trapped in a flawed fairy tale, but also a public who helped to ensure her continued captivity.”
📚 Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton
KGC-09 / STAR MAX / IPX 2019 VIA AP
Meghan, Kate, and the architecture of misogyny
“While researching my history of feminism, Difficult Women, I was struck by a pattern in which ‘good girls’ are promised an escape from misogyny, as long as they are docile and conformist—a pattern that has race- and class-based overtones.”
📚 Difficult Women, by Helen Lewis
📚 Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, by Afua Hirsch
About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Kate Cray. The book she’s reading next is Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
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