Not In Front Of The Gorgis (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
cute, but not really about the secret life, and not really about the corgis LOL.This book gives interesting information about the palace, people who work there, old customs, and some stories.If you're looking for gossip you're going to be disappointed. If you want to know about the rooms, the layout, who does what, the ranking of the staff and stuff like that, you are in for a treat. First the cons. As pointed out by reviewer Kate, this book could have used a solid edit. For instance, there's an entire chapter on what Royal Household staff are paid -- but there are also numerous asides about staff pay elsewhere in the book. This sort of thing gave the impression that the book's structure was somewhat haphazard. Why not either A. Group all the pay scale info in one section, or B. Introduce it in a more organized way as you share other information about various members of the household? More disappointing to me personally was that Hoey in some cases failed to deliver on implicit narrative promises. He starts a chapter titled The Royal Collection, for example, by telling us that of all the rogues that have ever been employed by The Queen, Sir Anthony Blunt was the worst. Wonderful set up, right? Can't wait to hear about this Rogue Among Rogues! Hoey then goes on to tell how Blunt was a Soviet spy in the mid-20th century; confessed in 1964 but was kept in The Queen's employ; and then, 15 years later (!) "his role was finally revealed" and he was stripped of his knighthood and kicked out of his clubs. And that was it -- Hoey tells us no more. I was left scratching my head. What was "finally revealed" in 1979 that was not understood when Blunt confessed? How could The Queen not have known that Blunt's '64 confession was only part of the story? Did his Rogue-ness ever compromise the Royals in any way?I will have to Google all that. But in the meantime, Hoey missed the mark completely in terms of delivering a juicy story. Did he assume readers would know the backstory? Perhaps. But this reader didn't, and would have loved for Hoey to tell the whole thing. As suggested by some of the other reviewers, the title is also somewhat misleading. "Secrets" suggests that you'll pick up some salacious details about the Royals. That's not going to happen. Instead, "Not in Front of the Corgis" is more like an insider look at the machinery of running the Royal Household. You'll learn things like the duties of a Valet, for example, and how staff are promoted and what their living quarters are like. The closest it comes to salacious is some mildly gossipy stuff about how various members of the Royal family treat their staff. You'll learn that some Royals are more petty and demanding than others ;-)One last observation. Although Hoey is obviously not a professional writer, I actually found the naivete of his delivery somewhat charming. Reading the book is very much like finding yourself sitting next to someone in a pub, and after he's had a drink or two you learn he worked for the Royals for years, and he gets talkative and you find yourself the recipient of an impromptu brain dump on the subject. Yes, he jumps around a bit; he repeats himself once in awhile; he doesn't always recognize that he's begun to bore you with a particular bit of information and needs to self-edit. But you put up with all that and listen, because you can tell it's authentic and it really does give you a sense of what it is like, in that Other World you'll never visit yourself.For this reason, "Not in Front of the Corgis" is a little piece of escapist non-fiction, and I enjoyed it as such.This book would be also be useful for people doing research on Britain's Royal Family -- i.e. writers or anyone hoping to go work for them.
What do You think about Not In Front Of The Gorgis (2011)?
An entertaining look into the lives of the staff to the Royal family.
—prill
This was an average read for the commute to and from the office
—faith86
Lots of fun facts about the queen and her family.
—Rebecca
