Usually, by this stage in the publicity process, I am desperately casting about to find some item of interest about one of my books. However, with The Crown in Crisis, my cup runneth over, thanks to the kind way in which people have continued to respond to it and asked me to discuss it. Here are a few of the recent highlights.
I sat down with my good friend Dan Jones a couple of weeks ago in his sitting room, amidst a truly phenomenal rain shower, and we had a splendidly entertaining hour’s chat about all things abdication-related for the BBC History podcast. You can have a listen to it here. I’ve also recorded a podcast for the Daily Mirror’s Pod Save The Queen series, and will put a link up to it soon.
As ever with a book like mine, there are articles to be written, and I have enjoyed writing them. I looked at the murky circumstances of the George McMahon assassination attempt in July 1936 for The Critic, tried to give an insight into the behind-the-scenes creation of the book for The Arbuturian and wrote about Edward VIII’s disastrous trip to Scotland in September 1936 for Scotland magazine. I also gave an interview to Italian TV station RAI about potential Italian involvement in the assassination attempt, which you can watch here. The blustery weather made it more eventful than I might have expected.
Reader’s Digest magazine have very kindly made my book their ‘Recommended Read’ for their August issue, and have called it an ‘absorbing new book, [which] takes us through the whole. tangled story with great clarity’. It’s a three-page story, and well worth a read, which you can have here.
More reviews are coming over the next few weeks – fingers crossed – and I’m also thinking about some forthcoming events. I’m doing a couple of private talks in August for members of the Royal Over-Seas League and the Oxford and Cambridge Club – via the medium of Zoom, of course – but my first (and probably only) live event of 2020 will be in September at the Appledore Book Festival in Devon. You can book tickets here – it promises to be the first drive-in literary festival I’ve ever done, and probably quite the unique experience for us all.
As ever, thanks to everyone who has bought the book and enjoyed reading it. It is for all of you that I spend the hours, weeks and months researching and writing, and your continued support is hugely welcome. I am deeply grateful.