Power And The Throne

Aug 22, 2025 9:57 PM

Author:Anthony Barnett

This is the most important, wide-ranging and critical debate so far published on the monarchy.

It is not concerned with the trivia and tragedy of the Windsor's personal lives. Instead, a glittering range of contributors from across the spectrum of opinion focus on what the monarchy means for Britain today. Do we - can we? - continue to live in what Anthony Barnett calls in a provocative introductory essay, "an empire state?"

The essays include Charles Moore's stirring reassertion of the case for the crown and David Hare's denunciation of the "odious rituals of deference." Lady Longford assures us that the royal phoenix will rise from the ashes of the Windsor fire. Christopher Hitchens rebukes Shirely Williams and criticizes the monarchy for invading our privacy. Marina Warner dissects our fear of change. These and many others contribute to a debate conceived as a watershed. A debate that will be seen as having shattered the taboo on serious scrutiny of the monarchy.

Reviews

Jason Starr is hypnotically good

—— Lee Child

The ultimate page turner

—— Michael Connelly

Manhattan receives a lustrous varnish of black, black humor in this sly urban fantasy thriller...Starr once again shows a real gift for satiric humor and capturing the contemporary New York scene

—— Publishers Weekly

Southern cadences resonate, imbuing Bitter In The Mouth with a warmth and wit that form a perfect foil for the Southern gothic undercurrents that propel it towards its gorgeous, heart-warming resolution

—— Herald

A revelation of wit and heart and stunning talent. Truong shades her classic coming of age tale with a magical ferocity that recalls Doctorow and Nabokov....a soulful hymn to the hands we fashion with the cards we're dealt

—— Jayne Anne Phillips

Truong's pen is a scalpel, laying perfect words down along that nerve until even the happiest reader understands what it means to forever stand apart from your family and the larger society you inhabit...The novel's end is neither bitter nor sweet, but the perfect combination of both

—— Los Angeles Times

If you liked The Shaking Woman by Siri Hustvedt, you'll love Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong... a tale of friendship, loyalty, love, family, and above all, the mysteries that make us who we are

—— Tatler

With a heroine who literally eats words, Truong is amply aware of the power of them... she wields her narrative like a quarterstaff, knocking readers' expectations right out from under them

—— Washington Post

Monique Truong creates a world so subtle, mysterious, moving and sensory that it heightens our consciousness of those qualities in our own. Bitter in the Mouth is the rare novel that makes one life story unique and universal at the same time

—— Gloria Steinem

Be prepared for a full range of tastes of life in Bitter in the Mouth: friendship, loyalty, love, family, and above all, the mysteries at every corner of one's history that make us who we are. Monique Truong is a great observer and a beautiful writer

—— Yiyun Li

A terrific writer... She's changed my perception on life

—— Anna Chancellor

A classic of contemporary Americana... variously funny and horrifying and finally, quietly, terribly moving

—— Los Angeles Times

A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read

—— Boston Globe

A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well

—— Newsweek

In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power

—— The New Yorker

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