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Description of  Bringing Them Up Royal: How the Royals Raised Their Children from 1066 to the Present Day

Henry VIII played his daughters off against each other, alternately exiling and honouring one and then the other George I cut his children off from their mother when he had her imprisoned George III violently attacked his son George V allowed one of his sons to be starved by a nanny. When he was just five years old, Prince Charles was reunited with his mother, who had been away for months touring the Empire and Commonwealth. Newsreels show him waiting for her at Victoria station. Immaculately dressed, as a trophy child should be, he was expected not to act his age. When his mother gets off the train, she does not rush towards him, kiss him or hug him. Instead, she shakes her son's hand. In a nice display of 'spurious maturity', he shakes her hand back. Achingly formal, it is an almost perfect example of protocol taking precedence over love. When Princess Diana became a mother, many were surprised by her parenting style – warm and nurturing. She stood in stark contrast to the generations of aloof, insensitive royal parents who had gone before her. Stories abound of Prince Philip reducing a young Charles to tears with his bullying – yet by royal standards he was a model of parental indulgence. As a new generation of princes and princesses comes of age, Bringing Them Up Royal reveals the truth about what it's like to be raised as a member of the royal family. Tracing hundreds of years of British history, David Cohen weaves a compelling and sometimes shocking tale, full of arresting psychoanalytic insights and twists. Intertwining history with child psychology, this unique study maps the changing face of royal parenting from 1066 to the present day – and suggests how it might develop in the twenty-first century. Bringing Them Up Royal is the first case study of its kind, and with it comes an unexpected story of violence, sex, betrayal, cruelty – and the occasional gem of kindness and wisdom.