Christopher Warwick's biography of the late Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, was published in its first edition in 2003, the year following the Princess' death, and subsequently republished in a second edition in 2011. This is a review of the 2nd edition.
The book presents a very detailed exposition of the public events in the life of the Princess, relying almost exclusively on contemporary newspaper accounts and some accounts from other contemporary media. His selection of source material is directly responsible for the book's two major flaws. By relying almost entirely on the extant published press accounts, the content of the book is mostly limited in scope to the public life of the Princess. With very little material sourced from private interviews with friends or associates, Warwick can only rely on second and third hand anecdotes that occasionally provide a little color beyond the already well-known episodes that captivated the attention of the contemporary royal tabloid and newspaper press.
Entirely missing from this biography is any attempt at trying to examine the Princess' private life, psychology, motivations, passions, and character.
Without the type of in-depth research necessary for a biography of this sort to be successful, Warwick's biography of such a fascinating woman becomes a horribly tedious read--merely page after page rehashing one supposed press frenzy or newspaperman's cook-ed up scandal after the next.
I would have rather spend an afternoon going to microfilm at the library to find the actual newspaper stories on which this book is based rather than having to suffer through Christopher Warwick's tedious prose and endless paraphrasing of one newspaper clipping after the next.
Save yourself the time, and wait for a better biography to come out once her personal letters are released. There's simply nothing new in this biography, and nothing in it worth reading.
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