Aristocrats

Rating:
Summary: Informative and Witty
Review: If you are looking for a book about fairy-tale Dukes, Counts, and Princes, then Robert Lacey's "Aristocrats" in NOT for you.

Lacey profiles 6 families from England, Italy, France, Germany, Liechtenstein and Spain. He examines how these families established themselves and built their tremendous wealth. Many of the founding family members started out as soldiers, merchants, bankers and acting as advisors to Kings, Holy Roman Emperors and Popes. In short, they made themselves indispensible to very powerful people. They also made lucrative business deals, excellent marriages, had children, and continued to do so each generation. There is, however, FAR more to them than that. They are SURVIVORS. They have survived wars, political and social upheavel only to regroup and rebuild. They inherit and pass on both their wealth, philosophy, and a way of life that has lasted for centuries.

In interviewing the 6th Duke of Westminister, H.S.H. Hans-Adam of Liechtenstein, Marquis Dino Frescobaldi, The Duchess of Medinaceli, H.S.H. Johannes von Thurn und Taxis, and Jean Louis, Marquis de Ganay, we start to understand how aristocrats feel about their positions in the modern world and the reverence they have for their past. We also find out what they see as their role for the future.

Robert Lacey's style is highly informative and full of wit, which really makes this book a very enjoyable read. For those of you who are trivia buffs, this book was a companion to the BBC production in the early 80's on Aristocrats. Though 20 years have passed, this is still an excellent beginning work on a world that many know little about.

Rating:
Summary: Informative and Witty
Review: If you are looking for a book about fairy-tale Dukes, Counts, and Princes, then Robert Lacey's "Aristocrats" in NOT for you.

Lacey profiles 6 families from England, Italy, France, Germany, Liechtenstein and Spain. He examines how these families established themselves and built their tremendous wealth. Many of the founding family members started out as soldiers, merchants, bankers and acting as advisors to Kings, Holy Roman Emperors and Popes. In short, they made themselves indispensible to very powerful people. They also made lucrative business deals, excellent marriages, had children, and continued to do so each generation. There is, however, FAR more to them than that. They are SURVIVORS. They have survived wars, political and social upheavel only to regroup and rebuild. They inherit and pass on both their wealth, philosophy, and a way of life that has lasted for centuries.

In interviewing the 6th Duke of Westminister, H.S.H. Hans-Adam of Liechtenstein, Marquis Dino Frescobaldi, The Duchess of Medinaceli, H.S.H. Johannes von Thurn und Taxis, and Jean Louis, Marquis de Ganay, we start to understand how aristocrats feel about their positions in the modern world and the reverence they have for their past. We also find out what they see as their role for the future.

Robert Lacey's style is highly informative and full of wit, which really makes this book a very enjoyable read. For those of you who are trivia buffs, this book was a companion to the BBC production in the early 80's on Aristocrats. Though 20 years have passed, this is still an excellent beginning work on a world that many know little about.

Rating:
Summary: Witty, anecdotal, and on the mark
Review: The Countess Mariae Gloria [etc.] von Schonburg-Glauchau, who now goes by her married name of Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, is a 22-year-old mother of two daughters who is disarmingly aware of her principal function as a wife: to produce a Thurn und Taxis male heir. (She got one on the third try, after this book was published.) One cannot become an aristocrat, she says; one can only be born one. But her family works at it. Besides being the largest landowners in Germany, they own farms in Georgia (U.S.), a big piece of the Matto Grosso, and eleven castles and palaces, among a great many other holdings. The Duke of Edinburgh, invited to a boar hunt, expressed disbelief that a private family could live so grandly without receiving (as the Windsors do) financial assistance from the state. "What do you expect?" responded Prince Johannes. "No workey, no money." Lacey gives a similarly witty, insightful, and fascinating view of the Duke of Westminster (the richest man in England), the Duchess of Medinaceli (owner of more than a hundred castles and fifty titles), Prince Franz Josef of Liechtenstein, and several more of their elite colleagues. There's also quite a lengthy bibliography but this is worth reading for the anecdotes alone.