Marion’s desire for her own life conflicts with what is perhaps the greater need of a girl destined to be queen, and the events which shaped her. It is the story of a strong woman who is determined to ensure that two girls would have contact with a world beyond the palace walls. It makes no claim to be a documentary, and some of the story may be inaccurate, but overall this is a novel which is secure in its settings and makes sense of some grey areas. This is a well researched novel which takes a particular line of narrative which blends assumptions with objective history. The story is about national events from Marion’s perspective, an insider but never truly on the real inside when trouble arose.

At one point she says to the young Margaret “I sacrificed my happy days for you, you see.”, and much of this book is about her choices being affected by others. This is how the author starts this intense novel, with an elderly woman waiting for a sign that she is important to the two women she devoted her life to for so many years. Marion, or “Crawfie, is apparently not mentioned much in the official accounts of the royal family’s life, as she was seen to have betrayed their privacy by writing her own story. In this fictionalised account of her life Marion is a strong willed young woman who wants to make difference, and probably did in an unexpected way. She was not an obvious choice her background was unconnected to high society and she had left wing sympathies. Marion Crawford became governess to the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in 1933.

The governess wendy holden reviews