Spare

R. Moehringer, is far stranger and more literary than the tabloid extracts suggested. Structured around the word a second son hears all his life - the 'spare' to an heir - it moves from a mother's death and a boy's frozen grief to war, fame and estrangement.

Whatever readers make of its grievances, the book is a genuine study of how institutions and the press can deform a family. intendle recommends it as a cultural document of rare candor, and as an unexpectedly well-built piece of storytelling. It became the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time, a fact that says as much about our appetite for the monarchy as about the man.