"The Royal Insider" - Paul Burrell's latest book - has anyone read it?

[Antimimisti]

Just curious to hear thoughts on this book. I'm that perhaps rare person who doesn't think much of the Royals but quite likes Paul Burrell; I think the RF exploited and scapegoated him, and his books are 'sweet revenge' as well as a tribute to Diana, with whom he was besotted.

Happy to hear thoughts if you've read it, are thinking of reading it or even if you're definitely not going to read it and would like to share your reasons.

SPOILERS:

I've just finished reading it. I enjoyed it overall but was disappointed to find some of the anecdotes were repeated almost verbatim from 'A Royal Duty'.

I was interested to read that not all the RF cut Burrell off after that book, and Queen Elizabeth II sent him a wedding present when he married Graham Cooper, albeit one that was left over from her store of staff Christmas gifts.

The parts where he talked about being in a closeted although loving and 'full' marriage with Maria Cosgrove were bravely written, and he was open about the difficulties of growing up as a gay man in what was a particularly homophobic environment within a homophobic era.

I was interested to read his opinions of Harry and Meghan and his conjectures about the future of the RF - it will be fascinating to see how well the book ages.

God awful man

What is it you dislike about him?

How is he an insider? He hasn’t been inside that world for years.

Apparently, PB did retain contacts within that world, particularly his good friend 'tall Paul' who had been a footman to QE II alongside him and remained in that role.

Though, as I mentioned, much of the insider content comes from the 80s/90s, which was a disappointment as I'd already seen it in his earlier books.

Dreadful man. This book is I presume, his pension if it sells.

I can't bear him. His whole life since Diana died is feeding off of 'anecdotes' and stories about the RF that get more and more bizarre and embroidered.

He filched 500 items from Diana's Estate, and got to keep some of them when the Queen caved in and remembered he could have them. Yeah right... the RF were just avoiding gossip. He has clothes, personal items, letters, diaries, even her underwear. 300 items were kept and he was returned 200

Was his wife aware that he was gay and therefore happy to be his cover and waste her life, have children with a man to whom she would always be second best make do until he was “brave” enough to have a permanent relationship with a man?

my parents had a friend who also worked for Diana, and he hated Paul Burrell - felt he had betrayed Diana. Friend never told us anything of substance from his (long) time working there.

At the time he married Maria, he was in denial about his sexuality and trying to 'become straight'. He was born in 1958, so for the first nine years of his life, it was illegal for a man to have gay relationships, and beyond that, the UK remained a very homophobic place, certainly into the 80s when Paul married his wife. From his account of how it was, he was not marrying as a 'cover' but as an attempt to deny his sexuality. He remains close to his ex-wife.

Denial does not mean unaware, quite the opposite.
He could have remained single.
So many gay men did.
Unless a man is honest with the woman involved from the start he is using her.
Maybe Maria has forgiven him because she has to keep a relationship given he is the father of her children. Who knows.

Just my opinion but I think he’s a thoroughly ghastly man out to make another buck. But he knows too much to be completely silenced!

He started working for the RF when he was very young and I think he’s a product of his early home life which was not accepting of homosexuality, and the working environment at the Palace where they had to be obsequious in order to progress. Obviously I have sympathy for anyone in that era not feeling they are able to come out.
I suppose lying becomes second nature in that situation.

I saw a clip of an interview he did recently promoting this book where he said the Queen advised him to marry and if I understood him correctly, she implied that a bright future would lie ahead of him if he did.

But he also said there were lots of elderly gay male servants at the Palace who had worked there for years, so it didn’t really make sense.

He also described how the Palace was fuelled by alcohol and how the servants and the royals drank a lot.

He described how he had to lock the door of his room at night when he first arrived at BP because he was “fresh meat”. And how one night he forgot and an older naked male servant tried to proposition him.

He also talked about having a fling with a sailor on Britannia so he definitely knew he was gay. The late Queen found out about this incident apparently and turned a blind eye.

Who knows what is or isn’t true at this point?

But the episode involving the trial about Diana’s missing items was all very odd wasn’t it? To have the Queen interrupt court proceedings at the last minute? It was all a bit murky imho? Burrell probably knew something damaging imho that the RF didn’t want coming out in Court.

The BP official statement, after the investigation by Sir Michael Peat, said that The Queen remembered PB saying to her that he was holding some papers of Diana’s at his home for safe-keeping. But according to this ABC News article, he took clothes, photographs, objets, music disks and although papers were included, they were mainly material things, some of which belonged to Charles and William, so none of it adds up:

https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123835&page=1

He was being accused of trying to sell the items but the Met didn’t find evidence of that?
And yet many of the things he took were signed by Diana.

All very dodgy if you ask me.

Most of all, how very sad, that no one cared enough to send a trustworthy protection officer or soldier from the Palace to secure Diana’s apartments properly after her death. Trusting one individual was a huge mistake.

He is someone who had a very privileged job, and purports to have loved and respected his boss, but has aired a whole lot of her dirty laundry in order to make money. He is an attention whore who has traded on his former life but not in a good way.

Nobody forced him to do that. He made a choice.

It was a choice, but not one I would want to judge without having walked in those shoes.

What? He had to do that? Why?

I'd love to hear a justification for how he was

Probably the best justification is in his book, I summarised his version of it earlier but it's better explained by the person who lived it.