The Boys and Their Mother

"William and Harry, Behind the Palace Walls" by Katie Nicholl Weinstein Books 328 pages $24.95

Nicholl is the Royal Correspondent for "Mail on Sunday" and works as a commentator for Sky News and the BBC.

I dutifully read along, faintly irritated by her, "Nanny is always right, dear" writing style. "Although he had a wobble in his first term, William soon settled..." The wobble was that he hated St. Andrews University and wanted desperately not to go back to it after his first term there.

Photo caption under a shot of Harry, drunk on his ass, falling backward while trying to get into a car - "Bleary-eyed Harry trips after one too many cocktails in March..." Yeah, one -- and only one -- too many can do that to a person.

I didn't learn anything new about the princes that hasn't already been in the tabloids, the book was just a chronicle of previous info.

Newsweek, in its infinite wisdom, used a cover shot of the late Diana on the left and the new Mrs. Prince William on the right. Tina Brown wrote "Diana at 50; If She Were Here Now."

Lines and wrinkles were photo shopped generously and a bit of weight added to her belly. Brown seems sure that Diana would have used Botox, had a FaceBook page (Brown generously created one for her) and lived in Manhattan and London. She would have been an active participant in the Clinton Global Initiative.

Brown believes that after some initial sparring that Diana and Carla Bruni Sarkozy might have bonded over how to evade Berlusconi. Here, I think Brown flatters them both a bit -- Silvio likes the young stuff; they're both too long in the tooth for his tastes.

In retrospect, how did "the world" get to be so fond of a woman who clearly never progressed beyond about 14 years old emotionally? Did we not recognize this as evidenced by her spite, her entitlement, stalking boyfriends, look at me? All over the tabloids, all of the time, for a lot of things we didn't have to know and certainly her two young sons shouldn't have had to know either.