Lacey, Robert 1944-

PERSONAL:

Born January 3, 1944, in Guildford, Surrey, England; son of Leonard John (a banker) and Vida Lacey; married Alexandra Jane Avrach (a graphic designer), April 3, 1971; children: Sasha (son), Scarlett, Bruno. Education: Selwyn College, Cambridge, B.A., 1966, diploma of education, 1967, M.A., 1970.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Jonathan Pegg, Curtis Brown, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, historian, journalist, and editor. Illustrated London News, London, England, writer, 1968; Sunday Times, London, assistant editor of Sunday Times Magazine, 1969-73, "Look!" page, editor, 1973-74; writer. Guest on television programs, including Good Morning America and Larry King Live.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Robert, Earl of Essex, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1971, published as Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1971, reprinted, Phoenix Press (London, England), 2001.

The Life and Times of Henry VIII, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1972, Abbeville Press (New York, NY), 1992.

The Queens of the North Atlantic, Sidgwick & Jackson (London, England), 1973.

Sir Walter Ralegh, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1973, reprinted, Phoenix Press (London, England), 2000.

Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1977, revised golden jubilee edition published as Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II, Free Press (New York, NY), 2002.

The Kingdom, Hutchinson (London, England), 1981, Avon (New York, NY), 1983.

Princess, Times Books (New York, NY), 1982.

Aristocrats (based on television series of same name; also see below), BBC Publications/Hutchinson (London, England), 1983.

Ford: The Men and the Machine, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1986.

God Bless Her! Century (London, England), 1987.

Queen Mother, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1987.

Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1991.

Grace, Putnam (New York, NY), 1994.

Sotheby's: Bidding for Class, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1998.

(With Danny Danziger) The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the Millennium: An Englishman's World, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1999.

The Queen Mother's Century, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1999.

Royal: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Little, Brown (London, England), 2002.

Great Tales from English History: Cheddar Man to the Peasants' Revolt, Little, Brown (London, England), 2003, published as Great Tales from English History: The Truth about King Arthur, Lady Godiva,Richard the Lionheart, and More, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2004.

Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2005.

Great Tales from English History: Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and More, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTOR

The French Revolution: A Collection of Contemporary Documents, Grossman (New York, NY), Volume 1: The Fall of the Bastille, 1968, Volume 2: The Terror, 1968, revised edition published in one volume as The French Revolution, Jackdaw (London, England), 1976.

The Retreat from Moscow, 1812, Jackdaw (London, England), 1970.

The Rise of Napoleon, Grossman (New York, NY), 1971.

The Pallisers: A Full Guide to the Serial, BBC Publications (London, England), 1971.

The Peninsular War, Jackdaw (London, England), 1971.

War and Peace: A Full Guide to the Serial, British Broadcasting Corp. (London, England), 1972.

Drake and the "Golden Hinde": A Collection of Contemporary Documents, Jackdaw (London, England), 1975.

Elizabeth II: The Work of the Queen; A Collection of Documents, Jackdaw (London, England), 1977.

OTHER

Also author of documentary series Aristocrats, broadcast on BBC-TV; author of The Saudi Arabians (audio cassette), Encyclopedia Americana/CBS News Audio Resource Library (New York, NY), 1982. Contributor to periodicals.

ADAPTATIONS:

Author's books have been adapted to audiobook format.

SIDELIGHTS:

British historian, journalist, and biographer Robert Lacey specializes in a particular type of "anthropological" biography that analyzes its subject—usually an elite family or a representative individual—in order to illuminate the customs, beliefs, and rituals of an entire segment of society. To get inside his subjects—which have included the British Royal Family, the founding chieftain of Saudi Arabia, and Henry Ford and his automobile company—Lacey has gone to great lengths to gain their trust. For example, he learned Arabic and moved to Saudi Arabia for eighteen months in order to research his history of that country, titled The Kingdom. "I feel it's one of the duties of a biographer to go through a stage of seeing the world exactly as his subject sees or saw it," Lacey once told CA. "I just don't understand people who write books which are dismissive of their subjects. I can't imagine myself devoting three or four years to studying something for which I have no respect or interest."

While on the editorial staff of the London Sunday Times, Lacey completed two biographies, Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh. On the strength of those critically acclaimed books, he was commissioned to write a history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, which he commenced in 1974. Published three years later to coincide with the queen's Silver Jubilee, Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor became an international bestseller that established Lacey's reputation for accuracy, fairness, thorough scholarship, and a lively prose style.

"If Elizabeth II were not a queen, no one would write a book about her," Lacey observed in Majesty, pinpointing one of the primary difficulties he had in enlivening his subject, who was an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances. He overcame that obstacle in part by emphasizing the queen's role in the public's imagination and her function as a tabula rasa onto which people project their fantasies and opinions of royalty. As the symbol of British nationalism, the queen is almost universally revered in her own country, where people's admiration for her presented Lacey with yet another problem in writing his book. "It was very difficult to get people to say anything uncomplimentary about her," he remarked to CA. "The British royal head of state is almost an icon," he continued. "It is one of her valuable functions to stand for everything that people agree upon, while politicians concentrate on what people disagree about…. So one is dealing there with a very precious part of the way the country runs."

Nor had public sentiment dimmed by 2002 When Lacey released Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II in time to coincide with the queen's golden jubilee. In the intervening years between the first and second books on Her Majesty, the royal family had undergone several divorces and faced the accidental death of the immensely popular Princess Diana, the subject of another Lacey biography. Monarch revisits these times of turmoil and examines how Queen Elizabeth II has handled herself in public and private. Library Journal contributor Isabel Coates noted Lacey's "mature and thoughtful discussion" of the British royal family, and Elizabeth in particular. While a Publishers Weekly reviewer described Lacey's book as "sympathetic" to the queen, the reviewer also felt that the work "offers an incisive analysis of the development of royal media coverage."

In researching his next book, The Kingdom, Lacey faced almost the opposite set of circumstances, in which the Arab people would criticize their ruler bluntly on a face-to-face basis but would strenuously avoid putting their complaints in writing. Lacey explained to CA that in Saudi Arabia "there are two sorts of truth: the spoken truth and the written truth. The spoken truth is close to the Western idea of the truth. If you are talking, you can gossip and you can criticize…. But when it came to writing, which was my job, writing is like carving out the tablets in marble. This is something which is preserved forever and where you don't have any criticism." Indeed, The Kingdom was banned in Saudi Arabia because of its unflattering depictions of the Bedouins and its impartial treatment of Abdul Aziz Ibn Sa'ud, the country's founding ruler.

Lacey turned to lighter subjects for his next two publications, Princess, a handsome pictorial biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Aristocrats, a survey of European nobility produced in conjunction with his BBC-TV documentary series of the same name. Neither book received serious critical attention, but both were judged competent treatments of their themes. Reviewing Princess for the Times Literary Supplement, Victoria Glendinning wrote that Lacey "knows more than he has space to write, so within his fairy-story framework every sentence makes its point, and he still finds room for anecdote and dialogue."

Turning to the United States for inspiration for his next project, an examination of four generations of the Ford family and their automotive empire, Lacey, in typical fashion, moved to Michigan in 1984 to conduct research, which included working on an assembly line in a Detroit auto plant. The result of his labor, Ford: The Men and the Machine, was published two years later to enthusiastic reviews. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, biographer Ted Morgan found that "Ford is really two books in one, in which Robert Lacey has indefatigably combed the archives and beguiled 100 birds of various plumage to sing. The first is an Algerish account of Henry Ford's triumph…. The second book is like a television serial. It is as rich in incident and character as the prime-time soaps and requires no suspension of disbelief, being true." Morgan concluded that "Robert Lacey has made the transition to the American industrial monarch with no loss of panache." Lacey's "research is prodigious."

Lacey investigated another realm of American mythology—the glamorization of organized crime—in his well-received 1991 biography of the Mafia's accountant Meyer Lansky, on whose life the character of Hyman Roth in the first two Godfather movies was based. "Americans cherish their gangsters," Lacey stated in Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. "They delight in the myths of cleverness, power, and wealth which they wreath around these defective outlaws." Evaluating the biography for the New York Times Book Review, Mordecai Richler described Little Man as "a useful and informative corrective, an exercise in demythologizing that we do well to take to heart. It does not have the narrative sweep of Lacey's exemplary history of the Ford family and it is longer than need be, but it is sober, balanced and persuasive." Describing Lacey's technique in his review for Newsweek, Malcolm Jones, Jr. praised the author for cleverly using "the minutiae of Lansky's existence—what he ate, what he wore, the inscription on his dog's tombstone—not to bring the legend to life but to show that behind the myths there wasn't much life there to start with. Dour and wittily deflating, Little Man is a scrupulous, scathing indictment of the gangster life."

Lacey's next project was another doomed royal, Princess Grace of Monaco, who died in an automobile accident at the age of fifty-one. The author told People reviewer Joanne Kaufman that before he signed to write about the former Grace Kelly he thought she was "insipid" and "rather bland." His research revealed a passionate actress from a high-living family who had affairs with her co-stars and, after marriage, with much younger men. Kaufman wrote that Grace "delivers some prime revelations." Brad Hooper in Booklist found the book to be "a very respectable biography" in which Lacey makes Princess Grace "real without really diminishing her effect and effectiveness."

Sotheby's: Bidding for Class explores the history of the famed auction house from its founding in eighteenth- century England as a rare book dealership to its place in the expanding market for rare items of all sorts. Lacey goes behind the scenes at Sotheby's to learn how its experts evaluate items and then create an atmosphere that will spur bidders to compete at the highest levels. "Robert Lacey tells the story of Sotheby's to match the polish and style of his subject matter," wrote Joan Bridgman in Contemporary Review. "As skillfully handled as any popular best-seller, his main narrative is sandwiched between a riveting prologue and an epilogue both detailing the buzz of two major auctions—a compound of cash, greed, and folly." A Publishers Weekly commentator likewise noted the work "makes a savory read—full of glamour, chicanery, snobbery and sharp practices." Booklist contributor Margaret Flanagan concluded that Sotheby's offers "charming entrepreneurial and social history."

In The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the Millennium: An Englishman's World, written with Danny Danziger, Lacey directs his attention deep into the past, to a time more than a thousand years distant from today. Basing their account on hard archaeological evidence as well as written accounts and surviving stories, legends, and tales, the authors strive to accurately reconstruct the world in which the average Briton lived at the turn of the second millennium. As a basis, Lacey and Danziger use an ancient written piece, the "Julian Work Calendar," which allowed readers from long ago to keep track of saints' days. In addition, the calendar also contains sketches and descriptions of everyday activities common to the period. Delving into life in late Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, the authors offer a number of conclusions, some of which help dispel modern misconceptions. For example, in the year 1000, English forests were about as thick as they are today. Medieval women were, on average, taller than men of the time. Few people practiced much personal hygiene, only one percent of the population was literate, and someone in their fortiess would likely be near the end of their life. Slavery existed until it was replaced by feudalism after the Norman invasion of 1066. Sugar and spinach did not exist in England at the time, but honey was a highly valued commodity. A reviewer in Whole Earth called the book "a readable chronicle of what ordinary life felt like 1,000 years ago, in England." Booklist reviewer Jay Freeman found the book to be "enjoyable," and added that "many of the conclusions are at least plausible." A Publishers Weekly critic concluded: "This is a superb time capsule, and the authors distill a wealth of historical information into brightly entertaining reading."

With Great Tales from English History: The Truth about King Arthur, Lady Godiva, Richard the Lionheart, and More, Lacey started a three-volume series dedicated to recounting stories of the famous and infamous from British history, and to relate these tales with as much factual underpinning as possible. The first volume includes material on personalities from both fact and legend, including Joan of Arc, Celtic queen Boadica, Henry II, Beckett, Wat Tyler, Robin Hood, Julius Caesar, and others. In those instances where Lacy considers individuals whose lives belong more to mythology and folklore, Lacey constructs a plausible context for their origins and ongoing popularity. Kliatt reviewer Maureen Griffin noted that Lacey's "survey is presented clearly and enthusiastically" throughout the book.

Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More continues Lacey's broad survey of personalities and individuals from British history and legend. Lacey covers the events of the year 1348, when the black plague descended on the British population and wiped out more than half of the country's five million inhabitants. He provides material on a variety of historical figures, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Richard II, Guy Fawkes to Dick Whittington. He covers religious and political events as well as the pioneering scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton and the lesser-known technological breakthrough of Sir John Harrington, Queen Elizabeth's godson, who invented the first flush toilet. "Lacey's animated prose, energetic storytelling and spirited approach to British history bring the past to life," remarked a contributor to Publishers Weekly. Library Journal contributor Gail Benjafield noted that "Lacey's jaunty, contemporary style is perfect for what some might consider dry historical facts." As a writer and historian, a Kirkus Reviews critic concluded, "Lacey both educates and entertains."

The third and final volume of the series, Great Tales from English History: Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and More, covers more recent British history. He provides background on significant military campaigns, such as Waterloo, the Charge of the Light Brigade, and the Battle of Britain; on the still-primitive state of public health and medical treatment in the early 1800s; on the reign of significant royals such as Queen Victoria; on technological innovations and clever inventors, such as farmer Jethro Tull; and on early social reformers such as feminist and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, who was also the mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shel- ley; journalist Anne Besant, who organized an early labor strike among British match girls; and Thomas Clarkson, founder of the British antislavery movement. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "humorous and literate, if incomplete." A writer in Publishers Weekly concluded: "Lacey's slyly oblique narratives will please history lovers of all ages."

In an interview in Publishers Weekly, Lacey said that he aims to write a bestseller each time he takes up his pen and that he enjoys the storytelling aspects of his craft. "It's true, I'm fascinated by elite groups," he said. "My whole life as a grammar-school boy, getting to Cambridge University and working on the London Sunday Times has been very aspirational." Indeed, several of the author's works have earned him large sums, and his books have been widely translated and sold in Europe, South America, and Asia. Publishers Weekly writer Giles Foden wrote: "Lacey is a fluent writer. On that level, the success of his books is well-deserved. Like Sotheby's punters, Lacey bids for class. And he delivers it—with some sophistication and an appropriate scent of filthy, but delicious, lucre." In Library Journal, Steven J. Mayover concluded that all of Lacey's works "incorporate meticulous historical research, fine storytelling, and a very readable style."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Lacey, Robert, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1991.

Lacey, Robert, Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 1994, Brad Hooper, review of Grace, p. 1987; June 1, 1998, Margaret Flanagan, review of Sotheby's: Bidding for Class, p. 1683; February 15, 1999, Jay Freeman, review of The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium: An Englishman's World, p. 1036.

Contemporary Review, December, 1998, Joan Bridgman, review of Sotheby's, p. 327.

History Today, June, 2002, Robert Lacey, "Story Telling: Robert Lacey, Royal Biographer and Commentator, Describes His Enthusiasm for Joyously Traditional History," p. 62.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005, review of Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More, p. 337; October 15, 2006, review of Great Tales from English History: Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and More, p. 1058.

Kliatt, March 1, 2005, Maureen Griffin, review of Great Tales from English History: The Truth about King Arthur, Lady Godiva, Richard the Lionheart, and More, p. 59.

Library Journal, May 1, 1998, Steven J. Mayover, review of Sotheby's, p. 112; February 15, 1999, Robert James Andrews, review of The Year 1000, p. 166; May 1, 2002, Isabel Coates, review of Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II, p. 112; March 15, 2005, Gail Benjafield, review of Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More, p. 96.

Newsweek, November 11, 1991, Malcolm Jones, Jr., review of Little Man, p. 71.

New Yorker, May 20, 2002, Martin Amis, "The Queen's Heart."

New York Times Book Review, July 13, 1986, Ted Morgan, review of Ford: The Men and the Machine, p. 1; October 20, 1991, Mordecai Richler, review of Little Man, p. 29; July 5, 1998, Carol Vogel, review of Sotheby's, p. 17.

People, October 17, 1994, Joanne Kaufman, review of Grace, p. 30, and "Amazing Grace: Talking with Robert Lacey," p. 30.

Publishers Weekly, August 1, 1994, review of Grace, p. 68; March 23, 1998, review of Sotheby's, p. 83; June 8, 1998, Giles Foden, "Robert Lacey: Hooked on Glamour," p. 42; January 18, 1999, review of The Year 1000, p. 321; April 22, 2002, review of Monarch, p. 60; March 14, 2005, review of Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More, p. 52; October 16, 2006, review of Great Tales from English History: Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and More, p. 47.

Times Literary Supplement, June 25, 1982, Victoria Glendinning, review of Princess, p. 689; February 7, 1992, Selwyn Rabb, review of Little Man, p. 6.

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1998, Suzannah Lessard, review of Sotheby's, p. 42.

Whole Earth, December 22, 2000, review of The Year 1000, p. 14.

ONLINE

Bookloons,http://www.bookloons.com/ (May 7, 2002), Anise Hollingshead, review of Great Tales from British History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More.

Robert Lacey Home Page,http://www.robertlacey.com (February 25, 2003).