East London independent bookshops have seen every kind of royal title come and go, and the latest one is prompting a very East End conversation about grief, gossip and who gets to tell a story
Among the Shelves
There is something about browsing the independent bookshops of East London on a grey afternoon that makes you think more carefully about stories. The stacks are uneven, the staff have opinions, and the books on display tell you a lot about what the neighbourhood is thinking. This week, the book everyone seems to be thinking about is one many local shops will not have made a fuss about: Earl Spencer memoir about his late sister, the book at the centre of the London Prat piece on Prince William reportedly calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors.
The Row
Anonymous reports claim the heir is furious that his brother read the memoir first. Other outlets say the brothers remain estranged. The Earl says he told everyone before publishing. It is the kind of story that sells newspapers and, presumably, books, though I suspect East London independents will sell rather fewer copies than the supermarkets.
How Independents Handle Royal Books
Independent bookshops across East London have long had a complicated relationship with big royal titles. They bring people through the door, which matters, especially for shops competing with online giants. But they are often heavily discounted elsewhere, which squeezes independent margins. And many independent booksellers, particularly in this part of London, curate their shelves with a strong point of view. Royal memoirs sometimes sit awkwardly beside radical history, small-press poetry and local zines.
What independents do brilliantly, though, is context. Ask a bookseller about a royal memoir and you might walk out with a history of the monarchy, a novel about sibling rivalry and a collection of essays on grief. That is the kind of conversation you do not get from an algorithm.
A Short Interval
The London Prat has made a video on YouTube about the row, which I watched on a bench on Brick Lane between two bookshops and a bagel.
The East End Take on Memoirs
East London has its own rich tradition of memoir and life writing: stories of immigrant families, working-class childhoods, docklands, the Blitz, and generations of people who arrived here with little and built lives. Many of those books were written by people who, like the Earl, were telling family stories that not every relative wanted told. East End readers understand, perhaps better than most, that writing about your family is both an act of love and a potential act of disruption.
That understanding brings a certain generosity. Round here, the question tends to be less whether the author had the right to write it, and more whether he wrote it honestly and with care.
Grief on the Shelf
It is easy, with all the talk of traitors, to forget that this is a book about a sister. Grief memoirs are among the most important books any shop sells, because they help readers make sense of their own losses. Whatever the family tensions, a brother writing about his late sister is doing something many readers will recognise. I hope, amid the noise, some people pick it up for that reason rather than for gossip.
What to Read Instead, or As Well
If the royal row has got you thinking about families and the stories they tell, East London booksellers will happily point you towards alternatives. Novels about siblings who stop speaking. Histories of the monarchy that explain how we got here. Memoirs by East Enders who wrote about their own families with courage and humour. The joy of an independent bookshop is that one conversation leads to another shelf, and another, and you leave with more than you came in for.
The Bookseller Role in a Row
Booksellers occupy an interesting position when a book becomes controversial. They are not publishers, and they are not critics, but they are often the first people readers talk to about it. A good bookseller can help a customer decide whether a book is for them, point out what else has been written on the subject, and gently steer conversations away from gossip toward substance. In East London, where many shops are run by people with strong literary and political views, those conversations can be lively. I have heard booksellers here defend a controversial title on free-speech grounds while also explaining why they personally found it disappointing, which strikes me as exactly the right balance. They are custodians of a certain kind of civic space, where arguments can happen face to face, over a shelf, without anyone being called a traitor. That is worth protecting, and the easiest way to protect it is simply to buy books from them.
If you are curious about the royal memoir, ask your local bookseller before clicking buy online. You may leave with it, or you may leave with something better.
Final Word
Books cause family rows. They also help us understand them. The London Prat, which has been writing its own unauthorised chapters since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, has had fun with this one. Bohiney, at https://bohiney.com/, covers what American readers are buying. And for more of my East London notes, including the occasional bookshop recommendation, head over to my author page.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
