Once upon a funny old time . . .

The drama of this book is not its contents but its frame, the sense of what might have been that surrounds it, had the players only known their parts. Everything was there, programmed as in a space shot, for this to have been a real-life fairytale. Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there was a princess …. The letters unroll as they did in the Hollywood films of the 1950s.

She was so young and so beautiful, her marriage to the prince had been the occasion for rejoicing among the people of that land. But the prince had wearied of her and turned to an older woman, which left the princess, who grew more beautiful by the day (and by regular work-outs in the gym) lonely and guarded in a palace….

Enter the scriptwriters, for whom all this is a godsend. Her guards fall in love with her; but the first of them is killed in a road accident, about which the princess will mutter darkly for the rest of her life, and then a dashing cavalry officer at the height of their love affair is called away to fight in the Crusades.