Coronet among the grass

by Charlotte Bingham

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Genres: Memoir

156 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2013

About the author

The Honourable Charlotte Mary Thérèse Bingham was born on 29 June 1942 in Haywards Heath, Sussex, England, UK. Her father, John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris, wrote detective stories and was a secret member of MI5. Her mother, Madeleine Bingham, née Madeleine Mary Ebel, was a playwright. Charlotte first attended a school in London, but from the age of seven to 16, she went to the Priory of Our Lady's Good Counsel school in Haywards Heath. After she left school, she went to stay in Paris with some French aristocrats with the intention of learning French. She had written since she was 10 years old and her first piece of work was a thriller called Death's Ticket. She wrote her humorous autobiography, called Coronet Among the Weeds, when she was 19, and not long before her twentieth birthday a literary agent discovered her celebrating at the Ritz. He was a friend of her parents and he took off the finished manuscript of her autobiography. In 1963, this was published by Heinemanns and was a best seller.

In 1966, Charlotte Bingham's first novel, called Lucinda, was published. This was later adapted into a TV screenplay. In 1972, Coronet Among the Grass, her second autobiography, was published. This talked about the first ten years of her marriage to fellow writer Terence Brady. They couple, who have two children, later adapted Coronet Among the Grass and Coronet Among the Weeds, into the TV sitcom No, Honestly. She and her husband, Terence Brady, wrote three early episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs together, Board Wages, I Dies from Love and Out of the Everywhere. They later wrote an accompanying book called Rose's Story. They also wrote the episodes of Take Three Girls featuring Victoria (Liza Goddard). In the 1970s Brady and Bingham wrote episodes for the TV series Play for Today, Three Comedies of Marriage, Yes, Honestly and Robin's Nest. During the 1980s and 1990s they continued to write for the occasional TV series, and in 1993 adapted Jilly Cooper's novel Riders for the small screen. Since the 1980s she has become a romance novelist. In 1996 she won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coronet Among the Grass by Charlotte Bingham is a 2013 Hardway Books publication.

This book is the sequel to Charlotte Bingham’s runaway hit ‘Coronet Among the Weeds” which catapulted the young author into the spotlight back in 1963.

Here we discover that Charlotte has fallen in love and gotten married. Her unconventional writing style continues as does her unconventional life.

“I mean the trouble with being brought up in England is that they only teach you to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and “I’m terribly sorry”, and sometimes it’s just not enough. He used to say that if someone ran me over, pinched my money, and stole my car, I’d just say excuse me, thank you very much, I’m terribly sorry. And that doesn’t make much of an impression. In fact, half the time the only impression it leaves is that one can come back any time and do it again.”

This is a bittersweet memoir at this point, but I enjoyed Charlottes take on the expectations of married life, the hilarious encounters she and ‘clever drawers’ experience, and Charlotte’s keen and sharp- witted observations.

As most people know Charlotte and her husband became quite a successful writing team, and Charlotte is a moderately prolific author of historical fiction. Getting a glimpse into their lives, as a young couple, no matter how satirical is enlightening and laugh out loud funny… no really.

4 stars