On this episode of #AudioBookClub:

 

'Their trousers all fell down!"

 

Steve Phillips and Matthew Layton present #AudioBookClub, a weekly podcast that reviews and recommends audiobooks.

 

On this week's episode we are casting an ear over Andrew Lownie's joint biography of The Duke and Duchess of York.

 

Entitled

The Rise and Fall of the House of York

A: Andrew Lownie

N: Andrew Lownie

R: 14-08-25

L: 11 hrs and 40 mins

P: William Collins

#Biographies & #Memoirs

Please get involved in the conversation

 

@SteveKPhillips and @WhingeingPom

#AudioBookClub.net

#AudioBookClub on facebook, instagram, Bluesky or X 

 

On the next episode of #AudioBookClub:

 

A Particularly Nasty Case

A: Adam Kay

N: Andy Serkis

R: 28-08-25

L: 10 hrs and 9 mins

P: Orion

#Literature #Fiction

 

TRANSCRIPT

Steve Phillips and Matthew Layton discuss Audiobook Club on this podcast

Matthew Layton: Audiobook Club with Steve Phillips and Matthew Layton.

Steve Phillips: On this episode of Audiobook Club. The grand old Duke of York was once a very naughty boy.

Speaker C: Andrew quickly grew into the classic spoil brat. Aware of his high rank from an early age. Arrogant and overbearing, he would order staff about and according to one member of staff, be a bloody nuisance. Even the Queen described him as a bit of a handful. He was fond of practical jokes, hiding knives and forks when a footman was laying the table, tying the shoelaces of centuries, teasing his grandmother and reputedly an Anglican bishop at Balmoral as well, with a whoopee cushion, putting itching powder into his mother's bed, turning the aerial at Buckingham palace so she could not watch the racing at sundown, and putting washing up liquid in the palace pool. A valuable silver tray was used as a toboggan for sliding down palace stairs, and he would pedal furiously up and down the long red carpeted corridors on his tricycle. Almost from the beginning, he felt a strong sense of entitlement with fawning staff, lavish homes, chauffeured cars, and showed himself to be wilful, exuberant, gregarious, undisciplined and aggressive, and possessed of a limited attention span. Evelyn Muir Bell, who worked at Windsor, between 1973 and 1995, remembered him as the most troublesome royal, a tiresome little shit.

Matthew Layton: Audiobook Club with Steve Phillips and Matthew Layton.

Steve Phillips: Hello and welcome to Audiobook Club, the podcast about audiobooks that loves pizza express and sports. Sweats like a pig. Matt. Hi, Matt.

Matthew Layton: Hello, Steve. I love making you say things.

Steve Phillips: Yes. Yeah, I just sight read that.

Matthew Layton: Still fun. Well, welcome back.

Steve Phillips: yeah, well, welcome, welcome back, welcome back. Here we are, Season three. I did want to say a welcome back to Audiobook Club, where this week we're going through a lot of princely sums. But you came up with something much more highbrow than I ever did.

Matthew Layton: yes, well, that's my job, isn't it? No, it's more low brow. I'm nothing but, but filthy low brow and smutty. oh, speaking of which, that leads me, on to another little clip I prepared that I didn't think I was gonna get the chance to play, but write up your strasse. Here is a, list of the guests from the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York, or Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, as she was until that point. that I thought you, you might enjoy.

Speaker C: Almost 2,000 guests had filled the abbey, among them, Nancy Reagan, the racing driver, Jackie Stewart, the comedian Billy Connolly and his actress wife Pamela Stevenson. Elton John and his wife Renata, Michael and Shakira Kane, Barry Humphries, the American comedian Joan Rivers and the actor Anthony Andrews as well as foreign royals, aristocrats and the great and the good.

Matthew Layton: How's that for Elton John and his wife Renata? That dates it, doesn't it?

Steve Phillips: That's going back a little bit, isn't it?

The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lowney

Well you may have noticed there dear listener, that this week we're casting an ear over entitled the Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lowney, narrated by the author, came out a couple of weeks ago as we record it's a stonking 11 hours and 40 minutes and published by William Collins and ah, this is fair to say, has set the. Well has set the. The audio book club world alight. It's the bestseller at the minute and and I'd be very remiss if we didn't cast an ear over the House of York in this week's episode.

Matthew Layton: It came to my attention because a couple of weeks ago, just as the book was being released, I think the Release date was 18th of August. I'll have a look at that in a minute and confirm. but Andrew Lanley who I'd never heard of before was on many of the things that I listen to basically tearing the Duke of York a new one. And you and I having worked at the BBC, we know how these things work. If you want to plug your book you would better on Radio 5 live or BBC Breakfast or you know a newsy type programme. You've got to have a newsline. And of course the Epstein story that refuses to go away from Trump is linked to this. so the timing must have been magnificent For Lonely and his publishers that was great. So that's why I was drawn to the book. It didn't turn out to be what I expected but yeah, do expand.

Steve Phillips: Do you want to expand on that now or should we park that for a little bit?

Matthew Layton: Let's park that for a little bit but let's start.

Chelsea Bridge is doing a biography about Duke and Duchess of York

So this whole book is about the Duke and Duchess of York and their story from And even it tells both of their childhood stories as you heard from that clip in the beginning. What I've done Steve, is I'm going to ask you a question and it is her first question is have you read the book?

Steve Phillips: yes, pretty much.

Matthew Layton: Okay, yeah, that doesn't matter. It's almost better if you're not. So I put in the script if you scroll down to the bit where it says bance, I've given you a little visual guide. Oh, they're all there off the top of your head. What do you think of when you see. Just use it as a tool. Pretend you haven't. Pretend to the listener not giving you basically a four stage crutch. Yeah. What do you think of. We think of Prince Andrew.

Steve Phillips: Steve, did you say crutch? Sorry, the line's very bad at the moment.

Matthew Layton: Get off with it.

Steve Phillips: well, yes, I mean this is.

Matthew Layton: Well, no. What do you, what do you think, what do you think when I say Prince Andrew is what I'm trying to ask?

Steve Phillips: Well, I think you summed it up in these four pictures. Shall I explain what these four pictures are?

Matthew Layton: No. Pretend you haven't seen the four pictures.

Steve Phillips: No.

Matthew Layton: And, but I'm just giving you a little visual. The four pictures that I put up there do not exist. Just I thought they might remind you of. They might trigger something in your memory and some wise words and perhaps a historical overview or, or you can just describe the pictures. Whichever you want to do really.

Steve Phillips: Well, you know me, I'm nothing if not base and simplistic. But yes, essentially, essentially Prince Andrew, the second son of the Queen. Doing a biography about Prince Andrew here. If anyone's, if no one's heard of Prince Andrew, you've come to the right place, I'll explain for you. But yeah, yeah, second son of the Queen and you know, he had a career, well I thought a distinguished career in the Royal Navy. He knocked it out the park in the Falklands and so on, got married to Sarah Ferguson, got slightly unmarried to Sarah Ferguson and then just went absolutely nuts everywhere. And frankly this book turned out, well, I don't know, a book in sort of. It's a game of two halves really, or quarters actually, because it's a double biography of both Sarah and Andrew. and it dives both into the financial sector and the private life sector and the behaviour sector and the financial sector. I don't know about you but, but it just felt like, like five and a half hour reading out of invoices.

Matthew Layton: Do you know what? that is exactly where I was going to conclude this episode. But I also remember that not everybody remembers Prince, Andrew the way that we do. In fact, you made my point in that for a British listener, he's ubiquitous. For an American listener who vaguely knows of the royal family and has, has realised that Prince