Theo Aronson

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Theodore Ian Wilson Aronson (November 13, 1929 - May 13, 2003), was a royal biographer with an easy manner which enabled him to meet and earn the trust of his subjects.

The son of a Latvian Jewish storekeeper, he was born at Kirkwood, South Africa^[1] and educated at Port Elizabeth High School before studying Art at Cape Town University, where he acted with Nigel Hawthorne. He became a commercial artist with J Walter Thompson in Johannesburg, then transferred to London, where he also worked part-time as a waiter. His interest in royalty began when he was a schoolboy. He saw the King and Queen and the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret at a siding near Kirkwood in 1947, and was bowled over by Queen Elizabeth’s charm and skill with the crowd. Some years later, after visiting the mausoleum of Napoleon III at St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire, he decided to write about royal subjects.

Taking six months leave, he made a hitch-hiking pilgrimage, visiting Paris to see Napoleon I's tomb; Vienna to visit Zululand to see where the Prince Imperial had been killed; and St Helena, where Napoleon I died. Three drafts of his account of the journey failed to interest English publishers, and it was an American looking for someone to write a history of the Bonapartes who commissioned him. The result, The Golden Bees (1965) was deemed "an overnight success".

Over 20 books followed, including Royal Vendetta (1966), The Coburgs of Belgium (1969); The Fall of the Third Napoleon (1970); The Kaisers (1971); Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes (1972); the very successful Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria (1973); Victoria and Disraeli (1977), and Crowns in Conflict (1986).

Later he switched to works looking at more recent, and more racy, aspects of the Royal Family in Britain, in titles such as The Royal Family at War (1992), an account of the family during the 1939-45 conflict; and Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underground (1994), about Edward VII's eldest son Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. His most successful book was Princess Margaret: A Biography (1997), an unauthorised work on the first member of the Royal Family to live under the spotlight of the media.

Charming, highly intelligent, well versed in his subjects, he became known as a devoted, if sometimes quizzical, admirer of British royalty. His research included interviewing several members of the royal family, including Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone (about whom he published a biography shortly after her death in 1981), the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret,^[2] as well as numerous courtiers. All were charmed by the small, dapper man who listened respectfully, had a light touch with flattery, yet was not tediously deferential.

He claimed that he gained access because, as a South African from the veld, he came from outside the British class system and therefore was unsophisticated enough simply to ask for an interview. He had an abiding interest in and knowledge of his subjects and their ancestors, and could entertain them with some well-turned anecdotes; one concerned the occasion when the Queen Mother's Daimler almost ran him over as he was carrying an ironing board across Hyde Park.

Some of his best anecdotes were saved for his last book, the autobiographical Royal Subjects (2000), which drew on diaries and notes kept over 35 years. This recorded the daily ritual of the Queen Mother coming downstairs at Clarence House, and reflected on whether her upright posture was dictated by her corsets. He recalled one lunch with Princess Margaret when she smashed a poppadom on her side plate; as he instinctively leapt down to pick up the pieces, he was firmly reminded that this was the butler's job. His success was attributable, above all, to the fact that he had no intention of dragging the Royal Family down to the gutter. He also had the advantage of writing amusing, accessible prose which encouraged royal personages to read him.

In his last years, he was increasingly sought after by television producers, and made regular contributions to documentaries on the subject until within a few months of his death from cancer. He died at Frome in Somerset.