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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When the sun never sank on the British Empire, 30 Jan 2005
Another car boot sale find, and what a book to find! I read it from cover to cover in one night and then wished I had savoured it chapter by chapter and made it last longer but I couldn't help myself, I had to be greedy and read it all in one go.This is a book about popular 19th and early 20th century racism, muck raking journalism of the time, hypocritical Victorian/Edwardian values, and the systematic cruelty of the British Empire towards it minority ethnic charges. It is also a love story be it a doomed love story between a pretty white girl Kitty Jewell, the daughter of a well to do Cornish Mining Engineer and a Black African Prince Peter Lobengula who was part of a popular show called "Savage South Africa" touring England in 1899 onwards, who for a brief moment in time dared to defy convention but paid a bitter price. There is no happy ending to "Kitty and the Prince," and though Peter stayed in England after the break up of his relationship with Kitty who disappeared into obscurity he was destined to in die poverty stricken in Salford, a victim of TB, an illness that would kill his Irish wife and all but one of his children. He was ignored by the British establishment, and ultimately denied his birthright (there were a lot of people who said he was not the Prince he claimed to be) as well as a pension that would let him die with dignity and give his family a chance of survival in the mean streets of Salford.
You can't read this book and not feel for Peter, however foolish some of his antics might have been, and even Kitty who in the end allowed herself to be influenced by society's disapproval of her relationship with Peter; you feel a pang of regret for a young man and woman who were never given the chance to live a normal, happy, loving life as a married couple. A love story, a historical memoir, a biography of two lives, call it what you will, "Kitty and the Prince" is a book well worth adding to your bookshelf if you get the chance.
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