All knickers and knockers

Whatever else this is, an intimate portrait of Mrs Parker Bowles it is not, or at least not one written by the author. This is a scissors-and-paste job, the bones of earlier would-be biographers whitening in every chapter, which gives it an air of California or Bust. Clearly done at speed, there are many errors of punctuation and of typography (Welsh has a lower-case throughout), and one can almost hear the prayer, ‘Lord, there be 2,000 words by lunchtime, and nothing decent on TV this afternoon.