Dynasties intertwine in ‘The Kennedys & the Windsors’

The two great and intertwined dynasties of US-UK history finally get a joint biography with Caroline Hallemann’s “The Kennedys & the Windsors.”

A longtime chronicler of the two families as the digital director of Town & Country, Hallemann, 37, explained how it all began.

“When Prince William was coming to Boston with the Earthshot prize in 2022, I thought, ‘That’s so interesting!’ For so long you’ve heard the Kennedys are the closest thing America has to a royal family. And here’s Prince William talking about the Kennedy moon shot.

“Coming to Boston and using the language of the Kennedy mythology to really market his environmental initiative. What a curious reversal there.

“Then, the following week Prince Harry received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award and I just started thinking about how intertwined were these two families.

“I knew about Joe Kennedy senior’s time in the UK as ambassador prior to WWII. And many people, mostly from ‘The Crown’ series, know about JFK and Jackie’s visits to Buckingham Palace

“There are all these parallels! And I would love to read something on that – only when I looked, there isn’t anything. So this is the book I could write.”

One point that sadly overlaps both dynasties: Tragedy. In those terms, the Kennedys have endured more than their share.

“That’s true. Because with the Kennedys, it just seems to be like, When is it ever going to be enough? So much has happened to this family.

“In terms of the current generation of the Windsors, it’s when Princess Diana died. That was so tragic, so difficult for Prince William and Prince Harry which has stayed with them.

“Not only was it, of course, losing their mother. It was having to deal with that in the public eye. That’s something that these two families have in common: That performance of grief is required of them.

“You saw it again when Queen Elizabeth died. Prince George and Princess Charlotte were so young” – he was 9, she 7 – “and they were required to go to the public funeral and be in front of all these people and cameras when they had lost their grandmother.

“That’s just a tragic part of the role they play. We see the very obvious parallel there to the Kennedys. Whether it’s JFK Jr. saluting his father’s casket when he was three years old, or even in our modern day with photos published of Caroline Kennedy leaving (her daughter) Tatiana Schlossberg’s funeral earlier this year.”

As for Jackie and Diana, charismatic women who each dominated their eras, “They were both visual icons in the true sense of that word.

“Both had a way of working with the press to get what they wanted.”

“The Kennedys & the Windsors” is on sale June 2…Read more by Stephen Schaefer