Ready For Absolutely Nothing: ‘If you like Lady in Waiting by Anne Glenconner, you’ll like this’ The Times

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stars. An absorbing memoir of a really fascinating life, yes one of great privilege, (which gives great anecdotes), but also one with many challenges. Susannah comes across as a resilient, funny and reflective woman who isn’t afraid to lay out her faults and also laugh at herself. Susannah Constantine is famous as the noughties style guru on What Not To Wear, but this is the least interesting thing about her. Shewd, funny, ideally candid and written with great confidence, brio and aplomb. A feisty, thought-provoking delight William Boyd

Ready For Absolutely Nothing (Hardback) - Waterstones

An intimate, relatable and funny memoir from Susannah Constantine, our favourite fashion guru and one half of the hugely popular, Trinny and Susannah's What Not to WearPDF / EPUB File Name: Ready_for_Absolutely_Nothing_A_Memoir_-_Susannah_Constantine.pdf, Ready_for_Absolutely_Nothing_A_Memoir_-_Susannah_Constantine.epub Hers is a life filled to the brim with 70s glitz, 80s glamour and above all else an enlightening 50 years of f**k-ups, crisis and chaos. When asked if she believes she would have been able to handle the pressure of marrying the Queen’s nephew, Susannah’s of two minds.

Ready For Absolutely Nothing by Susannah Constantine - Signed Ready For Absolutely Nothing by Susannah Constantine - Signed

From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: Wonderfully written, very funny, but more than anything completely genuine Lady Anne Glenconner, author of Lady in Waiting Susannah Constantine has dealt with a number of demons in her life and makes no attempt to hide her shortcomings here. She was in her late 20s before she discovered the world of work and found that she had more than a modicum of intelligence and capability. Until then, her father and his accounts with Harrod's etc. provided her with all the income she needed and a 6-year relationship with Princess Margaret's son, Viscount Linley, took her into the hedonistic spheres of the leading aristocracy. The title says it all really. Girls in the upper echelons of British society were not particularly well educated since their sole aim in life would be to find a wealthy husband and bow to his every whim while looking stylish and immaculate at all times. We are not talking Victorian times here. This book relates to the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Princess Diana was a prime example of this. Also what is missing for me is the development of her career into TV, as this is where I knew her from. I think this is because she doesn’t cover her relationship with Trinny, which I totally respect, but she mentions becoming an independent woman within her marriage and personally would have liked to know more about that part of her career. Maybe it was too difficult to disentangle from the partnership.It is a really entertaining read, but this was a book of two halves for me. The first half was a brilliant, brutally honest and fast paced read, covering her childhood through to her relationship with David Armstrong-Jones. I was totally fascinated by her world and what is was like to grow up in upper class Britain in the 60s/70s, being educated to be a society wife. I felt totally transported. Susannah Constantine, our loved style guru and one half of the outrageously popular television programme, What Not to Wear, spent her youth entangled in glitz and glamour. Susannah's very first memoir is filled to the brim with scandalous stories, jaw-dropping royal relationships and star-studded encounters from pop stars to the fashion greats. But beneath it all is a woman who is still getting to know herself, even after falling in love at first sight, presenting one of the most monumental television programmes ever and having Princess Margaret as a second mother figure. Susannah also harbors no envy for the outfits of royal ladies like Princess Diana, admitting that while the late aristocrat was undeniably “a style icon”, she never influenced her own wardrobe. Constantine and I were both youths in the 80s but our lives couldn’t have been more different. After an expensive education, she frequented society nightclubs and socialised with Princess Margaret, Elton John and ( raising my forearms in a cross in front of me) Margaret Thatcher. It was an interesting look at ‘how the other half lives.’

Susannah Constantine books and biography | Waterstones

Obviously the Princess of Wales dressed fashionably, she had an amazing figure, and she could have carried anything,” she says. “But I don’t think, God, I wish I’d worn that.” Daniel Mason’s latest novel is one of those rare books that truly deserves the description “spellbinding”. Its location is a house in the woods of New England, and Mason follows an eclectic cast of characters over four centuries, including painters, poets, psychiatrists, sensational journalists and big-game hunters, and makes their stories both fascinating on their own terms and part of a grander and satisfying picture. There are well-judged observations on colonialism, largely illustrated through the character of the British émigré and farmer Charles Osgood, and Mason’s twist-laden narrative enthrals throughout. Ready for Absolutely Nothing About the Author: Susannah Constantine is a novelist, journalist broadcaster and podcaster with over 25 years experience in the media and 50 years of f**k ups under her belt.Hers is a tale full to the brim with extraordinary anecdotes. From lavatory dramas with Princess Margaret, to behind-the-scenes power struggles between Thatcher and the Queen at Balmoral and eye-opening sex-club etiquette with pop royalty - her social landscape has been nothing, if not varied. It’s amazing to think she built a whole career around advising women how they might look more stylish ( What Not to Wear began on the BBC in 2001). In her royal days, after all, she sported a look that was “somewhere between Victoria Wood and Fergie” (polka dots, plentiful ruching). But I don’t know, for all that it must have been lucrative, that it made her happy, even if it was only after it ended that her boozing began in earnest (she once appeared drunk on QVC). Somehow, though, she got through this bad patch. A turn as Anton Du Beke’s worst ever partner on Strictly Come Dancingwould, indeed, one day be hers (in 2018), and it surely says something about her charmed life that, in the small hours, it’s Ann Widdecombe of whom she thinks enviously, the former politician having somehow made it to week 10 of that redoubtable, long-running talent show. Her perspective was utterly forthright as she depicted a lifestyle lived between the city of London and the more meaningful existence of country life. Her family lived near a Duchess where she was best friends with their daughter. Susannah explains the structure of "the help", and also the fine lines between being welcomed into the fold of royal homes from a moneyed family, but as a non-royal. She was born in the sixties and raised in a culture directing that the future hinged on making a good marriage, not to excel at an education or work for a living. READY FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is for fans of The Crown, royal followers, readers of LADY IN WAITING, What Not To Wear fans and anyone who likes a gossipy memoir with bold faced names and a drop dead sense of humor. Rather than being chronological, it seemed to jump all over the place and the strangest thing is that a big chunk of her life – when she made her name in What Not To Wear – seems to be missing. She goes from her early career as a fashion designer’s gofer/ house model, straight to her ‘celebrity’ appearances on Strictly etc. This is particularly weird when you consider that her book is titled ‘Ready for Absolutely Nothing’ because her education and upbringing were merely preparation for her becoming a society wife.