title: Charles & Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair
author: Gyles Brandreth
description: <b>Praise for <i>Philip and Elizabeth</i></b>: <br /><br />The writer who got closest to the human truth about our long-serving senior royals.<br /><i>The Times <br /></i><br />BOOK OF THE YEAR ... Riveting, gossipy and touching.<br /><i>Mail on Sunday</i> <br /><br />Could this be the best book ever written about the Royal Family? ... A masterpiece.<br /><i>Sunday Express</i>
zlib_text: > Synopsis:
  
  > SNOBS is the story of Edith Lavery, who earns a living answering the
  > telephone in a Chelsea-based estate agents. She is the attractive only child
  > of a comfortably-off accountant. When she attends Royal Ascot as a guest of
  > friends, she meets bachelor Charles Broughton, who as Earl Broughton and
  > heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, is a gossip-column favourite. He proposes,
  > she accepts — and here is the crux of the story: is she really in love with
  > Charles or with his title and all that goes with it? The story is narrated
  > by a journeyman character actor who comfortably moves among the upper and
  > middle classes, while observing their foibles. Superbly observed, the story
  > includes a fabulous character in Charles's mother, Lady Uckfield, known as
  > 'Googie', who wants for her son the daughter of a peer from the old,
  > familiar world she knows and trusts. She perceives Edith to be a young woman
  > on the make, and is vindicated when Edith, now Countess Broughton, 