Coronet Among the Weeds - Charlotte Bingham

In 1963, exactly fifty years ago, an unknown author took the book world by storm when publishing her autobiography at the tender age of nineteen. It stormed to the top of the non fiction Best Sellers list, creating a literary sensation en route and was published in twelve other countries including the USA. The teenage author embarked on a major author tour of every country that had bought her book, immediately becoming a cult figure in the global media, the wildfire publicity campaign culminating in the paparazzi hanging from the trees outside her family home, television appearances in most every country that had television and multi page spreads in all the glossies including LIFE magazine and PARIS MATCH. Being the the daughter of LORD CLANMORRIS an impoverished Irish peer who was also the notable thriller writer author JOHN BINGHAM, and MADELEINE BINGHAM the novelist and playwright, Charlotte had grown up in a literary household yet no one in her family had expected her to burst upon the literary world in such a sensational fashion at such a tender age, a debut that left many Establishment figures speechless seeing the book 'taking the lid of Society' and thus in some way as a betrayal of the author's own class and background. The book is of course nothing of the sort. What it is is hilariously funny, inocent, highly original and touching and as a result it became an icon for the young of all classes. It was in fact considered to be a work serious enough for certain Scandanavian universities to include it in their curriculum not only as an important social document but as a work of literary merit. Fifty years on it is still remembered with enormous affection by everyone who read it and heard about it at the time, whether they read it as a hardback book or as a serialisation in The People, a Sunday newspaper more famous for its sensational journalism than its literary merit, the book being chosen personally by the Editor simply because as he confessed he had never read anything so funny or so touching. In its time CORONET AMONG THE WEEDS has been compared to THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and not without good reason since both are wonderful statements of the hopes and beliefs of contemporary youth. To disprove some of her critics who claimed the book to be a fluke and Miss Bingham to be a one trick literary pony, the young author went on to become one of the best selling and best loved authors of her generation, having to date written over forty works of published fiction as well as countless successful television, stage and film scripts in collaboration with her husband the actor and writer TERENCE BRADY, also publishing the autobiograhical sequel to her first book, CORONET AMONG THE GRASS, another best seller that she and her husband finally adapted for television as the chart topping comedy series NO HONESTLY. The humour in the book is as fresh as the day it was minted, as does the originality and honesty of the author's perception.