After a series of bombshell books about the Windsors, writer Tom Bower has turned his gaze to Britain’s other royal family: the Beckhams. In the years since they married on matching thrones in 1999, footballer David and former Spice Girl Victoria have become – in the eyes of the public at least – less of a couple than a shiny, impenetrable mega-brand.
Together, the former Manchester United wonderboy and Posh Spice are something much greater than the sum of their parts. They may no longer dress in his and hers outfits, but their image – propagated in golden Instagram despatches from their country residence in the Cotswolds and smiling all-family snaps from the front row of Victoria’s fashion shows – is now generally one of carefully curated, photogenic harmony. Their names adorn everything from high-end clothes to aftershave, glasses to whiskey. And yet, over the course of their almost 25-year marriage, there have always been rumblings that all is not quite as it seems behind the scenes at House Beckham, and that the couple are, as Bower puts it in his book, “consummate actors” merely play-acting to project what their public wants from them.
