SOURCE: "A Romp among the Royals," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 3969, April 28, 1978, p. 463.

In the review below, Annan praises the satiric tone of Palace without Chairs.

The crown prince's name is Ulrich; his brothers, the archdukes, are called Balthasar, Sempronius, and Urban; the youngest child is the Archduchess Heather, a butch seventeen-year-old; their father rules the modern kingdom of Evarchia. All this, with the subtitle "a baroque novel", suggests a Firbankian romp, or something like Muriel Spark's The Abbess of Crewe. That was a send-up of politics and the media; they are sent up here too, but fundamentally [Palace without Chairs] is a moral fable in a pretty and entertaining guise: poetic descriptions of animals, landscape, and the weather relieve a steady flow of wit and humour, and passionate convictions lie beneath.

The plot is ten-little-nigger-boys: the whole royal family (except for one member) is gradually eliminated. The...