William Kuhn Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Eight Friends of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Books

William Kuhn is a memoir, and autobiography author from Columbus Ohio.

He was born to an English professor and a stay at home mother who would later on be the owner of an art gallery. While his parents worked, he was for the most part a stay in his room child with a book.

When he was 12 years old, his family spent a year in England and he remembers it as the most exciting, even if traumatic, period in his life. He wore a uniform to attend an all boys school and had to learn to write class notes with a fountain pen.

He was something of an oddity to everyone at his new school but this had been the case even back home in Ohio. What he really loved about the UK was that he was allowed to ride the “Tube” to his heart’s content.

He soon got the hang of everything and in fact loved his year in England. Kuhn then started making friends and after he went back home, he had transformed into an Anglophile. He now spends several weeks every year in England.

When William Kuhn attended the University of Chicago, he studied history and wrote his thesis on Queen Victoria’s reign as monarch. Following his graduation, he got a job in Chicago with an advertising firm and was put in charge of the Nestle and Kellogg accounts.

While he did not know what he was doing, he did not do too badly for himself, even if he never felt quite at home. In time, he decided to high tail back to history, which he often felt more comfortable with.

He went to Johns Hopkins for his doctorate degree and his doctoral thesis sent him to the UK where he spent quite some time doing research. He particularly loved spending time at the green leather covered tables at the old British Museum.

For the first time ever, he did research on the Royal Archives about Windsor Castle. He published his thesis in 1996.

William Kuhn ended up as a professor at a small liberal arts university between Milwaukee and Chicago. It was a beautiful college campus with a small river running across it next to Lake Michigan.

It was here that he started thinking of becoming an author and soon after wrote “Henry & Mary Ponsonby.” It told the story of a married couple with a strange sense of humor that were employed at Windsor. He also penned “The Politics of Pleasure,” a biography of Benjamin Disraeli, who has to be the most gay British prime minister.

Kuhn wrote “Reading Jackie,” the story of Jacqueline Kenndedy Onassis. It told of her love for books and life in publishing. The advance he got for the work from Doubleday allowed him to become the author he always desired to be.

Kuhn’s first fiction novel was “Mrs. Queen Takes the Train,” which was so successful that it was optioned for a movie.

“Mrs Queen Takes the Train” tells the story of Queen Elizabeth. She is feeling low and on one blustery day decides to visit the stables at Windsor. Rebecca who looks after the horses lends her a hoodie and now unrecognizable, she leaves London for Scotland.

She intends to visit the former royal yacht named the “Britannia,” that had been converted into a tourist attraction. Meanwhile, the staff back at Windsor is frantic trying to locate and bring her back.

These include the horse caretaker Rebecca, the butler William, the lady in waiting Ann, the equerry Luke, the Rajiv the seller of cheddar, and the dresser Shirley. Even the MI6 are roped into the quest to bring back the queen in one piece.

While this is a fictional work, it attributes real feelings to the Queen. She is still dealing with the horrible feelings from the falling apart of all her children’s marriages. The most scandalous of these was the divorce of Princess Daina and Prince Charles.

She is puzzled by the hostility from the public and new technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and computers in general. Seems the world is changing fast and she is finding it hard to keep up with it.

“Reading Jackie” by William Kuhn tells the story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a captivating and iconic woman. While many know her as just the wife to the powerful JFK, there was more to Jackie.

She was an independent and very hardworking woman that worked as an editor to support herself. Jackie was a woman that loved books and in this work, Kuhn provides a handy list of some novels that Jackie loved.

However, the book is not all about Jackie as Kuhn also paints portraits of many of the subjects and authors of the books Jackie loved.
These include the cultural historians, politicians, photographers and media stars such as Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Diana Vreeland the former editor of Vogue Gelsey Kirkland the ballerina and Joseph Campbell the mythologist.

An important character profiled is Gelsey Kirkland’s boyfriend Greg Lawrence whose relationship was going strong when Jackie was the editor to “Dancing on My Grave” by Kirkland.

William Kuhn’s work “Prince Harry Boy to Man” is set in 2007, where the twenty three year old Prince is facing some seemingly insurmountable problems. The press deem him a brat, the army sees him as a risk, the girls want him because he is a prince, when all he wants to be is a normal young man.

He is hoping that by joining the army and serving in Afghanistan, he can redeem his image. But by serving, he exposes how vulnerable he is and he comes to age when he is not really prepared for it.

He has never liked the media and hence when he falls for a young woman from CNN, he is at a loss at what to do. What is worse is that she came in disguised as a man since the Pentagon banned women from reporting from the front line.

He also never thought he would make friends with a gay man named Mustafa. Things get interesting when he meets his former nanny while heading to the Afghan capital. He also bumps into a colonel with a love for Shakespeare and a warlord cruising in a Mercedes.

Together, they embark on a journey that will uncover his childhood trauma and help him onto a path of healing.