English Royalty History

During an age of heightened religious conflict, Catherine de' Medici lived her life at the center of sixteenth-century European and French politics. Catherine de' Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen is Mary Hollingsworth's evocative, authoritative biography of the most extraordinary woman of the sixteenth-century.

Who was the real Marie-Antoinette? She was mistrusted and reviled in her own time, and today she is portrayed as a lightweight incapable of understanding the events that engulfed her. In this new account, John Hardman redresses the balance and sheds fresh light on Marie-Antoinette's story. Hardman shows how Marie-Antoinette played a significant but misunderstood role in the crisis of the monarchy.

To many Queen Victoria was a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, portrayed as an aging, stiff widow. But in truth Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was passionate, expressive, humorous, and unconventional. A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources, showing us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before.

In fairy tales, dreams do come true...little girls can grow up to marry handsome princes, and live happily ever after in beautiful palaces, where they have delightful children of their own, and in time become queen, to rule with wisdom and grace. But in real life...even when it appears a fairy tale is being played out in the full glare of our modern media age, things never seem to go quite to plan. Such was the life of Diana Spencer.

The Three Edwards, third in Thomas B. Costain's survey of Britain under the Plantagenets, covers the years between 1272 and 1377 when three Edwards ruled England. Edward I brought England out of the Middle Ages. Edward II had a tragic reign but gave his country Edward III, who ruled gloriously, if violently.

The final volume in A History of the Plantagenets covers the century from 1377 to 1485, when civil war ravaged England, rebellious peasants marched on London and wandering preachers sowed dissent in the credulous poor. The last Plantagenet monarchs governed in violence and confusion. Kings came and went, deposed or murdered. Princes and nobles slaughtered or were slaughtered in bloody battles or private feuds. It was an era of brilliant successes, tragic reverses, and wild extravagance.

Sarah Churchill, first Duchess of Marlborough, was the glamorous and controversial subject of hundreds of satires, newspaper articles and publications both during her lifetime and after her death. This biography brings Sarah Churchill's own voice, passionate and intelligent, back to life and casts a critical eye over images of the Duchess handed down through art, history and literature. Here is an unforgettable portrait of a woman who cared intensely about how we would remember her.

Dara Shukoh - the emperor Shah Jahan's favourite son, and heir-apparent to the Mughal throne prior to being defeated by Aurangzib - has sometimes been portrayed as an effete prince, incompetent in military and administrative matters. But his tolerance towards other faiths, and the myths and anecdotes surrounding him, continue to fuel the popular imagination. Even today, over 350 years after his death, the debate rages on: if this 'good' Mughal had ascended the throne instead of his pugnacious younger brother, how would that have changed the course of Indian history?  

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of George VI: The Dutiful King by Philip Ziegler, read by Charlie Anson. If Ethelred was notoriously 'Unready' and Alfred 'Great', King George VI should bear the designation of 'George the Dutiful'. Throughout his life he dedicated himself to the pursuit of what he thought he ought to be doing rather than what he wanted to do. Inarticulate and loathing any sort of public appearances, he accepted that it was his destiny to figure regularly and conspicuously in the public eye, gritted his teeth, largely conquered his crippling stammer and got on with it.

There are few women in English history more famous or controversial than Queen Anne Boleyn. In this vivid and engaging account of the triumphant and harrowing final year of Queen Anne Boleyn's life, the author reveals a very human portrait of a brilliant, passionate, and complex woman.

The longest reigning British monarch and female sovereign in history, Queen Victoria was a figure of profound paradox who has mystified historians for over a century. Now in this magisterial biography, A.N. Wilson rebukes the conventional wisdom about her life - that she was merely a "funny little woman in a bonnet" who did next to nothing - to show she was in fact intensely involved in state affairs despite a public façade of inaction.

The phrase "an heir and a spare" refers to the imperative for members of the royal family to provide both an heir to take on their title and a spare. In this equation King George VI was the spare - the second son of King George V and Mary, and never expected to sit on the throne. King George VI, or Albert as he was known prior to his kingship, had a career in the Royal Navy and served during the First World War before King Edward VIII’s decision to abdicate his throne.

This book focuses on the history of several kings and queens. Learn about Anne Boleyn, her execution for treason, and her political and religious upheaval, and Bloody Mary, or Mary Tudor, the queen who took on the Protestant revolt. In France, learn about Charlemagne, King of the Franks, King of Lombardy, and Emperor of the Romans; Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest women in Western Europe; and Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution. Last, return to England with Queen Victoria and Richard the Lionheart.

Though often derided today for his cruelty, sensual pursuits, and despotism, Henry VIII was, in reality, much better in those respects than his contemporaries, and he compares well with the personal behavior of many historic leaders we now deem heroic. It was well that England in her hour of need had a man as king who counted the cost, who faced the risks, and successfully brought his country out of Europe's religious maelstrom. 

A remarkably fresh and engaging account of Britain’s long-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne at 18, in 1837, and died in 1901. Lytton Strachey captures her essential spirit in concise and elegant prose, with an eye and an ear keenly attuned to human nature, and its foibles. Written only 20 years after her death, this biography exemplifies the emergence of modern thought from the Victorian Era.

In 1346, at the age of sixteen, he won his spurs at Crécy; nine years later he conducted a brutal raid across Languedoc; in 1356 he captured the king of France at Poitiers; as lord of Aquitaine he ruled a vast swathe of southwestern France. He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, but better known to posterity as 'the Black Prince'. Michael Jones tells the remarkable story of a great warrior-prince – and paints an unforgettable portrait of warfare and chivalry in the late Middle Ages.

This comprehensive biography draws from previously unreleased photographs and documents from the Grimaldi family archive and, for the first time, access to the letters between Kelly and Hitchcock. It is also based on interviews with Kelly’s companions and relatives, including an exclusive interview with Prince Albert II of Monaco.

On 6 July 1868, when told of the birth of her seventh granddaughter, Queen Victoria remarked that the news was "a very uninteresting thing for it seems to me to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park". Her apathy was understandable - this was her 14th grandchild, and, though she had given birth to nine children, she had never been fond of babies, viewing them as "frog-like and rather disgusting...particularly when undressed".

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted the most international power and influence: as a matchmaking grandmother. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking travels through the glittering, decadent palaces of Europe from London to Saint Petersburg, weaving in scandals, political machinations, and family tensions. It is at once an intimate portrait of a royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the marriages the Queen arranged. At the heart of it all is Victoria herself: doting grandmother one moment, determined Queen Empress the next.

Few personalities from classical antiquity are more famous - yet more poorly understood - than Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt. In this major biography, Duane Roller reveals that Cleopatra was in fact a learned and visionary leader whose overarching goal was always the preservation of her dynasty and kingdom. Roller's authoritative account is the first to be based solely on primary materials from the Greco-Roman period: literary sources, Egyptian documents (Cleopatra's own writings), and representations in art and coinage produced while she was alive.