For seventy years, Queen Elizabeth ruled over an institution and a family. During her lifetime she was constant in her desire to provide a steady presence and to be a trustworthy steward of the British people and the Commonwealth. In the face of her uncle's abdication, in the uncertainty of the Blitz, and in the tentative exposure of her family and private life to the public via the press, Elizabeth became synonymous with the crown. ? But times change. Recent years have brought grief and turmoil to the House of Windsor, and even as England celebrated the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, there were calls for a changing of the guard. In The New Royals, journalist Katie Nicholl provides a nuanced look at Elizabeth's remarkable and unrivalled reign, with new stories from Palace courtiers and aides, documentarians, and family members. She examines King Charles and Queen Camilla's decades in waiting and beyond-where "The Firm" is headed as William and Kate present the modern faces of an ancient institution. In the wake of Harry and Meghan leaving the Royal Family and Prince Andrew's spectacular fall from grace, the royal family must reckon with its history, the light and the dark, in order to chart a new course for Britain and show that it is an institution capable of leadership in an ever-changing modern world.

A thrilling new account of the tragic life and troubled times of Henry VI.

'The best life of Henry VI now in print' DAN JONES.
'Vivid, absorbing and richly detailed' HELEN CASTOR.
'A well-crafted moving account of a tragic reign' MICHAEL JONES.

First-born son of a warrior father who defeated the French at Agincourt, Henry VI of the House Lancaster inherited the crown not only of England but also of France, at a time when Plantagenet dominance over the Valois dynasty was at its glorious height.

And yet, by the time he was done to death in the Tower of London in 1471, France was lost, his throne had been seized by his rival, Edward IV of the House of York, and his kingdom had descended into the violent chaos of the Wars of the Roses.

Henry VI is perhaps the most troubled of English monarchs, a pious, gentle, well-intentioned man who was plagued by bouts of mental illness. In Shadow King, Lauren Johnson tells his remarkable and sometimes shocking story in a fast-paced and colourful narrative that captures both the poignancy of Henry's life and the tumultuous and bloody nature of the times in which he lived.

'Hollman combines scrupulous research with spellbinding storytelling; The Queen and the Mistress will keep you turning the pages.' - Sylvia Barbara Soberton, author of Ladies-In-Waiting: The Women Who Served Anne Boleyn 'A must-read for anyone interested in medieval women's or royal history.' - Catherine Hanley, author of Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior 'In The Queen and the Mistress, Gemma Hollman challenges much of the misinformation and misconceptions which have surrounded both women for centuries ... A triumph of historical research and interpretation.' - Sharon Bennett Connolly, author of Ladies of Magna Carta: Women of Influence in Thirteenth Century England 'The Queen and the Mistress is an absorbing and masterful historical work, which you might not even notice because it is also incredibly fun. Hollman writes with obvious joy and sensitivity towards her subjects, bringing these complex women and their world to glorious life. I couldn't put it down.' - Eleanor Janega, Going Medieval Podcast IN A WORLD WHERE MAN IS KING, CAN WOMEN REALLY HAVE IT ALL - AND KEEP IT? Philippa of Hainault was Queen of England for forty-one years. Her marriage to Edward III, when they were both teenagers, was more political transaction than romantic wedding, but it would turn into a partnership of deep affection. The mother of twelve children, she was the perfect medieval queen: pious, unpolitical and fiercely loyal to both her king and adopted country. Alice Perrers entered court as a young widow and would soon catch the eye of an ageing king whose wife was dying. Born to a family of London goldsmiths, this charismatic and highly intelligent woman would use her position as the king's favourite to build up her own portfolio of land, wealth and prestige, only to see it all come crashing down as Edward himself neared death. The Queen and the Mistress is a story of female power and passion, and how two very different women used their skills and charms to navigate a tumultuous royal court - and win the heart of the same man.

"The Duchess of York wished to have the portraits of the most beautiful women at Court," Anthony Hamilton wrote in the Memoirs of Count Grammont. "Lely painted them, and employed all his art in the execution. He could not have had more alluring sitters. Every portrait is a masterpiece."

The original set of "Beauties" painted by Lely were, as we find from James II's catalogue, eleven in number, their names being Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland (nee Villiers); Frances, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (nee Stuart); Mrs. Jane Myddleton (nee Needham); Elizabeth, Countess of Northumberland (nee Wriothesley); Elizabeth, Countess of Falmouth (nee Bagot); Elizabeth, Lady Denham (nee Brooke); Frances, Lady Whitmore (nee Brooke); Henrietta, Countess of Rochester (nee Boyle); Elizabeth, Countess de Grammont (nee Hamilton); and Madame d'Orleans.

It will be seen that in this list of "Beauties" Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, does not figure; but since she was responsible for the collection, it would be peculiarly ungracious to omit her from a volume that treats of it. Also, she deserves inclusion for her supreme courage in selecting the sitters-for what must the ladies who were not chosen have said and thought of her?

Nor in the series are Nell Gwyn, Louise de Keroualle, and the Duchess Mazarin; but no account of the social life of the Court of Charles II can possibly omit mention of them, and therefore something has been said about each of these ladies.

The new Revised Edition restores Melville's masterpiece of the intricate relationships and day-by-day account of court life in the reign of Charles II of England. This edition also adds a new glossary, bibliography, and extended footnotes for the lay history reader. Also included are first-ever translations of French language poems, letters, and epitaphs of St. Evremond completed by Coby Fletcher.

The Lao and the Siamese are descendants of the same Ai-Lao race, but they have different characters and destinies, and they established their own kingdoms. The invasion of ViengChan by Siam in 1779 left Lao LanXang in danger of total collapse. The twelve-year-old prince Chao Anouvong, the feudal ruling class, the court nobility and many of the people were forcefully taken to Siam, resulting in the total political extinction of a society that had governed LanXang for over 1,000 years. Chao Anouvong grew up in Bangkok and was regarded by the Siamese as a mere provincial ruler. He returned to ViengChan at the age of twenty-eight and became king, with nothing to support him but his own talents and his ambition to restore LanXang.

The compelling quest to solve a great mystery of the twentieth century: the ultimate fate of Russia's last tsar and his family. In July 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow grave near Ekaterinburg, Siberia, a few miles from the infamous cellar where the last tsar and his family had been murdered seventy-three years before. Were these the bones of the Romanovs? If so, why were the bones of the two younger Romanovs missing? Was Anna Anderson, celebrated in newspapers, books, and film, really Grand Duchess Anastasia? This book unearths the truth. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie presents a colourful panorama of contemporary characters, illuminating the major scientific dispute between Russian experts and a team of Americans, whose findings - along with those of DNA scientists from Russia, America, and the UK - all contributed to solving one of history's most intriguing mysteries.

Using hitherto neglected sources, this work offers a dramatic reinterpretation of the Lancastrian revolution, and the establishment of Henry IV's kingship. It is also the first work for thirty years to re-examine the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV together, charting the shifting balance of power between the crown and the nobility across the turn of the fifteenth century.

Richard II (1377-99) has long suffered from an unusually unmanly reputation. Over the centuries, he has been habitually associated with lavish courtly expenditure, absolutist ideas, Francophile tendencies, and a love of peace, all of which have been linked to the king's physical effeminacy. Even sympathetic accounts have essentially retained this picture, merely dismissing particular facets of it, or representing Richard's reputation as evidence of praiseworthy dissent from accepted norms of masculinity. Christopher Fletcher takes a radically different approach, setting the politics of Richard II's reign firmly in the context of late medieval assumptions about the nature of manhood and youth. This makes it possible not only to understand the agenda of the king's critics, but also to suggest a new account of his actions. Far from being the effeminate tyrant of historical imagination, Richard was a typical young nobleman, trying to establish his manhood, and hence his authority to rule, by thoroughly conventional means; first through a military campaign, and then, fatally, through violent revenge against those who attempted to restrain him. The failure of Richard's subjects to support this aspiration produced a sequence of conflicts with the king, in which his opponents found it convenient to ascribe to him the conventional faults of youth. These critiques derived their force not from the king's real personality, but from the fit between certain contemporary assumptions about youth, effeminacy, and masculinity on the one hand, and the actions of Richard's government, constrained by difficult and complex circumstances, on the other.

As the battle for royal supremacy raged between the houses of Lancaster and York, Margaret Beaufort, who was descended from Edward III and proved to be a critical threat to the Yorkist cause, was forced to give up her son - she would be separated from him for fourteen years. Surrounded by conspiracies in the enemy Yorkist court, Margaret remained steadfast, only just escaping the headman's axe as she plotted to overthrow Richard III and secure her son the throne. Against all odds, in 1485 Henry Tudor was victorious on the battlefield at Bosworth. Margaret's unceasing efforts and royal blood saw her son crowned King Henry VII, and Margaret became the most powerful woman in England. Nicola Tallis unmasks the many myths that have attached themselves to Margaret and reveals the real woman: an independent and vibrant character, who would risk everything to become Queen in all but name.

It was famously the scene of Charles and Diana's nightmare marriage and Charles's serial adulteries. But then Kensington Palace has a long history of royal philandering. George II installed his wife and mistress in the palace, for example, and made his mistress sleep in a room so damp there were said to be mushrooms growing on the walls. And then there were the eccentrics. George III's sixth son, Augustus, Duke of Sussex, became a virtual recluse at the palace. He collected hundreds of clocks and mechanical toys, thousands of early Bibles and dozens of songbirds that were allowed to fly freely through the royal apartments. Today, the palace is home to the future King William and his wife Catherine, and until recently home to the newly married Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan. Tom Quinn takes the reader behind the official version of palace history to discover intriguing, sometimes wild, often scandalous, but frequently heart-warming stories.

An elegant and magisterial new biography of Her Majesty The Queen, tracing the events of a reign that now spans seven decades, and evaluating her achievement as a practitioner of monarchy across the entirety of her reign. For millions of people, both in Britain and across the world, Elizabeth II is the embodiment of monarchy. Her long life spans nearly a century of national and global history, from a time before the Great Depression to the era of Covid-19. Her reign embraces all but seven years of Britain's postwar history; she has been served by fifteen UK prime ministers from Churchill to Johnson, and witnessed the administrations of thirteen US presidents from Truman to Trump. The vast majority of Britons cannot remember a world without Elizabeth II as head of state and the Commonwealth. In this brand-new new biography of the longest-reigning sovereign in British history, Matthew Dennison traces her life and reign across an era of unprecedented and often seismic social change. Stylish in its writing and nuanced in its judgements, The Queen charts the joys and triumphs as well as the disappointments and vicissitudes of a remarkable royal life; it also assesses the achievement of a woman regarded as the champion of a handful of 'British' values endorsed - if no longer practised - by the bulk of the nation: service, duty, steadfastness, charity and stoicism.

Mary I: Gender, Power, and Ceremony in the Reign of England's First Queenexplores the gender politics of the reign of Mary I of England from her coronation to her funeral and examines the ways in which the queen and her supporters used language, royal ceremonies, and images to bolster her right to rule and define her image as queen. By detailing the ways that Mary's powers were defined as the first queen ruling in her own right, and as a married ruler with Philip of Spain as king consort, this study provides a deeper appreciation of Mary's capabilities as an early modern queen and the importance of her precedent.

Famously depicted as 'Crookback Dick', and as Shakespeare's 'bunch-back'd toad', the murderer of the Princes in the Tower and the warrior vanquished at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III is one of England's most enigmatic monarchs. Now, with the discovery of Richard's bones under a car park in Leicester in 2012 and their reburial in early 2015, the obsession with this mysterious king has been further ignited. Historian David Horspool tells the story of Richard, Duke of Gloucester's birth and upbringing and his part as a young man in the closing years of the Wars of the Roses, describes what really happened to the Princes in the Tower, and explains why this character has become one of the most compelling and divisive rulers in the history of the British Isles. In his final chapter, with a ringside seat to the pomp and circumstance of Richard's reburial in Leicester in 2015, Horspool explains why the public fascination with this flawed king has been so enduring. Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation is concerned to examine the legend as well as the man. Have we bought in to the myth of Richard III as the personification of evil, a view maintained by his Tudor successors and publicised by Raphael Holinshed and William Shakespeare? Or should we believe the Ricardian narrative of a much maligned monarch, warrior and statesman made popular by the Richard III Society and conceded in part by some historians and archaeologists? These questions and more are discussed in this fascinating insight into one of England's most elusive kings.

The story of the Stuart dynasty is a breathless soap opera played out in just a hundred years in an array of buildings that span Europe from Scotland, via Denmark, Holland and Spain to England. Life in the court of the House of Stuart has been shrouded in mystery: the first half of the century overshadowed by the fall and execution of Charles I, the second half in the complete collapse of the House itself. Lost to time is the extraordinary contribution the Stuarts made to the fabric of sovereignty. Every palace they built, painting they commissioned, or artwork they acquired was a direct reflection of the lives that they led and the way that they thought. Palaces of Revolution explores this rich history in graphic detail, giving a unique insight into the lives of this famous dynasty. It takes us from Royston and Newmarket, where James I appropriated most of the town centre as a sort of rough-and-ready royal housing estate, to the steamy Turkish baths at Whitehall where Charles II seduced his mistresses. We see the intimate private lives of the monarchs, presented through the buildings in which they lived and the objects they commissioned, creating an entirely new narrative of the Stuart century. Palaces of Revolution traces this extraordinary period across the places and palaces on which the action played out, giving us a thrilling new history of this remarkable dynasty.

Elizabeth I is one of England's most famous monarchs, whose story as the ‘Virgin Queen’ is well known. But queenship was by no means a certain path for Henry VIII’s younger daughter, who spent the majority of her early years as a girl with an uncertain future.

Before she was three years old Elizabeth had been both a princess and then a bastard following the brutal execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn. After losing several stepmothers and then her father, the teenage Elizabeth was confronted with the predatory attentions of Sir Thomas Seymour. The result was devastating, causing a heartbreaking rift with her beloved stepmother Katherine Parr.

Elizabeth was placed in further jeopardy when she was implicated in the Wyatt Rebellion of 1554 – a plot to topple her half-sister, Mary, from her throne. Imprisoned in the Tower of London where her mother had lost her life, under intense pressure and interrogation Elizabeth adamantly protested her innocence. Though she was eventually liberated, she spent the remainder of Mary’s reign under a dark cloud. On 17 November 1558, however, the uncertainty of Elizabeth’s future came to an end when she succeeded to the throne at the age of twenty-five.

When Elizabeth became queen, she had already endured more tumult than many monarchs experienced in a lifetime. This colourful and immensely detailed biography charts Elizabeth’s turbulent and unstable upbringing, exploring the dangers and tragedies that plagued her early life. Nicola Tallis draws on primary sources written by Elizabeth herself and her contemporaries, providing an extensive and thorough study of an exceptionally resilient youngster whose early life would shape the queen she later became. The heart racing story of Elizabeth’s youth as she steered her way through perilous waters towards England’s throne is one of the most sensational of its time.

Despite its reputation as the longest established in Europe, the history of the English monarchy is punctuated by scandal, murders, betrayals, plots, and treason. Since William the Conqueror seized the crown in 1066, England has seen three civil wars; six monarchs have been murdered or executed; the throne of England has been usurped four times, and won in battle three times; and personal scandals and royal family quarrels abound. Dark History of the Kings & Queens of England provides an exciting and dramatic account of English royal history from 1066 to the present day. This engrossing book explores the scandal and intrigue behind each royal dynasty, from the 'accidental' murder of William II in 1100, through the excesses of Richard III, Henry VIII and 'Bloody' Mary, to the conspiracies surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, William and Kate Middleton's on-off courtship before they married, and Prince Harry's years of partying, girlfriends and Las Vegas strip poker, before his 2018 marriage to American divorcee Meghan Markle. Carefully researched, superbly entertaining and illustrated throughout with more than 200 colour and black-and-white photographs and artworks, this accessible and immensely enjoyable book highlights the true personalities and real lives of the individuals honoured with the crown of England-and those unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE WEDDING AND FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE Once a reckless rebel, now a respected role model, Prince Harry is one of the world's most popular royals and all set to haul the British royal family into the twenty-first century. How has he done it? Harry: Conversations with the Prince takes a three-dimensional look at what Harry is really like, both on and off royal duty. It delves into his troubled childhood and rebellious teenage years, as well as exploring the defining moments that have enabled him to face his demons and use his own experiences to help others. Distinguished journalist and royal biographer Angela Levin accompanied Prince Harry on many of his engagements and had exclusive access to him at Kensington Palace. She found a complex man who has inherited his late mother's extraordinary charisma and determination to 'make a difference.' In this updated insightful and engaging biography, Levin examines the first year of Harry's marriage to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, the pivotal moments the couple face following the birth of their son, and their shared vision as they forge their own path on the world stage.

Platinum Jubilee edition 'Full of gems ... Angela Kelly is a jewel in the crown' Daily Telegraph 'Entertaining and beautifully illustrated' The Sunday Times 'For real intel, [The Crown] can't come close to The Other Side of the Coin by Angela Kelly' The New York Times 'When Angela Kelly and The Queen are together, laughter echoes through the corridors of Buckingham Palace.' Angela worked with The Queen and walked the corridors of the Royal Household for twenty-eight years, initially as Her Majesty's Senior Dresser and then latterly as Her Majesty's Personal Advisor, Curator, Wardrobe and In-house Designer. As the first person in history to hold this title, she shared a uniquely close working relationship with The Queen. Her Majesty personally gave Angela her blessing to share their extraordinary bond with the world. Whether it was preparing for a formal occasion or brightening Her Majesty's day with a playful joke, Angela's priority was to serve and support. Sharing never-before-seen photographs - many from Angela's own private collection - and charming anecdotes of their time spent together, this revealing book provides memorable insights into what it was like to work closely with The Queen, to curate her wardrobe and to discover a true and lasting connection along the way. Revised and updated to mark The Queen's Platinum Jubilee, this special edition of The Other Side of the Coin contains chapters covering the Royal Household's isolation during the pandemic, Angela's own devotion to service to keep the monarch safe, and the light and laughter that was shared behind closed doors, even in the darkest moments.