This intimate and personal memoir of the present incumbent of Firle Place, the home in the South Downs of the Gage family for 500 years, is described as follows by Charles Moore: In this book, Nicky Gage describes his father's memoirs as 'masterly but short'. The same could be said of his own. Both when being funny - which, again and again, he is - and when being serious, he has a gift for economy of style. Take this chapter opening: 'Sadly, the sexual revolution of the 1960s passed me by, as I was either sitting on my tractor looking after sheep or occasionally visiting my parents - whose butler disapproved of my agricultural attire.' Without being tediously confessional, Nicky is direct about his own failings. One of these, he thinks, is that he took much too long to grow up. Is that such a failing? No doubt it caused some difficulties along the way, but his childlike quality is central to the charm to which all his friends testify. It has allowed him to stay open to the world. He became a father in his seventies and continues to paint and hunt in his mid-eighties, an age when most men would long have put aside such things. He possesses an invincible innocence, which lights up his blue eyes, and makes this book a delight. Sir John Gage made the family fortune in the first half of the 16th century. Nicky, his descendant, writes admiringly of Sir John's good intentions towards Firle expressed in his will. We should all admire Nicky's fulfilment of those intentions in the 21st.

Immortalised by the chronicler Froissart as the most beautiful woman in England and the most loved, Joan was the wife of the Black Prince and the mother of Richard II, the first Princess of Wales and the only woman ever to be Princess of Aquitaine. The contemporary consensus was that she admirably fulfilled their expectations for a royal consort and king's mother. Who was this 'perfect princess'? In this first major biography, Joan's background and career are examined to reveal a remarkable story. Brought up at court following her father's shocking execution, Joan defied convention by marrying secretly aged just twelve, and refused to deny her first love despite coercion, imprisonment and a forced bigamous marriage. Wooed by the Black Prince when she was widowed, theirs was a love match, yet the questionable legality of their marriage threatened their son's succession to the throne. Intelligent and independent, Joan constructed her role as Princess of Wales. Deliberately self-effacing, she created and managed her reputation, using her considerable intercessory skills to protect and support Richard. A loyal wife and devoted mother, Joan was much more than just a famous beauty.

'He seems to have laboured under an almost child-like misapprehension about the size of his world. Had greatness not been thrust upon him, he might have lived a life of great harmlessness' The reign of Edward II was a succession of disasters. Inept in war, and in thrall to favourites, most notably the young nobleman Piers Gaveston, he preferred drinking, driving carts and rowing boats to the tedium of government. After twenty ruinous years, he was imprisoned and murdered. This remarkable book gives a glimpse into the abyss: the terrors of kingship.