This book addresses the age-old problem of those persons, for reasons of advantage, who would, through false statements and manufactured evidence, have others believe that they were descendants of royalty when, in fact, they were not. Though the list of these false claimants to a throne is a lengthy one, the author illuminates the individuals and circumstances of those considered the most interesting. This work is an interesting resource for the student of sovereigns and royal families. Paperback, (1882), 2014, 276 pp.

DIANA'S NIGHTMARE: The Family

By Chris Hutchins and Peter Thompson "Now available in paperback"

Even before Lady Diana Spencer married into the most revered family on earth, she had her suspicions that the kith and kin of Prince Charles were not all they seemed-to-be. No sooner had she become the Princess of Wales and moved into Kensington Palace than her fears were confirmed: the House of Windsor constituted a flawed dynasty. She found herself trapped in a world of scandal, deceit and treachery. Diana's Nightmare reveals the previously untold secrets Diana discovered about her royal relatives. This book exposes how intensely Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles contrived to exclude her, it reveals the Queen was angry and bitter at her family's indiscretions, how the Queen Mother's indifference was matched only by Prince Philip's blind range over Diana's determination to find her own path, what really went on between the Duke and Duchess of York and how Prince Edward witnessed Diana's tantrums at Balmoral . . . Diana's own secret life.

""Filled with new insights into the troubled life of the beautiful Princess. I remained riveted to the end."" - DOMINICK DUNNE

When the Tsar's eighteen-year-old niece Princess Irina Romanov announced her marriage to Prince Felix Youssoupov, heir to the richest fortune in Russia, the Imperial family were shocked. Prince Felix and his wife Princess Irina had it all. When they married in St Petersburg in 1914 immense wealth and social standing were theirs. But fate had other ideas. In 1916 Felix was involved in one of the most famous crimes of the twentieth century - the murder of Gregory Rasputin, evil genius of Empress Alexandra. It was Irina's royal blood that ensured Felix was never prosecuted for what many saw as a patriotic act. The following year revolution swept the country and in 1919 Felix and Irina were forced into exile for the rest of their lives. How did they survive in the real world when the money began to run out? Why did they live their lives in the shadow of Rasputin? How did Rasputin save them? And how did Felix redeem himself for Rasputin's murder? No joint biography of Irina and Felix has ever been written. This book utilises little-known Russian sources, as well as documents recently purchased at auction to reveal new facts, throwing fresh light on the couple's lives, their relationship and how they never quite escaped from the shadow of Rasputin.

Sometimes it takes just one strong woman to tame a pack of zealous men. Meet Margaret of Sicily. For five years during the twelfth century, Margaret of Navarre, Queen of Sicily, was the most powerful woman in Europe and the Mediterranean. Her life and times make for the compelling story of a wife, sister, mother and leader. This landmark work is the first biography of the great-granddaughter of El Cid and friend of Thomas Becket who could govern a nation and inspire millions. In Margaret's story sisterhood is just the beginning. The Basque princess who rose to confront unimagined adversity became the epitome of medieval womanhood in a world dominated by men, governing one of the wealthiest, most powerful - and most socially complex - states of Europe and the Mediterranean. This book is the result of original, scholarly research in medieval chronicles and manuscripts - some never before translated into English - yet its narrative is lively and interesting, exploring the essence of the queen's personality. In addition to its main text, the volume presents fourteen pages of maps, four genealogical tables and numerous photographs, reflecting information gathered by the author in Italy, Spain and England (and even in the United States). Her research took her from the tiny town in Navarre where Margaret was born to the locality in Sicily where the queen died, and a lot of places in-between. The author's keen knowledge of history and her mastery of Italian, Spanish, French and Latin aided her in following every step of Margaret's journey. If you could travel back in time to the twelfth century, Ms Alio would be the perfect guide, and in this book she guides you through an eventful life in a perilous age. Chapters detail Margaret's life but also her world, from Pamplona to Palermo. The chapter on Monreale's splendid abbey, erected on the orders of Margaret and her son, is a sophisticated guide to this unique place, offering the reader nuggets of information rarely mentioned in travel books. Ten appendices provide information on the chronicles of Hugh Falcandus, Romuald of Salerno and others, along with the hard-to-find original texts of both surviving codices of the Assizes of Ariano, the legal code enacted by Margaret's father-in-law in 1140. There is a timeline and over 400 end notes, and a bibliography with hundreds of sources cited. (The text was peer reviewed.) There is much in these 512 pages for the armchair historian but also for the hardcore academic, everything from the analysis of sources like chronicles and royal decrees to maps of medieval Palermo. This work is so exhaustively documented that the 'back matter' containing notes, appendices and the detailed bibliography is almost as long as the main narrative text. This book is full of interesting details. For example, Margaret was one of the few women of her century to govern a population that included a substantial number of Muslims. Closer to our times, Palermo-based Jackie Alio stands out as the only Sicilian woman writing books in English about the women of medieval Sicily. She lives and breathes Sicilian history. Her previous titles include The Peoples of Sicily: A Multicultural Legacy and Women of Sicily: Saints, Queens and Rebels. She authored the first English translation of the Ferraris Chronicle, written in Italy before 1228. A defining biography, Margaret, Queen of Sicily is the longest monograph of its kind written in English by a Sicily-based historian. At a time when academic publishers are reluctant to publish anything this lengthy, it is an exhaustive work in the tradition of the tomes published in decades past. It touches a number of fields: Norman and Navarrese culture, the power of medieval women, twelfth-century politics, the nature of multicultural societies, the role of religion in the Mediterranean. With the publication of this book, our knowledge of Europe's complex twelfth century is one step nearer completeness. Queen Margaret would be proud.