Helene was a strong-willed princess, raised in France but closely connected with the court of Queen Victoria. After the premature end to a romance with Victoria's grandson, she married into the royal family of Italy. However, Helene began extended adventuresome trips into Africa where she became a big-game hunter, explorer and travel writer, escaping from an unhappy marriage and the boredom of court life. Her travels took her around the world, but her sense of royal duty brought her back to nurse aboard a hospital ship in Libyan waters, then to an important role as head of the Italian Red Cross nurses during the First World War while her husband headed Italy's Third Army, and her two sons served in the artillery and the navy. Afterwards, her strong Italian nationalism made her an ally to Gabriele d'Annunzio and Benito Mussolini, but the disastrous Second World War saw her grandchildren interned in Austria and her older son die as a British prisoner-of-war while she continued her charitable work in Naples. When the country voted to become a republic in 1946, Helene was the only member of the royal family allowed to remain in Italy with her second 'secret' husband.

More than just a single-minded warrior-king, Henry V comes to life in this fresh account as a gifted ruler acutely conscious of spiritual matters and his subjects' welfare Shakespeare's centuries-old portrayal of Henry V established the king's reputation as a warmongering monarch, a perception that has persisted ever since. But in this engaging study a different view of Henry emerges: that of a multidimensional ruler of great piety, a hands-on governor who introduced a radically new conception of England's European role in secular and ecclesiastical affairs, a composer of music, an art patron, and a dutiful king who fully appreciated his obligations toward those he ruled. Historian Malcolm Vale draws on extensive primary archival evidence that includes many documents annotated or endorsed in Henry's own hand. Focusing on a series of themes-the interaction between king and church, the rise of the English language as a medium of government and politics, the role of ceremony in Henry's kingship, and more-Vale revises understandings of Henry V and his conduct of the everyday affairs of England, Normandy, and the kingdom of France.

Anne Boleyn is one of the most divisive figures in British history. Her love-match with Henry VIII and her subsequent execution at the Tower of London after only three years of marriage have made her the subject of heated debate and speculation.Everyone wants to know how she really felt and how and why she became queen: was she a ruthless schemer or was her death simply a tragic consequence of court politics?Unbiased descriptions of Anne are difficult to find: most were written after her death. Anne was effectively written out of history for the rest of Henry VIII's reign, and that of his son, Edward VI. Her name was literally chiselled out of the fabric of Hampton Court, her badges and heraldry replaced by those of Jane Seymour.Historians continue to battle over her reputation today and the fascination with the life and death of Anne Boleyn lives on. This objective and informative book brings clarity to our view of Anne Boleyn, perhaps the most influential and important queen consort England ever had.

The Pulitzer prizewinning biography of Peter the Great, the ruler who brought Russia from darkness into light. Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, Robert K. Massie unfolds the extraordinary story of Peter the Great. A volatile feudal tsar with a taste for barbaric torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; Peter the Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development. Robert K. Massie delves deep into Peter's life and character, chronicling the pivotal events that transformed the boy star into a national icon. His portrayal of the complexities and contradictions of this most energetic of Russian rulers brings a towering historical figure unforgettably to life.

Cecily Bonville-Grey was one of the richest women of her time, inheriting the Harington and Bonville fortunes as a young child. In 1474, at the age of fifteen, she married Thomas Grey, the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville from her first marriage to Sir John Grey. When Thomas was created Marquis of Dorset a year later, Cecily became the Marchioness of Dorset alongside him. During her lifetime she was connected to many of the fifteenth and sixteenth century personalities that we read about today. Her stepfather was William, Lord Hastings, her mother-in-law Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. Her mother was a daughter of the great Neville family and her uncle was the Earl of Warwick, also known as the 'kingmaker' having assisted his cousin, Edward IV, in his path to the throne. Her second husband was a son of the ancient Stafford family and Lady Jane Grey was a direct descendant of hers. During the Wars of the Roses and the emergence of the new Tudor dynasty, Cecily was witness to many of the events that unfolded and her own story is intertwined with many of these events. Yet she remains relatively unknown. This is Cecily's story.

After the Second World War, war crimes prosecutors charged two of King George VI's closest German relatives with 'crimes against humanity'. American soldiers discovered top-secret documents at Marburg Castle that exposed treacherous family double-dealing inside the Royal Family. Two of the King's brothers had flirted dangerously with the Nazi regime in duplicitous games of secret diplomacy. To avert a potential public relations catastrophe, George VI hid incriminating papers and, with Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt's help, whitewashed history to protect his family. Three of Philip Mountbatten's sisters were banned from Westminster Abbey and the wedding of their brother to Princess Elizabeth because their husbands were senior Nazi officers. This dilemma was Queen Victoria's fatal legacy: she had hoped to secure peace in Europe through a network of royal marriages, but her plan backfired with two world wars. Tea With Hitler is a family saga of duty, courage, wilful blindness and criminality, revealing the tragic fate of a Saxe-Coburg princess murdered as part of the Nazi euthanasia programme and the story of Queen Victoria's Jewish great-grand-daughter, rescued by her British relatives.

Examines Kaiser Wilhelm's political career, from the Hohenzollern court, through the turbulent peacetime decades of the Wilhelmine era, into global war and exile.

Kaiser Wilhelm II is one of the key figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe. He was King of Prussia and German emperor from 1888 to the collapse of Germany in 1918 and a crucial player in the events that led to the outbreak of World War I. Kaiser Wilhelm II presents a new interpretation of this controversial monarch and assesses the impact on Germany of his forty-year reign.

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow - and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling - and how their lives would play out from that point on.

For Harry, this is that story at last.

With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

Prince Harry wishes to support British charities with donations from his proceeds from Spare. The Duke of Sussex has donated $1,500,000 to Sentebale, an organisation he founded with Prince Seeiso in their mothers' legacies, which supports vulnerable children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS. Prince Harry will also donate to the non-profit organisation WellChild in the amount of £300,000. WellChild, which he has been Royal patron of for fifteen years, makes it possible for children and young people with complex health needs to be cared for at home instead of hospital, wherever possible.

This is the first full-scale biography of two early English queens: Emma, queen first to Aethelread and then to Cnut, and Edith, queen to Edward the Confessor. Through detailed study of these women the author demonstrates the integral place of royal queens in the rule of the English kingdom and in the process of unification by which England was made.

The careers of Emma and Edith span the troubled decades of eleventh-century English history, and the book reassesses their role in the story of foreign conquests, succession dispute and political murder. Their biography is illuminated by a detailed study of the structures of tenth- and eleventh-century English Queenship - motherhood, marriage, inheritance and succession, the royal household and patronage, consecrated and holy Queenship. It moves from the partial stories told of them by others, and the unique narrative worlds they themselves commissioned, to a new and detailed biography in which Emma especially emerges as one of the most significant political actors of her day and in which both women are shown as both imprisoned by but contesting the inexorable female lifecycle.

The book is an important contribution to our understanding of eleventh- and twelfth-century rule but also of medieval England in general, and, crucially, the role of women within that world.

Inspector Ken Wharfe, the first royalty protection officer to publish a memoir, was a crucial figure in the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, for nearly seven years. In that time, he became a close friend and trusted confidant who shared her most private moments. His first-hand contradicts many of the so-called 'facts' about the Princess and provides an affectionate, if not always uncritical, insight into this complex, troubled, but ultimately fascinating woman. Here is the authentic voice of a man who played an important role during Diana's most trying times, and in her beloved sons' formative years, and who shows himself to be an exceptionally perceptive observer of the events that unfolded around the Princess. After Inspector Wharfe resigned his position in 1993 (making headline news), Diana announced her withdrawal from public life and axed her Scotland Yard protection - a decision her former 'top cop' believes led ultimately to her death. This account presents the most intimate portrait of Diana to date, as well as a fitting tribute to one of the outstanding figures of our age.

The summer of 2022 saw the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, the first time in British history that a monarch has reached this remarkable milestone. As the event was the first of its kind to be televised, images from the ceremony inside Westminster Abbey are instantly recognisable. Far less familiar are the scenes in the streets outside, where huge crowds assembled to see a procession of state coaches and historic regiments marching past public buildings festooned with patriotic banners and colourful grandstands erected outside many famous landmarks. Using a private collection of more than 200 rare images of London's West End, Protect and Keep looks back to the day that the Queen pledged herself to her country. It provides a unique and precious record of an historic occasion: the day of the Coronation as it was seen by ordinary members of the public.

In 1936, the monarchy faced the greatest threats to its survival in the modern era - the crisis of abdication and the menace of Nazism. The fate of the country rested in the hands of George V's sorely unequipped sons: Edward VIII abandoned his throne to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson; Prince Henry preferred the sporting life of a country squire; the glamorous and hedonistic Prince George, Duke of Kent, was considered a wild card; and stammering George VI felt himself woefully unprepared for the demanding role of King. As Hitler's Third Reich tore up the boundaries of Europe and Britain braced itself for war, the new king struggled to manage internal divisions within the royal family. Drawing on many new sources including from the Royal Archives, Princes at War goes behind the palace doors to tell the thrilling drama of Britain at war.

A moving and compulsively readable look into the lives, loves, relationships, and rivalries among the three women at the heart of the British royal family today: Queen Elizabeth II, Camilla Parker-Bowles, and Kate Middleton--from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Good Son, These Few Precious Days, and The Day Diana Died. One has been famous longer than anyone on the planet--a dutiful daughter, a frustrated mother, a doting grandmother, a steel-willed taskmaster, a wily stateswoman, an enduring symbol of an institution that has lasted a thousand years, and a global icon who has not only been an eyewitness to history but a part of it. One is the great-granddaughter of a King's mistress and one of the most famous "other women" of the modern age--a woman who somehow survived a firestorm of scorn to ultimately marry the love of her life, and in the process replace her arch rival, one of the most beloved figures of the twentieth century. One is a beautiful commoner, the university-educated daughter of a flight attendant-turned-millionaire entrepreneur, a fashion scion the equal of her adored mother-in-law, and the first woman since King George V's wife, Queen Mary, to lay claim to being the daughter-in-law of one future king, the wife another, and the mother of yet another. Game of Crowns is an in-depth and exquisitely researched exploration of the lives of these three remarkable women and the striking and sometimes subtle ways in which their lives intersect and intertwine. Examining their surprising similarities and stark differences, Andersen travels beyond the royal palace walls to illustrate who these three women really are today--and how they will directly reshape the landscape of the monarchy.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER UPDATED PAPERBACK FEATURING NEW CONTENT A Daily Mail Royal Book of the Year, 2021 A Spectator Book of the Year, 2021 'Briskly written and compulsively readable' - A.N. Wilson, TLS 'Meticulously researched' - Spectator 'Entertaining, convincing, timely' - Evening Standard December 1936. The King of England, Edward VIII, has given up his Crown, foregoing his duty for the love of Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. Their courtship has been dogged by controversy and scandal, but with Edward's abdication, they can live happily ever after. But do they? In Traitor King, bestselling historian Andrew Lownie draws on hitherto unexplored archives to uncover the dramatic world of the Windsors post-abdication. Lownie reveals a couple obsessed with their status, financially exploiting their position and manipulating the media. Filled with treachery and betrayal, this is a story of an exiled Royal and the Nazi attempts to recruit him to their cause. And of why the Royal family never forgave the Duke for choosing love over duty.

According to the great diarist, John Evelyn, Charles II was ‘addicted to women’, and throughout his long reign a great many succumbed to his charms. Clever, urbane and handsome, Charles presided over a hedonistic court, in which licence and licentiousness prevailed.

Mistresses is the story of the women who shared Charles’s bed, each of whom wielded influence on both the politics and cultural life of the country. From the young king-in-exile’s first mistress and mother to his first child, Lucy Walter, to the promiscuous and ill-tempered courtier, Barbara Villiers. From Frances Teresa Stuart, ‘the prettiest girl in the world’ to history’s most famous orange-seller, ‘pretty, witty’ Nell Gwynn and to her fellow-actress, Moll Davis, who bore the last of the king’s fifteen illegitimate children. From Louise de Kéroualle, the French aristocrat – and spy for Louis XIV – to the sexually ambiguous Hortense Mancini. Here, too, is the forlorn and humiliated Queen Catherine, the Portuguese princess who was Charles’s childless queen.

Drawing on a wide variety of original sources, including material in private archives, Linda Porter paints a vivid picture of these women and of Restoration England, an era that was both glamorous and sordid.

Princess Diana is seen as the first member of the British royal family to tear up the rulebook, and the Duchess of Cambridge is modernising the monarchy in strides. But before them was another who paved the way. Princess Mary was born in 1897. Despite her Victorian beginnings, she strove to make a princess's life meaningful, using her position to help those less fortunate and defying gender conventions in the process. As the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, she would live to see not only two of her brothers ascend the throne but also her niece Queen Elizabeth II. She was one of the hardest-working members of the royal family, known for her no-nonsense approach and her determination in the face of adversity. During the First World War she came into her own, launching an appeal to furnish every British troop and sailor with a Christmas gift, and training as a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital. From her dedication to the war effort, to her role as the family peacemaker during the Abdication Crisis, Mary was the princess who redefined the title for the modern age. In the first biography in decades, Elisabeth Basford offers a fresh appraisal of Mary's full and fascinating life.

In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist when Francis II became Emperor of Austria. 112 years later, the Habsburg empire collapsed after the First World War after surviving many tribulations. During the year of revolutions in 1848 the much-loved but incompetent Emperor Ferdinand had abdicated in favour of his young nephew Francis Joseph. His long reign was marked by defeat in several wars, family tragedies and scandals including the execution of his brother Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, the suicide of his son Crown Prince Rudolf, and the assassinations of his wife Empress Elizabeth, and nephew Francis Ferdinand. He was succeeded in 1916 by the succession of his great-nephew Charles, who abdicated in 1918 and died after two unsuccessful attempts to regain the throne of Hungary, but his eldest son Otto remained head of the family and Member of the European Parliament for twenty years. This book looks at the final chapter of the Habsburgs, from the Napoleonic era to the age of the dictators and post-war Europe.

A heartwarming and dramatic World War I saga of secrets, love and the British royal family for readers of Daisy Styles and Maisie Thomas. 'A heartwarming historical novel' Rosie Goodwin 'A gripping historical saga' Daisy Styles Roll out the red carpet. The royal train is due in half an hour and there's not a minute to be wasted. It's 1915 and the country is at war. In the small Norfolk village of Wolferton, uncertainty plagues the daily lives of sisters Ada, Jessie and Beatrice Saward, as their men are dispatched to the frontlines of Gallipoli. Harry, their father, is the station master at the local stop for the royal Sandringham Estate. With members of the royal family and their aristocratic guests passing through the station on their way to the palace, the Sawards' unique position gives them unrivalled access to the monarchy. But when the Sawards' estranged and impoverished cousin Maria shows up out of the blue, everything the sisters thought they knew about their family is thrown into doubt. The Royal Station Master's Daughters is the first book in a brand-new World War I saga series, inspired by the Saward family, who ran the station at Wolferton in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through this history-making family we get a glimpse into all walks of life - from glittering royalty to the humblest of servants. Don't miss the second book in the series, The Royal Station Master's Daughters at War, coming in 2022. Pre-order now. 'Anyone who reads romantic fiction in a historical setting should love [The Royal Station Master's Daughters] but for anyone who knows Sandringham it really does evoke something of the place and life on the estate' Neil Storey, WWI historian

First Published in 1976. Sir Alec Kirkbride was born in Nottinghamshire in 1897, but grew up in Egypt. He was an army officer from 1916 to 1920 and then Deputy Resident in Transjodran from 1927 to 37. This book is a collection of his Amman Memoirs 1947-1951 when he was serving as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom to The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946 and played an important diplomatic role during the Arab-Israeli war.

A riveting saga of deceit, scandal, sex, greed and power

I've traveled all over the world. I've stayed in the best hotels and eaten in the best restaurants. But that isn't me. I'm a simple man. I have simple tastes and I live in a simple house.

But people who knew of my past life still want to know . . . what's it like? What's it like to work for the richest family on earth, the Royal Family of Brunei?

"Well they have money and they spend it," I answer them. I tire of the subject. I know once they get a taste of the story, the questions will keep coming.

"No," they answer. "That's not what I mean. What's it like to travel with the Royal Family? What are they like?"

How can I answer that?

What are they like? They are one of the last true monarchies here on earth. They still rule with a word and with a wave of their hand, no different than they did centuries ago. I worked for a true monarchy, which could have been taken straight out of the movie, "The King and I."

There is not enough time in a day or even a week to tell them all there is to tell.

Yet this story is true. It is no movie nor is it a fairy tale.

I lived it.

For a simple man like me who lives in a simple house, to become a slave of the highest order and to have lived in their world is still surreal.

I see you interrupting me, "A slave you say. There are no longer any slaves."

I scoff at you. I was indeed a slave. What do you call a person who has no life other than what the prince or princess gives them as their daily morsel. What do you call a man who does not sleep but maybe three hours a night waiting by the phone for orders or instructions for twelve years on end? Shall I tell those who ask that the work almost killed me several times over? Shall I tell them that I was indeed a slave who lost his wife because of years of neglecting her and who did not get to see his own children grow up?

Shall I tell them of the deceit, lies, and backstabbing which were the normal part of my everyday existence. Shall I tell them that maybe only one out of ten thousand men could have done my job because of the miracles that they expected me to perform?

No slaves indeed

Welcome to my life.

The fate of Richard III's nephews, Edward V and Richard of York, who disappeared after his coronation in 1483, remains controversial centuries after Thomas More's history and Shakespeare's play laid the blame on their conniving uncle. Later writers, unconvinced of the king's guilt, have tried (with little success) to portray him as an innocent victim of Tudor propaganda, pointing instead to a number of unlikely culprits, including Henry Tudor and the Duke of Buckingham. This book sifts through the available evidence concerning the fate of the two boys. The author examines the facts, discusses who may or may not have known key information and offers a reasoned solution to the question, What really happened to the two princes?

A "New York Times" Notable Book
In 1852, at age sixteen, Cixi was chosen as one of Emperor Xianfeng's numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a coup against her son's regents and placed herself as the true source of power--governing through a silk screen that separated her from her male officials.
Drawing on newly available sources, Jung Chang comprehensively overturns Cixi's reputation as a conservative despot. Cixi's extraordinary reign saw the birth of modern China. Under her, the ancient country attained industries, railways, electricity, and a military with up-to-date weaponry. She abolished foot-binding, inaugurated women's liberation, and embarked on a path to introduce voting rights. Packed with drama, this groundbreaking biography powerfully reforms our view of a crucial period in China's--and the world's--history.

To refer to the private life of Charles II is to abuse the adjective. His personal life was anything but private. His amorous liaisons were largely conducted in royal palaces surrounded by friends, courtiers and literally hundreds of servants and soldiers. Gossip radiated throughout the kingdom. Charles spent most of his wealth and his intellect on gaining and keeping the company of women, from the lowest sections of society such as the actress Nell Gwyn to the aristocratic Louise de Kerouaille. Some of Charles' women played their part in the affairs of state, colouring the way the nation was run. Don Jordan and Michael Walsh take us inside Charles' palace, where we will meet court favourites, amusing confidants, advisors jockeying for political power, mistresses past and present as well as key figures in his inner circle such as his 'pimpmasters' and his personal pox doctor. The astonishing private life of Charles II reveals much about the man he was and why he lived and ruled as he did. The King's Bed tells the compelling story of a king ruled by his passion.

Queen Victoria's son, Prince Leopold, died from haemophilia, but no member of the royal family before his generation had suffered from the condition. Medically, there are only two possibilities: either one of Victoria's parents had a 1 in 50,000 random mutation, or Victoria was the illegitimate child of a haemophiliac man. However the haemophilia gene arose, it had a profound effect on history. Two of Victoria's daughters were silent carriers who passed the disease to the Spanish and Russian royal families. The disease played a role in the origin of the Spanish Civil War; and the tsarina's concern over her only son's haemophilia led to the entry of Rasputin into the royal household, contributing directly to the Russian Revolution. Finally, if Queen Victoria was illegitimate, who should have inherited the British throne? The answer is astonishing.