NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE BOSTON GLOBE

This richly entertaining biography chronicles the eventful life of Queen Victoria’s firstborn son, the quintessential black sheep of Buckingham Palace, who matured into as wise and effective a monarch as Britain has ever seen. Granted unprecedented access to the royal archives, noted scholar Jane Ridley draws on numerous...

The complex and contradictory lives of the Windsors following Edward's abdication of the British throne in 1936. Shut out by the royal family, the couple was forced into exile--but a glamorous one in which they flitted from sumptuously appointed mansions in the south of France to luxurious residences in Palm Beach. They were spoiled, selfish people, obsessed with their image, reveling in adulterous affairs, and financially exploiting their position...

The author of The Diana Chronicles takes readers inside the British royal family since the death of Princess Diana, showing the Queen's stoic resolve as family drama raged around her. “Never again” became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Princess Diana’s tragic death. More specif­ically, there could never be “another Diana”—a mem­ber of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and...

A panoply is a splendid and striking array, sometimes an array of knightly arms, sometimes an array of banners or trophies, costumes or works of art. In the following pages I have assembled a royal panoply, an array of monarchical lives, some splendid, a few wretched, all striking in their variety, their vicissitudes, their predictabe or improbable fates.