It is the extraordinary tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who became first the mistress and later the wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.Katherine Swynford’s charismatic lover was one of the most powerful princes of the 14th century, the effective ruler of England behind the throne of his father Edward III in his declining years, and during the minority of his nephew, Richard II. Katherine herself was enigmatic and intriguing, renowned for her beauty, and regarded by some as dangerous. Her existence was played out against the backdrop of court life at the height of the age of chivalry and she knew most of the great figures of the time — including her brother-in-law, Geoffrey Chaucer. She lived through much of the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, and the Peasants’ Revolt. She knew loss, adversity, and heartbreak, and she survived them all triumphantly. Although Katherine’s story provides unique insights into the life of a medieval woman, she was far from typical in that age. She was an important person in her own right, a woman who had remarkable opportunities, made her own choices, flouted convention, and took control of her own destiny — even of her own public image. Weir brilliantly retrieves Katherine Swynford from the footnotes of history and gives her life and breath again. Perhaps the most dynastically important woman within the English monarchy, she was the mother of the Beauforts and through them the ancestress of the Yorkist kings, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and every other sovereign since — a legacy that has shaped the history of Britain.

    Acclaimed historian G. J. Meyer reveals the flesh-and-bone reality in all its wild excess.In 1485, young Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne was so weak as to be almost laughable, crossed the English Channel from France at the head of a ragtag little army and took the crown from the family that had ruled England for almost four hundred years. Half a century later his son, Henry VIII, desperate to rid himself of his first wife in order to marry a second, launched a reign of terror aimed at taking powers no previous monarch had even dreamed of possessing. In the process he plunged his kingdom into generations of division and disorder, creating a legacy of blood and betrayal that would blight the lives of his children and the destiny of his country.The boy king Edward VI, a fervent believer in reforming the English church, died before bringing to fruition his dream of a second English Reformation. Mary I, the disgraced daughter of Catherine of Aragon, tried and failed to reestablish the Catholic Church and produce an heir. And finally came Elizabeth I, who devoted her life to creating an image of herself as Gloriana the Virgin Queen but, behind that mask, sacrificed all chance of personal happiness in order to survive.  The Tudors weaves together all the sinners and saints, the tragedies and triumphs, the high dreams and dark crimes, that reveal the Tudor era to be, in its enthralling, notorious truth, as momentous and as fascinating as the fictions audiences have come to love.

    But Waterloo was one peak only in the career of this phenomenal man, and it is the achievement of this major biography that it reveals the subtlety and full variety of Wellington's genius as well as the fascinating complexity of England in his time.He was born Arthur Wesley, third son of the Earl of Mornington, in 1769--the same year as Napoleon. His family, which belonged to the ruling caste of Englishmen in Ireland, was long on the tradition of proud service to the King and chronically short of funds. Neither his childhood nor his years at Eton were happy; but when he went to Anjou at seventeen, to study at France's Royal Academy of Equitation, he came into his own, learned well, and emerged qualified and cosmopolitan.He joined the British Army as an ensign and, for the next few years, rose through the ranks. He courted Kitty Pakenham but her family would not allow his suit--his family was not rich enough-- so he went to India at the age of twenty-seven still a bachelor.It was in India that he made his name. There he became a scholar and a soldier. He returned a Knight of the Bath, a major-general, a hero to his countrymen and acceptable, at last, to the Pakenhams. (He had courted Kitty by post over the twelve intervening years; it was scarcely surprising that the woman he married proved different indeed from the charming girl he had left.)When he was forty, the youngest lieutenant-general in the army, he took command of the allied armies in the Peninsular War. With Napoleon's downfall, abdication and exile to Elba, the hero of Europe began a gay career as ambassador to Paris. All the ladies, from the formidable Madame de Staël to the melting Signora Grassini, vied--often successfully--for his favors. His behavior with them and as a diplomat caused some disquiet, and there was evident relief when he was dispatched to the Congress of Vienna. When word came of Napoleon's escape, Wellington took command once more, and after the spectacular eve-of-battle ball in Brussels, led the British and Dutch-Belgian armies to triumph at Waterloo.Lady Longford's unique biography draws on new material from private papers and Wellington's own uninhibited correspondence. Wellington: The Years of the Sword is a worthy successor to her superb Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed.

    Historian Anne Sebba has written the first full biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, by a woman which attempts to understand this fascinating and enigmatic American divorcee who nearly became Queen of England.

    Young, handsome, an expert horseman and crack pistol shot, his swaggering style irritated the stuffier of the king's courtiers almost as much as the Roundheads they were fighting. To the parliamentarians, above all Oliver Cromwell, he was the ultimate "malignant," one of those Royalists who fought on even after Charles was executed in 1649. Rupert commanded the Royalist forces in exile, who were one point reduced to little more than pirates before the triumphant restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In this thoroughly researched account, Prince Rupert is revealed as more than just a great general and dashing cavalier. He was a scientist and classical scholar, a true renaissance prince. From his dramatic childhood escape through the snows of Bohemia to his later life as a respected older statesman, this is the first comprehensive biography of the greatest cavalier of them all.

    For some, royal employment was the defining experience of their lives; for others it came as an unwelcome duty, or a prelude to greater things. Serving Victoria follows the lives of six members of her household, from the governess to the royal children, and her maid-of-honor to her chaplain and personal physician.Drawing on their letters and diaries - many hitherto unpublished - Serving Victoria offers a unique insight into the Victorian court, with all its frustrations and absurdities, as well as the Queen herself, sitting squarely at its center. Seen through the eyes of her household as she traveled between Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, and to the French and Belgian courts, Victoria emerges as more vulnerable, more emotional, more selfish, more comical than the austere figure depicted in her famous portraits. We see a woman who was prone to fits of giggles, who wept easily and often, who gobbled her food and shrank from confrontation but insisted on controlling the lives of those around her. We witness her extraordinary and debilitating grief at the death of her husband Albert, and her sympathy towards the tragedies that afflicted her household.Witty, astute and moving, Serving Victoria is a perfect foil to the pomp and circumstance - and prudery and conservatism - associated with Victoria's reign, and gives an unforgettable glimpse of what it meant to serve the Queen.

    Lucy, the Countess of Carlisle, dominated the royal scene. Her beauty was immortalized in magnificent Van Dyck portraits, her political skills attracted many famous lovers, and her talent as a gossip ensured her inclusion in the queen's inner circle—until civil war and its machinations led to her imprisonment in the Tower of London.Her sister, Dorothy, Countess of Leicester—wife of a diplomat and an ancestor of Princess Diana—managed the family estates and raised twelve surviving children. Though brilliant, with a keen eye and special purview of European politics, she had a reputation as a shrewish wife and, when her husband rebelled after thirty-five years of marriage, it caused a public scandal.Viewing a tempestuous era through the exceptional lives of Lucy and Dorothy Percy, Lita-Rose Betcherman's Court Lady and Country Wife offers a perfect window into a remarkable world.

    In July 1553, the death of the childless Edward VI threw the Tudor dynasty into crisis. On Edward's instructions, his cousin Jane Grey was proclaimed queen, only to be ousted 13 days later by his half-sister Mary, and later beheaded. In this radical reassessment, Eric Ives rejects traditional portraits of Jane both as hapless victim of political intrigue or Protestant martyr. Instead, he presents her as an accomplished young woman with a fierce personal integrity. The result is a compelling dissection by a master historian and storyteller of one of history's most shocking injustices.

    Tim Heald's vivid and elegant biography portrays a woman who was beautiful and sexually alluring—even more so than Princess Diana years later—and whose reputation for naughtiness co-existed with the glamour. The mythology is that Margaret's life was "ruined" by her not being allowed to marry the one true love of her life—Group Captain Peter Townsend. Therefore her marriage to Lord Snowdon and her well-attested relationships with Roddy Llewellyn and others were mere consolation prizes. Margaret's often exotic personal life in places like Mustique is a key part of her story. The author received extraordinary help from those closest to Princess Margaret, including her family (Lord Snowdon and her son, Lord Linley), three of her private secretaries, and many of her ladies in waiting; as well as gaining the Queen's permission to use the royal archives. Heald asks why one of the most famous and loved little girls in the world, who became a juvenile wartime sweetheart, ended her life a sad wheelchairbound figure, publicly reviled and ignored. This is a story of a life in which the private and the public seemed permanently in conflict.

    A story that Jane Austen famously declined to tell, declaring: “I could no more write a romance than an epic poem.”Charlotte was the only legitimate royal child of her generation, and her death in childbirth resulted in a public outpouring of grief the like of which was not to be seen again until the death of Diana, over 150 years later. Charlotte’s death was followed by an unseemly scramble to produce a substitute heir. Queen Victoria was the product.James Chambers masterfully demonstrates how the personal and the political inevitably collide in scheming post-Napoleonic Europe, offering a vivid and sympathetic portrait of a couple whose lives are in many ways not their own. From the day she was born, Charlotte won the hearts of her subjects and yet, behind the scenes, she was used, abused, and victimized by rivalries—between her parents; between her father (the Prince Regent, later King George IV) and (Mad) King George III; between her tutors, governesses, and other members of her discordant household; and ultimately between the Whig opposition and the Tory government.Set in one of the most glamorous eras of British history, against the background of a famously dysfunctional royal family, Charlotte & Leopold: The True Story of The Original People’s Princess is an accessible, moving, funny, and entertaining royal biography with alluring contemporary resonance.James Chambers is a professional historian and author of many books on British and colonial history, including The Daily Telegraph History of the British Empire, which sold over 250,000 copies. He has also written extensively for television and made countless BBC TV and radio appearances.

    As a young man, voraciously addicted to drugs and sex, with men as much as women, marriage and parenthood for the impetuously wayward playboy prince, with his night-clubbing lifestyle and intimate liaisons, was seen as the only stabilizing influence. Enter the stylish and sophisticated Princess Marina, the cultured, artistic and multilingual youngest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece and his Russian-born wife, Grand Duchess Yelena Vladimirovna. As Duke and Duchess of Kent, George and Marina were the Crown’s most glittering representatives, not least in the aftermath of the Abdication of George’s adored elder brother, the briefly-reigned King Edward VIII; the man with whom he had not only shared both home and high-flying lifestyles, but who had helped cure him of his addiction to morphine and cocaine.On and off duty, the Duke and Duchess lived life to the full, and after George’s untimely death, Marina continued to do so during the twenty-six years of her widowhood. Revisiting his 1988 best-selling biography, George and Marina: Duke and Duchess of Kent, Christopher Warwick, in this revised and partly re-written study, tells their story anew.

    But she was also empress, heir to the English crown—the first woman ever to hold the position—and an able military general. This new biography explores Matilda’s achievements as military and political leader, and sets her life and career in full context. Catherine Hanley provides fresh insight into Matilda's campaign to claim the title of queen, her approach to allied kingdoms and rival rulers, and her role in the succession crisis. Hanley highlights how Matilda fought for the throne, and argues that although she never sat on it herself her reward was to see her son become king. Extraordinarily, her line has continued through every single monarch of England or Britain from that time to the present day.

    At the center of a triangle of Anglo Saxons, Vikings, and Normans all jostling for control of England, Emma was a political pawn who became an unscrupulous manipulator. Regarded by her contemporaries as a generous Christian patron, an admired regent, and a Machiavellian mother, Emma was, above all, a survivor: hers was a life marked by dramatic reversals of fortune, all of which she overcame.

    For the first time, all the contenders for the crown were female.In 1553, England was about to experience the ‘monstrous regiment’ - the unnatural rule - of a woman. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edward’s death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conquerer, came tantalisingly close to securing her hold on the power of the crown. And between the 12th and the 15th centuries three more exceptional women - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou - discovered, as queens consort and dowager, how much was possible if the presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly.The stories of these women - told here in all their vivid humanity - illustrate the paradox which the female heirs to the Tudor throne had no choice but to negotiate. Man was the head of woman; and the king was the head of all. How, then, could a woman be king, how could royal power lie in female hands?

    To everyone's great surprise, this playboy prince sobered up and became an extremely effective leader and the founder of England's modern monarchy. For readers of Sally Bedell Smith's Elizabeth the Queen and Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great."This is not only the best biography of King Edward VII; it's also one of the best books about royalty ever published." So began the London Independent's review of this wonderfully entertaining biography of Britain's playboy king-a Prince Charles of the Victorian age, only a lot more fun-who waited for nearly six decades to get his chance to rule. A notorious gambler, glutton and womanizer (he was dubbed "Edward the Caresser"), the world was his oyster as this aging Prince of Wales took advantage of his royal entitlements to travel, hunt, socialize, over-indulge-he smoked a dozen cigars a day-and bed a string of mistresses and married women in addition to his own wife. His mother Queen Victoria despaired: "Bertie, I grieve to say, shows more and more how totally, totally unfit he is for ever becoming king." And yet by the time he died in 1910, after only nine years on the throne, he had proven to be a hard working, effective king and an ace diplomat, at home and abroad.A bestseller in the UK, this "exhaustively researched, richly colorful and wittily observed biography" (the London Sunday Times) is a tremendously entertaining read for history buffs and royal watchers.