Biography: royalty

Showing 1–16 of 23 results

  • Aethelred II

    £12.99

    Aethelred II

    A biography of Aethelred II

    £12.99
  • Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I

    £12.99

    Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I

    One of the most extraordinary mother and daughter stories of all time – Anne Boleyn, the most famous of Henry VIII’s wives and her daughter Elizabeth, the ‘Virgin Queen’.

    SKU: 9781399705110 Category: Tag:
    £12.99
  • Clarissa

    £30.00

    Clarissa

    Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon, wife of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, once famously said: ‘For the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing-room.’ With her impressive intellect and acerbic wit, she was a highly influential muse to many leading figures over several decades. At Oxford in the 1940s she fascinated dons and undergraduates alike. She went on to work in the film world for Alexander Korda and for George Weidenfeld at Contact Magazine. She was a close friend of Cecil Beaton, James Pope-Hennessy, Lucian Freud, Isaiah Berlin, and Lord Goodman. She fascinated Greta Garbo. After an early Bohemian life, she became a politically active wife to Eden when he was Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, particularly during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Her death at 101 in 2021 has opened the way for this enthralling and revealing biography by the widely admired biographer Hugo Vickers.

    £30.00
  • Cnut

    £7.99

    Cnut

    Cnut, or Canute, was King of England for nearly 20 years, dying in Dorset in 1035. A formidable figure, Cnut is one of the great ‘what ifs’ in English history. The culmination of a long period of Viking attacks and settlement across England, Cnut’s reign could have permanently shifted 11th century England’s orbit to Scandinavia. Stretching his authority across the North Sea to become king of Denmark and Norway, and with close links to Ireland and an overlordship of Scotland, Cnut created a Viking Empire at least as plausible as the Anglo-Norman Empire that would emerge in 1066. Ryan Lavelle’s book explores this fascinating and powerful man. He has popularly come down to us for the story of Canute and the waves – but he was a nation and empire builder on the grandest scale and his reign is a sort of masterclass in the contingent, wayward nature of history.

    £7.99
  • Cooking and the crown

    £30.00

    Cooking and the crown

    Blending history, monarchy, and gastronomy, Tom Parker Bowles guides the reader on an adventure across royal culinary history. From breakfasts, picnic lunches and dinners, to coronations and state banquets, ‘Cooking and the Crown’ showcases an abundance of beloved royal recipes for all seasons and occasions. Sophisticated creations feature alongside dishes of surprising simplicity, combining historical insights with modern tastes. Each chapter is accompanied by fascinating tales of royal kitchens, chefs and culinary traditions. Weaving together material from the royal archives, contemporary accounts and personal insight, Tom Parker Bowles paints a vivid picture of royal tastes and traditions, as far back as Victorian times.

    £30.00
  • George III

    £8.99

    George III

    King of Britain for 60 years and the last king of the future United States, George III has traditionally had a bad press as the villain of Whig history and for America’s Founding Fathers a monarch of madness – and, more recently, a figure of fun and menace in the musical Hamilton. Black turns back to the archives and instead locates George within his age as a man of duty and piety, and a king who faced the loss of key colonies, rebellion in Ireland, insurrection in London, constitutional crisis in Britain and an existential threat from Revolutionary France as part of modern Britain’s longest period of war. George III rose to these challenges with fortitude and helped settle parliamentary monarchy as an effective governmental system, eventually becoming the most popular monarch for well over a century. He was also a talented and curious individual, committed to music, art and science.

    £8.99
  • Heirs of ambition

    £20.00

    Heirs of ambition

    This book explores how the Boleyn family were able to go from being Norfolk farmers to aristocracy at a time when it was unheard of for families to do so

    £20.00
  • Henry VIII

    £7.99

    Henry VIII

    Henry VIII’s reign transformed the physical and spiritual landscape of England. Magnificent, tyrannical, a strong ruler, a ‘pillager of the commonwealth’, this most notorious of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the church in Rome; a talented, charismatic, imposing figure who nevertheless could not bear to meet people’s eyes when he talked to them. In this revealing new account, John Guy explores how Henry himself understood the world and his place in it – from his sheltered and increasingly isolated upbringing and the blazing glory of his accession; to his desperate quest for recognition, fame and an heir, and the terrifying paranoia of his last, agonising, 54-inch-waisted years – and in doing so casts new light on his choice of wives and ministers, his impact on the European stage, and his extraordinary legacy.

    £7.99
  • Izabela the Valiant

    £25.00

    Izabela the Valiant

    Trawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Adam Zamoyski has revealed the dramatic life of his great-great-great grandmother, an uneducated, vulnerable girl cast into a man’s world.

    SKU: 9780008521684 Category: Tags: ,
    £25.00
  • Margaret of Anjou

    £22.99

    Margaret of Anjou

    Margaret of Anjou ruled England but lost the Wars of the Roses and her reputation. She was reviled as a murderer and adulterer, This biography restores her rightful place as a powerful medieval queen.

    SKU: 9781445683584 Category: Tags: ,
    £22.99
  • Matilda II

    £25.00

    Matilda II

    Joanna Arman shines a new light on the life and legacy of a forgotten Queen.

    SKU: 9781526794222 Category: Tag:
    £25.00
  • Power and glory

    £25.00

    Power and glory

    ‘Power and Glory’ brings us to the dramatic conclusion of Larman’s ‘Windsors trilogy’. It begins with the fallout from the revelation of the Duke of Windsor’s wartime treachery, and ends with the Coronation of Elizabeth II on the 2nd of June 1953. In between, it depicts a monarchy – and a country – struggling to cope with the aftermath of World War Two, in an era where old certainties have been replaced by the rise of a new, uncertain world, and where love, tragedy and modernity battle for supremacy.

    SKU: 9781399615525 Category: Tag:
    £25.00
  • Queen Victoria and her prime ministers

    £30.00

    Queen Victoria and her prime ministers

    It is generally accepted that Queen Victoria reigned but did not rule. This couldn’t be more wrong.

    £30.00
  • Queens of the age of chivalry

    £10.99

    Queens of the age of chivalry

    Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies, yet many of the Plantagenet queens of the high middle ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex. Using personal letters and wonderfully vivid sources, Alison Weir evokes the lives of five remarkable queens and brilliantly recreates this truly dramatic period of history.

    SKU: 9781784701888 Category: Tags: ,
    £10.99
  • The eagle and the hart

    £35.00

    The eagle and the hart

    Richard of Bordeaux & Henry Bolingbroke were first cousins, born just three months apart. Their two lives were from the beginning entwined. When they were still children, Richard was crowned King Richard II with Henry at his side, carrying the sword of state: a ten-year-old lord in the service of his ten-year-old king. Yet, as the animals on their heraldic badges showed, they grew up to be opposites: Richard was the white hart, a narcissist, & Henry the eagle, a chivalric hero, a leader who inspired loyalty where Richard inspired only fear. Henry had all the qualities Richard lacked, all the qualities a sovereign needed, bar one: birth right. Increasingly threatened by his cousin, Richard became consumed by the need for total power, in a time of constant conspiracies, rebellions & reprisals. When he banished Henry into exile, the stage was set for a final confrontation, as Richard became the tyrant & Henry his usurper.

    £35.00
  • The history of England

    £5.00

    The history of England

    Jane Austen, one of the nation’s most beloved authors, whose face adorns our currency, surely needs no introduction, but while many are familiar with her groundbreaking novels, few have come across her short burlesque work The History of England. Billed a history ‘from the reign of Henry IV to Charles I by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian’, ‘The History of England’ pokes fun at the overly verbose and grand histories of Austen’s day. Written when she was just 15, this is a comic tour de force that shows Austen’s wit developing into the satirical prowess she is remembered for.

    SKU: 9781804470244 Category: Tags: ,
    £5.00