"Since William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel in 1066 to defeat King Harold II and unite England's various kingdoms, forty-one kings and queens have sat on Britain's throne: "shining examples of royal power and majesty alongside a rogue's gallery of weak, lazy, or evil monarchs," as Tracy Borman evocatively describes them in her sparkling chronicle, Crown & Sceptre. Ironically, during very few of these 955 years has the...

The #1 New York Times bestselling, controversial portrait of the British royal family — as told from behind the palace walls — for fans of Netflix's The Crown and all royal watchers
They are the most chronicled family on the face of the globe. Their every move attracts headlines. Now Kitty Kelley has gone behind the scenes at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Kensington Palace to raise the curtain on the men and women...

A concise, thousand-year history of the lives and contributions of England's royal leaders shares such information as William the Conqueror's struggles with cholera and Queen Anne's need to be carried to her coronation.

The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this history, Jones resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world.

Product Description: This is the first major biography for a generation of a truly formidable king-a man born to rule England, who believed that it was his right to rule all of Britain. His reign was one of the most dramatic and important of the entire Middle Ages, leading to war and conquest on an unprecedented scale, and leaving a legacy of division between the peoples of Britain that has lasted from his day to our own. Edward I is familiar to millions...

King John is one of those historical characters who needs little in the way of introduction. If readers are not already familiar with him as the tyrant whose misgovernment gave rise to Magna Carta, we remember him as the villain in the stories of Robin Hood. Formidable and cunning, but also cruel, lecherous, treacherous and untrusting. Twelve years into his reign, John was regarded as a powerful king within the British Isles.

St. Martin's Griffin is proud to reissue acclaimed biographer Carolly Erickson's lives of the Tudor monarchs. In this full-scale popular biography of Henry VIII, Carolly Erickson re-creates the extravagant life and times of one of history's most complex and fascinating men. Based on voluminous records of the period, the story of Henry's life covers his troubled youth, his triumphant early reign, and his agonizing old age. Against the lively backdrop...

"From one of the most beloved and distinguished historians of the British monarchy, here is a lively, intimately detailed biography of a long-overlooked king who reimagined the Crown in the aftermath of World War I and whose marriage to the regal Queen Mary was an epic partnership"-- King George V reigned over the British Empire from 1910 to 1936. As a young man George seemed uninspired, but his reign was immensely consequential. He faced a constitutional...

In this hilarious book that takes history seriously, a British actor and comedian introduces England's earliest kings and queens, who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits, revealing a story of narcissists, inadequate self-control, excessive beheadings, uncivil wars and more.

"A monstrous injurer of heaven and earth," as Shakespeare referred to this powerful medieval matriarch, Eleanor of Aquitaine's reign as England's stormiest and most ambitious queen has never been matched. As the greatest heiress in Europe, she was in turn Queen of France and Queen of England; among her sons were Richard the Lionheart and King John. A magnificent independent ruler in her own right, she lost her power when she married Louis VII of...