"Monarchs : they're just like us. They entertain their friends and eat and worry about money. Henry VIII tripped over his dogs. George II threw his son out of the house. James I had to cut back on the alcohol bills. In Behind the Throne, historian AdrianTinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking the reader on a remarkable journey from one Queen Elizabeth to another and exploring life as it was lived by clerks...

The Story of Britain is an accessible one-volume history that clearly depicts Britain's origins - and to explain how the past shaped the nation's current identity. He begins the story of Britain from the very earliest recorded Celtic times, and with this new edition has now brought it up to date via the Blair years and into the present day of Brexit Britain. A magnificently eloquent volume, the narrative chronicles two thousand years of Britain's...

Known for its advances in literature, industrialization, politics, and science, the Victorian era was a prominent time in British history. However, author Lytton Strachey remembers Queen Victoria as a person instead of just focusing on her accomplishments. First starting with a brief history of her predecessors and origins, Victoria was crowned just as she came of age. Having only been eighteen, Queen Victoria was widely unfamiliar to her subjects...

Acclaimed historian A. N. Wilson gives a sweeping, definitive biography of one of the most recognizable yet enigmatic monarchs of all time. The longest reigning British monarch and female sovereign in history, Queen Victoria was a figure of profound paradox who has mystified historians for over a century. Now in this magisterial biography, A. N. Wilson rebukes the conventional wisdom about her life-that she was merely a "funny little woman in a bonnet"...

Recreates twenty-four of the most important days in Queen Victoria's life to explore her myriad roles as they reflected her defiance of gender conventions and defining position in a time of extraordinary change and political resistance.

A riveting and authoritative history of the single most important event in English history: the Norman Conquest.

When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, many proclaimed the start of a new Elizabethan Age. Few had any inkling, however, of the stupendous changes that would occur over the next fifty years, both in Britain and around the world. In Our Times, A. N. Wilson takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through postwar Britain. With his acute eye not just for the broad social and cultural sweep but also for the telling detail, he brilliantly distills...

The notable characteristic of the royal families of Europe is that they have so very little of anything remotely resembling true power. Increasingly, they tend towards the condition of pipsqueak principalities like Liechtenstein and Monaco-fancy-dress fodder for magazines that survive by telling us things we did not need to know about people we have hardly heard of. How then have kings and queens come to exercise the mesmeric hold they have upon...

In this companion biography to the acclaimed "Victoria", A.N. Wilson offers a deeply textured and ambitious portrait of Prince Albert, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the royal consort's birth. "For more than six decades, Queen Victoria ruled a great empire at the height of its power. Beside her for more than twenty of those years was the love of her life, her trusted husband and father of their nine children, Prince Albert. While...

Serving Victoria follows the lives of six members of her household, from the governess to the royal children, from her maid of honor to her chaplain and her personal physician -- Front jacket flap.