Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Royalty

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from beloved historian Alison Weir. The war between the houses of Lancaster and York was characterised by treachery, deceit, and bloody battles. Alison Weir's lucid and gripping account focuses on the human side of history. At the centre of the book stands Henry VI, the pious king whose mental instability led to political chaos, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who took up her arms in her husband's cause and battled in a violent man's world.

In A Royal Duty, Paul Burrell reveals the truth about Princess Diana, as well as a faithful account of her thoughts. He was the favourite footman who formed a unique relationship with the Queen. He was the butler who the Princess of Wales called "my rock" and "the only man I can trust". He was accused of theft, then acquitted following the historic intervention of the monarch. He was the Princess' most intimate confidant.

Who was the real Diana? What was it like to be so privileged yet so anguished, so beloved yet so self-loathing, so spoiled yet so despairing? The Princess of Wales was all these things--far more complicated, conflicted, and intriguing a person than the wildly disparate saint or lunatic she is frequently portrayed to be.

A balanced account of game changes, conflicts and ambitions. The fall from popular grace of the previously adulated brother of the heir to the British throne as a consequence of his marriage to a beautiful and dynamic Hollywood starlet of colour makes for fascinating listening in best-selling royal author Lady Colin Campbell's balanced account. Lady Colin knows her royal history and psychology, and as the first seven years of her adult life were spent in the USA, she has a foot in both the American and British camps. 

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother has been called the 'most successful queen since Cleopatra'. Her personality was so captivating that even her arch-enemy, Wallis Simpson, wrote about 'her legendary charm'. Portrayed as a selfless partner to the king in the Oscar-winning movie The King's Speech, The Queen Mother is most often remembered from her later years as the smiling granny with the pastel hats. When she died in 2002, just short of her 102nd birthday, she was praised for a long life well lived. But there was another side to her story.

The fifteenth century was a turbulent age: the Hundred Years War between England and France, and the Wars of the Roses dominated the lives of people both inside and out of the royal courts. Joan of Navarre, Katherine of Valois, Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Wydeville and Anne Neville were the queens who stood by England's sovereigns, caught up in wars that changed the course of their lives, and the course of history. They were also formidable women who defied the limitations of their times, often living out the brutal consequences of their determination.

The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, queen seductresses, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe - these determined women often broke through medieval constraints to exercise power and influence, for good and sometimes for ill.

The remarkable, moving story of Prince Philip's mother by eminent biographer Hugo Vickers, updated in this new edition - for fans of Kingmaker and The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse Princess Alice, mother of Prince Phillip, was something of a mystery figure even within her own...

King Henry IV survived at least eight plots to dethrone or kill him in the first six years of his reign. However, he had not always been so unpopular. In his youth he had been a great chivalric champion and crusader. In 1399, at the age of 32, he was greeted as the saviour of the realm when he ousted from power the tyrannical King Richard II. But Henry had to contend with men who supported him only as long as they could control him; when they failed, they plotted to kill him. Adversaries also tried to take advantage of his questionable right to the crown. 

Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, later Princess Henry of Battenberg, was the last-born - in 1866 - of Victoria and Albert's children and she would outlive all of her siblings to die as recently as 1944. Her childhood coincided with her mother's extended period of mourning for her prematurely deceased husband, a circumstance which may have contributed to Victoria's determination to keep her youngest daughter as close to her as possible. She would eventually marry Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885, but only after overcoming her mother's opposition to their union.

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, as Alison Weir shows in this gripping group biography of England's fourteenth-century consorts. Using personal letters and wonderfully vivid sources, Alison Weir evokes the lives of five remarkable queens: Marguerite of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois.

In this ground-breaking audiobook, Ian Mortimer portrays Henry in the pivotal year of his reign. Recording the dramatic events of 1415, he offers the fullest, most precise and least romanticised view we have of Henry and what he did. At the centre of the narrative is the campaign which culminated in the battle of Agincourt: a slaughter ground intended not to advance England’s interests directly but to demonstrate God’s approval of Henry’s royal authority on both sides of the Channel. 

In the first volume of this epic new series, Alison Weir strips away centuries of romantic mythology and prejudice to reveal the lives of England's queens in the century after the Norman Conquest. Beginning with Matilda of Flanders, who supported William the Conqueror in 1066, to the turbulent life of the Empress Maud, who claimed to be queen of England in her own right and fought a bitter war to that end, the five Norman queens emerge as hugely influential figures and fascinating characters.

She came to the throne in 1952 when Britain had a far-flung empire, sweets were rationed, mums stayed home and kids played on bombsites. Seventy years on, everything has changed utterly—except the Queen herself, ageing far more gracefully than the fractious nation over which she so lightly presides. How did we get from there to here in a single reign? To cancel culture, anti-vaxxers and Twitter feeds? Matthew Engel tells the story—starting with the years from Churchill to Thatcher—with his own light touch and a wealth of fascinating, forgotten, often funny detail.

Political intriguers. Abducted nuns who demanded divorces. Murderers. Our princesses have been mothers willing to risk anything for their children, wives who followed their husbands to the very ends of earth, and spinsters who demanded their intellectual and societal freedom. This book explores what it meant to be royal, how sons came to be valued higher than daughters, and just how England might have looked under a royal matriarchy.

The imprisonment and execution of Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, in 1536 was unprecedented in English history and never before has there been a book devoted entirely to her fall. But here Alison Weir has reassessed the evidence and created a richly researched and detailed portrait of the last days of one of the most influential and important figures in English history.

Elizabeth I is one of England's most famous monarchs, whose story as the ‘Virgin Queen' is well known. But queenship was by no means a certain path for Henry VIII's younger daughter, who spent the majority of her early years as a girl with an uncertain future. Before she was three years old Elizabeth had been both a princess and then a bastard following the brutal execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn. 

Firstborn son of a warrior father who defeated the French at Agincourt, Henry VI of the House Lancaster inherited the crown not only of England but also of France, at a time when Plantagenet dominance over the Valois dynasty was at its glorious height. And yet, by the time he was done to death in the Tower of London in 1471, France was lost, his throne had been seized by his rival, Edward IV of the House of York, and his kingdom had descended into the violent chaos of the Wars of the Roses.

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicized affair with the poet Lord Byron—he was 24, she 26. Her phrase 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' became his lasting epitaph. Antonia Fraser's biography animates the life of 'a free spirit' who was far more than mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Few figures in British history have been so deeply and so consequentially involved with the British royal family as Winston Spencer Churchill. While numerous men of stature have advised kings and queens during their reigns, Churchill is unique in his role: helping to shape not only a single reign but an entire royal dynasty. However, it was by no means a seamless relationship. At times, the royal family treated him with suspicion and contempt; at others, their relations were avuncular, competitive and cheering.