Cecil Beaton was a man of dazzling charm and style, and his talents were many. At the age of twenty he sent Vogue an out-of focus snap of a college play, and for the next half-century and more he kept readers of the magazine up to date on all the various activities of his career.

Conde Nast, the owner of Vogue, convinced Beaton to abandon his pocket Kodak, and his resulting photographic work earned him a place among the great chroniclers of fashion. Witty and inventive, he also designed settings for plays and films--and for himself--and as a writer he was an...

From her childhood, overshadowed by the marital upheavals of her father Henry VIII, and the tragic first encounter with courtship, to the fantastical flirtations of her old age, Elizabeth refused to commit herself to any man. During the marriage negotiations, which spanned half a century, romance blended with diplomacy as one illustrious suitor after another endeavoured to ally himself to her in the most intimate of treaties.

Sought after by some of the most powerful men in...