Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Royalty

The eighteenth-century was long deemed 'the classical age of the constitution' in Britain, with cabinet government based on a two-party system of Whigs and Tories in Parliament, and a monarchy whose powers had been emasculated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. This study furthers the work of Sir Lewis Namier who argued in 1929 that no such party system existed, George III was not a cypher and that Parliament was an administration comprising of factions and opposition. George III was a high-profile and well-known character in British history whose policies have often been blamed for...

In Cupid and the King, Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent recounts the stories of five very different women, each of whom became a celebrated -- or notorious --...

More than just a window into the politics and power brokering of royal marriage, Crowned in a Far Country...

" Told with energy, perception and great charm. . . . For anyone who wants to . . . gain insight into the great cultural and political richness of Iran, past, present and future, this book is a marvelous introduction."
--Fred Halliday, Los Angeles Times

Iran was the first country in the Middle East to develop an oil industry, and oil has been central to its tumultuous twentieth-century history. A finalist for the PEN/West Award, Blood and Oil tells the epic inside story of the battle for Iranian oil. A prominent member of one of Iran's most powerful...

Shortly before 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 1, 1928, Europe gained a new kingdom and its only Muslim king: 32-year-old Zog I of the Albanians. Few foreign journalists were present in the Parliament House in Tirana to hear him swear his oath on the Koran and the Bible, yet the birth of the Kingdom of Albaniaa native monarchy, not an alien impositiondid not go unnoticed abroad.

King Zog (18951961) was a curiosity, and so he has remained: the most atypical European monarch of the twentieth century, a man entirely without royal connections who created his own kingdom. By contemporaries, he...

Barrett Beer here presents the first scholarly edition of Sir John Hayward's Life and Raigne of King Edward VI, the earliest biography of the last Tudor king. Originally published in 1630 and again in 1636, Hayward's account was reprinted in White Kennett's Complete History of England in 1706. Beer uses the printed editions and unpublished manuscripts to produce a more complete text of Hayward's book than has ever before appeared in print. In his introduction he examines the environment in which Hayward wrote and considers the influence this pioneering work has had on attitudes...

Louis XIV, the highly-feted Sun King, was renowned for his political and cultural influence and for raising France to a new level of prominence in seventeenth-century Europe. And yet, as Antonia Fraser keenly describes, he was equally legendary in the domestic sphere. Indeed, a panoply of women his mother, Anne; mistresses such as Louise de la Valliere, Athenais de Montespan, and the puritanical Madame de Maintenon; and an array of courtesans moved in and out of the court. The highly visible presence of these women raises many questions about their position in both Louis XIV s life and in...

When Charles Stuart was a young child, it seemed unlikely that he would survive, let alone become ruler of England and Scotland. Once shy and retiring, an awkward stutterer, he grew in stature and confidence under the guidance of the Duke of Buckingham; his marriage to Henrietta of Spain, originally planned to end the conflict between the two nations, became, after rocky beginnings, a true love match. Charles I is best remembered for having started the English Civil War in 1642 which led to his execution for treason, the end of the monarchy, and the establishment of a commonwealth until...