The Kings and Queens of England - Tapa dura

From the reign of Alfred the Great - the first king of Wessex to call himself 'king of England' - in the ninth century, to the shock of Norman invasion in the 11th, and from the brutal vicissitudes of late medieval kingship to the comfortable ceremonial of modern-day constitutional monarchy, the story of England's kings and queens is to a large degree that of England herself. The Kings and Queens of England offers elegant portraits of 59 English monarchs from Harold II to Henry VIII, and from Æthelred the Unready to Elizabeth II. Each sovereign is concisely and memorably profiled and the impact of his or her rule on wider English history clearly described and analysed. For every king and queen there is a detailed timeline of key events, and the narrative is further amplified by display quotations, feature boxes, panels of key biographical facts, and - last but not least - by 150 lavish full-colour images. Author Ian Crofton recounts a 1000-year tale of murder, invasion, usurpation, adultery, divorce, civil war and revolution in a manner that is as entertaining as it is informative. The Kings and Queens of England is the perfect choice for anyone looking for an illustrated and accessible history of the English monarchy from the Anglo-Saxon era to the present.

A former editor-in-chief of The Guinness Encyclopedia, Ian Crofton's authorial credits include Brewer's Britain and Ireland, the 2nd edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable, Brewer's Cabinet of Curiosities, and, for Quercus, History Withourt the Boring Bits. He lives in North London with his family and a number of whippets.