Gimson's Kings & Queens: Brief Lives of the Monarchs Since 1066
Andrew Grimson
NEWLY REVISED AND UPDATED
A book for all lovers of history: the experienced and the novice, the serious and the silly.
Gimson's Kings and Queens whirls us through the lives of our monarchs - from 1066 and William the Conqueror right up to Queen Elizabeth II and the present-day - to tell a tale of bastardy, courage, conquest, brutality, vanity, vulgarity, corruption, anarchy, absenteeism, piety, nobility, divorce, execution, civil war, madness, magnificence, profligacy, frugality, philately, abdication, dutifulness, family breakdown and family recovery.
Written in Andrew Gimson's inimitable style, and illustrated by Martin Rowson, this is both a primer and a refresher for anyone who can't quite remember which were the good and bad Edwards or Henrys, or why so-and-so succeeded to the throne rather than his second cousin.
'The most entertaining and instructive book on the English monarchy you will ever read' Daily Telegraph
Product Details
About Andrew Grimson
Reviews for Gimson's Kings & Queens: Brief Lives of the Monarchs Since 1066
Marcus Berkmann
Spectator
What is most valuable is the way this turns out to be the neatest and most revealing way to tell the story of this country. The chapter on Henry VIII, for example, is a masterpiece of vivid narrative, which somehow manages to dramatise, in ten pages, so many factors about why we are who we are
Charles Moore, author of Margaret Thatcher
Telegraph
Gimson's Kings and Queens is unfailingly entertaining and frequently moving. In addition, the monarchs are wonderfully caricatured in all their sneers and jowls by political cartoonist Martin Rowson
Suzi Feay
London Magazine
The most entertaining and instructive book on the English monarchy you will ever read
Daily Telegraph
[An] entertaining romp through England’s monarchs… an amusing, quirky reminder of what older generations were taught at school. Gimson's Kings and Queens is the natural successor to Sellar and Yeatman's 1930 classic, 1066 and All That
Tim Bouverie
Sunday Telegraph