PENQUIN BOOKS
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‘Absorbing, well-researched, part-serious enquiry, part-rollicking
anecdote’ Sarah Bradford, Evening Standard
‘Entertaining,… will certainly confound’ London Lite
‘Offers a fascinating perspective of monarchs throughout the ages’
Big Issue
‘Ruffles a few ostrich feathers’ Time Out
‘A highly readable and highly entertaining romp’ Tablet
PENQUIN BOOKS
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First published by Viking 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007
1
Copyright © Jeremy Paxman,
2006 All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint extracts from the following
works: The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw, reprinted by kind permission of the Society
of Authors, on behalf of the Estate of Bernard Shaw. And They Call It Cricket by
John Osborne, copyright the Arvon Foundation. Elizabeth by Sarah Bradford, copyright
Sarah Bradford 1996 and 2002, reprinted by kind permission of Gillon Aitken Associates.
Great Contemporaries by Winston S. Churchill, reproduced by kind permission of Curtis
Brown Ltd, on behalf of the Estate of Winston Churchill. Every effort has been made to
contact copyright holders, but the author and publisher would be happy to correct any error
of omission or commission at the earliest opportunity
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90376–7
1. First, Find a Throne
2. Next, Produce an Heir
3. .Learning to be Regal
4. Now Find a Consort
5. Marshals and Mannequins
6. Being God’s Anointed
7. Killing a King
8. Divine Right and Diviner Impotence
9. We are You
10. The Happiness Business
11. Gilded but Gelded
12. The End of the Line?
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index