The genuine love match between Prince William and Kate Middleton has rekindled enthusiasm for the British monarchy. In the past, young princes reluctantly entered into arranged marriages and took mistresses. Perdita Robinson, a famous actress, was enticed from the stage with promises of money to live with the fickle Prince of Wales, who turned her and her child onto the street. Perdita fought back, won a financial settlement and became a pioneer of women's writing. Edward VII's most fascinating mistresses were aristocrats' wives like the multi-talented unconventional Lady Jennie Churchill, mother of Winston, and the headstrong heiress, Daisy, Countess of Warwick, mother of one of Edward's love children. Beautiful Alice Keppel became the love of Edward's life and was the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, yet another royal mistress. Edward's grandson, Edward VIII suffered an attack of mumps that left him physically and mentally immature. He implored Mrs Freda Dudley Ward to elope but she refused. Another mistress, Lady Thelma Furness, star of Hollywood's silent screen, introduced Edward to the domineering Wallis Simpson who insisted the impotent king seek psychiatric help. In order that Wallis could look like a queen the Duke of Windsor lavished her with jewels and forgave her infidelities in this most intriguing of all royal stories.

'An engaging story' – The Spectator Geneva, April 1987. The staid Swiss town is awash with limousines, journalists and minor European aristocracy. All the best hotels and restaurants are bursting at the seams. Caviar, truffles and foie gras are in short supply, while champagne is flooding the market at ridiculously high prices. They are all focused on one place: Sotheby's auction house, which is preparing to host the 'auction of the century' – that of the late Duchess of Windsor's jewellery collection. But where did this treasure trove come from? And was it ever really the Duchess' at all? Questions have circulated around the collection's murky provenance since the moment Wallis Simpson stepped onto the scene; now, for the first time, The King's Loot looks to find the answers. Drawing on eyewitness interviews, contemporary accounts and previously unpublished sources, Richard Wallace – who was there at that notorious Swiss auction – delves into the mystery surrounding this hoard.

Attractive Nell Tritton was determined to embrace a life of adventure after her elder siblings died in the 1919 flu pandemic. She became Brisbane’s first female journalist and won prizes for rally driving before moving to Paris, met struggling writers and fell in love with a penniless Tsarist officer. Warned by her wealthy father to avoid fortune hunters, Nell married after a whirlwind courtship. She wrote Tales from the Left Bank but her publisher demanded sexual privileges so she sold individual chapters as short stories. Her spy novel set against the infamous ‘Lockhart plot’ to kill Lenin in September 1918 was banned under the Official Secrets Act. When divorced, Nell worked in Paris for the former Russian Prime Minister, Alexander Kerensky who edited an anti-Communist anti-Hitler newspaper. Her rally driving skills saved her husband from Stalin’s assassins in a harrowing car chase through the narrow streets of Montparnasse. As the Germans invaded Paris, Kerensky was on Hitler’s death list and they joined a long queue of cars heading south. German planes bombed cars and machine-gunned their drivers so they sheltered in a ditch with only polluted water to drink. Eventually they reached the coast and were rescued by a British warship. The American government financed their passage to New York, where Kerensky became an advisor on Russian affairs and they were treated like royalty by exiled Russians. Nell suffered kidney damage as a result of drinking polluted water. They returned to Brisbane for the last months of Nell’s life when her family home became a centre of international intrigue.

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, made history when she married Prince Harry in a genuine love match, as the first divorced, bi-racial American woman to be welcomed into the British royal family. But for centuries it was accepted that princes married virginal aristocrats for dynastic reasons (and often the large dowries of their brides) and few arranged royal marriages were happy. Most kings and princes took mistresses – or, in the case of Edward II and James I, male lovers. Royal wives were used as baby factories and if found to be unfaithful could be beheaded or have the lover murdered. Prince George of Wales (later George IV) married for money but found his bride, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, physically repulsive, and his marriage became the first War of the Wales. This fascinating book is now able to tell the full story of the second War of the Wales – the tragic mismatch of Prince Charles and Princess Diana which ended in 'Camillagate' and divorce. Now, decades later, the Queen has relaxed the ancient rules, allowing Prince Charles to marry his mistress and the Queen's grandsons, William and Harry to marry for love, in a significant change in royal history.

This book will look at the phenomenon of celebrity hookers in the eighteenth century – all of them the subject of extraordinary press scrutiny and comment. They were the fashion icons of the age, and what they wore was copied and put on sale in the high street within days. Many of them were passed around within the same small circle of aristocratic lovers. They were the object of constant gossip and whether they were flaunting their fame by taking a box at the opera for the entire season, or by parading through Hyde Park in a phaeton pulled by matching cream ponies, or returning from Paris wearing the very latest fashions, they enjoyed a celebrity status nowadays bestowed on TV reality stars and footballers’ wives.

Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 800 cross-referenced entries that cover significant events, places, institutions, and other aspects of British culture, economics, politics, and society.

Swashbuckler, daredevil racing-car champion, Winter Olympian, gambler, smuggler, scoundrel, stud and suspected Nazi agent who died a mysterious death - this is the fascinating story of the scandalous Freddie McEvoy. Born in Melbourne in 1907, Freddie's life took him from socialising with a young Errol Flynn in Sydney and on to the French Riviera in the heady years leading up to World War II. With his dashing good looks and charm, Freddie lived a swashbuckling life, quickly figuring out his path to easy fortune was through lonely rich women. World War II didn't stop Freddie's hedonistic pursuits - he skipped enlistment for Australia and Britain to party on in Hollywood, where he renewed his friendship with the now infamous Errol Flynn. Always short of cash, Freddie smuggled guns and diamonds on his yacht between California and Mexico and was rumoured to have worked as a spy. It was a life lived large and Freddie's death in 1951 was under the most mysterious circumstances off the coast of Morocco: his body was found naked and scalped . . . Frank Walker, bestselling author of The Tiger Man of Vietnam and Maralinga, has for the first time uncovered the complete, outrageous and incredible true story of Freddie McEvoy, Australia's daredevil lothario. 'Freddie was one of the great livers of life. He lived it the way he saw it - he didn't give a hoot.'Errol Flynn 'Pleasure is my business.' Freddie McEvoy 'an extraordinary yarn . . . finely researched' Sun-Herald on Frank Walker's Ghost Platoon

A must-buy book for everyone interested in history and skeletons in the regal cupboards. Discover fascinating facts about lust, greed, murder, envy and just plain stupidity. Read King Henry VIIIs scurrilous letters to Anne Boleyn (thought he was interested in her mind? Think again). Whilst King Charles II was known as the Merry Monarch and Queen Elizabeth Is nickname, the Virgin Queen was rumored to be a misnomer, there was a darker side to the royal family, including murder and regicide was Queen Victorias son really Jack the Ripper or did her surgeon do it? History will come alive with this fact-filled book.

The four Hanoverian King Georges may have become fixed in history as 'faintly absurd, certainly unattractive, figures' but in this colourful account of their lives and times, families and courts, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson restores a sprinkling of credit where it has been due. His account does not neglect the marital discords of George I, the towering paternal disdain of George II or the tragically misunderstood 'madness' of George III. But the reader is also encouraged to consider how the Hanoverian monarchs reacted to the climate of art and fashion in their times, from George II's espousal of Handel to George IV's patronage of Beau Brummell. By its own admission not a comprehensive history, Blood Royal is nevertheless an elegant and shining string of linked vignettes and short studies.