King Charles I


Book Description

A biography of the British monarch examines his upbringing, personality, and the events that led to his downfall







King Charles


Book Description

An exhaustive and revealing biography of Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III, with fresh reporting by the journalist the Wall Street Journal dubbed “the Godfather of royal reporting.” With exclusive interviews and extensive research, King Charles delivers definitive insight into the extraordinary life of His Royal Highness, former Prince of Wales, as he takes the throne, a watershed moment in modern history and in the British monarchy. New York Times bestselling author Robert Jobson debunks the myths about the man who became king, going beyond banal, bogus media caricatures of Charles to tell his true story. Jobson—who has spent nearly thirty years chronicling the House of Windsor, and has met Charles on countless occasions—received unprecedented cooperation from Clarence House, what was the Prince’s office, in writing this illuminating biography. King Charles divulges the full range of Charles’s profoundly held political beliefs: the United Kingdom’s special relationship to the United States, climate change, Brexit, and immigration—to ultimately portray the kind of monarch Charles III will be. Jobson taps a number of sources close to the now-King who have never spoken on the record before, plus members of the Royal Household who have served Charles during his decades of public life. This comprehensive profile also reveals the late Queen Elizabeth’s plans to transition Charles to the throne; how at her insistence he already reads all government briefings; and why he feels it is his constitutional duty to relay his thoughts to ministers in his controversial “black spider memos.” Moreover, King Charles reveals the truth about Charles's deeply loving but occasionally volatile relationship with his second wife and chief supporter, Camilla. The result is an intriguing new portrait of a man who at last has become king.




To Catch A King: Charles II's Great Escape


Book Description

How did the most wanted man in the country outwit the greatest manhunt in British history?




The White King


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the tragic story of Charles I, his warrior queen, Britain's civil wars and the trial for his life. Less than forty years after England's golden age under Elizabeth I, the country was at war with itself. Split between loyalty to the Crown or to Parliament, war raged on English soil. The English Civil War would set family against family, friend against friend, and its casualties were immense--a greater proportion of the population died than in World War I. At the head of the disintegrating kingdom was King Charles I. In this vivid portrait -- informed by previously unseen manuscripts, including royal correspondence between the king and his queen -- Leanda de Lisle depicts a man who was principled and brave, but fatally blinkered. Charles never understood his own subjects or court intrigue. At the heart of the drama were the Janus-faced cousins who befriended and betrayed him -- Henry Holland, his peacocking servant whose brother, the New England colonialist Robert Warwick, engineered the king's fall; and Lucy Carlisle, the magnetic 'last Boleyn girl' and faithless favorite of Charles's maligned and fearless queen. The tragedy of Charles I was that he fell not as a consequence of vice or wickedness, but of his human flaws and misjudgments. The White King is a story for our times, of populist politicians and religious war, of manipulative media and the reshaping of nations. For Charles it ended on the scaffold, condemned as a traitor and murderer, yet lauded also as a martyr, his reign destined to sow the seeds of democracy in Britain and the New World.




The Trial of Charles I


Book Description

Eyewitness accounts of the trial and execution of Charles I portray a revolutionary moment in English history




Royal Renegades


Book Description

Publishers Weekly called Katherine the Queen “Rich, perceptive, and creative.” In Royal Renegades, Porter examines the turbulent lives of the children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars. The fact that the English Civil War led to the execution of King Charles I in January 1649 is well known, as is the restoration of his eldest son as Charles II eleven years later. But what happened to the king’s six surviving children is far less familiar. Casting new light on the heirs of the doomed king, acclaimed historian Linda Porter brings to life their personalities, legacies, and rivalries for the first time. As their family life was shattered by war, Elizabeth and Henry were used as pawns in the parliamentary campaign against their father; Mary, the Princess Royal, was whisked away to the Netherlands as the child bride of the Prince of Orange; Henriette, Anne’s governess, escaped with the king’s youngest child to France where she eventually married the cruel and flamboyant Philippe d’Orleans. When their "dark and ugly" brother Charles eventually succeeded his father to the English throne after fourteen years of wandering, he promptly enacted a vengeful punishment on those who had spurned his family, with his brother James firmly in his shadow. A tale of love and endurance, of battles and flight, of educations disrupted, the lonely death of a young princess and the wearisome experience of exile, Royal Renegades charts the fascinating story of the children of loving parents who could not protect them from the consequences of their own failings as monarchs and the forces of upheaval sweeping England.




Killers of the King


Book Description

Examines the lives of the men who signed Charles I's death warrant and the far-reaching consequences for them, those present at the trial, and England itself.




A Coffin for King Charles


Book Description




Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland


Book Description

A biography of the king who is remembered by the English with more popular affection than any almost any other. Covering his entire life, it takes in his colourful years as a prince and as an exiled monarch during the Civil War and Interregnum, in addition to his later career as effective ruler of three kingdoms.