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Featured Book of the Month

Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters by Andrew Morton. Biography of Queen Elizabeth II and her drastically different sister - one resigned to duty, the other resistant to it. Published in March 2021.

For other books about Elizabeth II, click here. For books about Princess Margaret, click here.

New Royalty Books

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Published in April 2021

Queen Elizabeth II

The Queen: A Life in Pictures by Victoria Murphy, Town & Country. More than 300 photographs, with commentary from a royal journalist.

The Queen at 95: A Life in Pictures by Jack Harrison. Includes more than 400 images.

What Would HM the Queen Do? by Mary Killen. This small guide presents Queen Elizabeth II as a role model for navigating life's ups and downs.

British Royal History

Elizabeth I's Last Favourite: Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex by Sarah-Beth Watkins. Essex flattered the queen, but his love had undercurrents of selfishness and greed.

Visualising Protestant Monarchy: Ceremony, Art and Politics After the Glorious Revolution (1689-1714) by Julie Farguson. How the English people were persuaded to transfer their loyalties to a kingship rooted in Protestantism and Parliament.

Europe

Princess Olga of Yugoslavia: Her Life and Times by Robert Prentice. Olga's dramatic life included the assassination of her grandfather, the king of Greece, and a short engagement to the future king of Denmark.

Agathokles of Syracuse: Sicilian Tyrant and Hellenistic King by Christopher de Lisle. Agathokles ruled large areas of Italy between 317 and 289 BC. This is the first book-length study of him in English in over a century.

The Making of a King: Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon and the Greeks by Robin Waterfield. Charts Antigonus's conflicts with the Greeks and Ptolemy of Egypt.

Politics and Piety at the Royal Sites of the Spanish Monarchy in the Seventeenth Century edited by Jose Eloy Hortal Munoz. Institutions under royal control included residences, convent-palaces, and monasteries.

Napoleon: A Biography by Frank McLynn. This biography reveals Napoleon I as a great man and a deeply flawed human being. New paperback edition.

Other

Kaiulani of Hawaii and the Fall of Her Kingdom by Peter W. Noonan. Heir to the throne of Hawaii, Princess Kaiulani struggled against the kingdom's annexation by the United States.

Queens: Women Who Ruled, From Ancient Egypt to Buckingham Palace by Lauren Bucca. This miniature book introduces some 250 queens, each represented by her portrait and a fact about her reign.

Published in March 2021

Britain

Diana: Style Icon by Dan Jones. An illustrated celebration of the fashion of Diana, Princess of Wales.

St James's Palace: From Leper Hospital to Royal Court edited by Simon Thurley, Rufus Bird, and Michael Turner. Includes over 300 color images, including maps and digital reconstructions.

Royal Greenwich: A History in Kings and Queens by Pieter Van Der Merwe. An illustrated history of the royal heritage of Greenwich, starting in the mid-15th century, when it was a sprawling Tudor palace.

Europe

Princes of the Renaissance: The Hidden Power Behind an Artistic Revolution by Mary Hollingsworth. The lives of the aristocratic elite whose patronage created the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance.

Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia: The Transfer of Power 1450-1725 by Paul Bushkovitch. Argues that the monarch usually designated the eldest son as heir by custom, not by law.

The Comedians of the King: Opéra Comique and the Bourbon Monarchy on the Eve of Revolution by Julia Doe. How comic theater was folded into the royal propaganda machine.

Napoleon and the Art of Leadership: How a Flawed Genius Changed the History of Europe and the World by William Nester. According to this book, Napoleon was all that his partisans lauded and his enemies condemned.

Other

Cleopatra: The Queen Who Challenged Rome and Conquered Eternity by Alberto Angela, translated by Katherine Gregor. According to this account, Cleopatra was a strikingly modern woman, skilled in diplomacy and war.

Maya Kingship: Rupture and Transformation From Classic to Postclassic Times edited by Tsubasa Okoshi, Arlen F. Chase, Philippe Nondédéo, and M. Charlotte Arnauld. Experts offer insights into the breakdown of kingship regimes in Maya lowland cities.

The Imperial Patronage of Labor Genre Paintings in Eighteenth-Century China by Roslyn Lee Hammers. Examines pictures and poems about tilling and weaving commissioned by Chinese emperors.