The Royals

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 2: Chapter 2 : Part 1
They are the most chronicled family on the face of the globe. Their every move attracts headlines. Scores of books have tried and failed to penetrate the royal facade. Now Kitty Kelley has gone behind palace walls to provide the first three-dimensional

Chapter 2: Chapter 2 : Part 2
As the devoted secretary to Queen Victoria, Lord Stamfordham was by far the most important of the King's men. He had served Victoria's heir, King Edward VII, who had put him in charge of his own son, George, at an early age.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2 : Part 3
George V never expressed any qualms about his actions. He pragmatically buried his German roots to save his throne and then systematically ostracized his foreign relatives. He did this without compunction, even after receiving news from Russia

They are the most chronicled family on the face of the globe. Their every move attracts headlines. Scores of books have tried and failed to penetrate the royal facade. Now Kitty Kelley has gone behind palace walls to provide the first three-dimensional and comprehensive portrait of the men and women who make up the House of Windsor.

Kelley, the most fearless biographer of our time, spent more than four years investigating the royal family. In addition to meticulous research into documented sources, she conducted hundreds of exclusive interviews with past and present employees of the royal household, royal friends and relations, courtiers, members of Parliament, and other intimate observers. The author has unveiled and examined the private and public lives of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Prince Andrew, and Sarah, the Duchess of York, as well as their forebears and predecessors, as no other biographer has been able to do.

Kitty Kelley has raised the curtain on this most secretive family. Here are lonely royal children brought up without a proper education in isolated and artificial surroundings, twentieth-century adolescents with nineteenth-century touchstones. Here are the sexual ambiguities, the alcoholism, gambling, and womanizing that were common in the House of Windsor long before Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. No one is spared; here are the scandals of the last decades: the doomed marriages and the husbands, wives, lovers, and children caught in their wake.

The Royals is Kitty Kelley's richest, most iconoclastic, historically significant, and compelling book. She smashes the images created by palace bureaucrats and perpetuated by our own fantasies. Yet she introduces readers to people they can understand and will never forget.

Kitty Kelley is an internationally acclaimed writer whose last book, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography, sold faster than any biography in publishing history. Before that her book about Frank Sinatra, His Way, set another publishing record as the biggest-selling biography. Jackie Oh! and Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star were also international bestsellers.

	Home \| Forum \| Search
Health Parenting Personal Growth Relationships Religion & Spirituality Career & Money