Lives of England's Reigning and Consort Queens

A comprehensive historical work about how royal mistresses, wives and queens influenced and helped shape the future of Britain from the Dark Ages to the present.

Neatly and logically packaged into separate sections, this history of more than 3,000 years of English royalty delves into the little-known and offbeat details about the women on the throne—as well as those near it, and those in the royal beds. Lehman (Lives of England’s Monarchs, 2005, etc.) gives a straightforward summary of each of the 41 monarchs’ reigns, analyzes the importance of the women involved, and discusses the stability and success of the various marriages and liaisons. Religion, mostly bitterness between Catholics and Protestants, dominates the blood-soaked rivalries of the first 1,500 years. Women were fair game to the executioner’s ax, sometimes justifiably but often unjustly; the reign of Henry VIII predictably gets the most pages. The book’s tone is sometimes simplistic, but the narrative keeps the reader’s attention with intriguing details. For example, Richard II and his queen, Anne of Bohemia, brought in the Sumptuary Laws, which dictated how the different social classes could dress; the aim seemed to be to stop the peasants from being upwardly mobile. Queen Caroline, Lehman writes, was the power behind George II’s support of the music of composer George Frideric Handel. The king was so impressed by the “Hallelujah Chorus” in Handel’s “Messiah” during a 1743 performance that he stood up—a tradition that has continued to this day. American Wallis Simpson comes in for her share of scrutiny, with Lehman agreeing with many historians that Simpson was genuinely prepared to end her controversial affair with Edward VIII. The English people hated her, and she returned their feelings with equal measure: “I hate this country and shall hate it to my grave,” she said. However, Lehman doesn’t mention one serious political aspect of the affair: The country and the empire were so absorbed in the scandal that they were distracted from the rise of Nazi Germany.

A useful reference about famous and relatively overlooked figures of English history.