'To live through Josephine - that is the story of my life.' So wrote the young General Bonaparte a few weeks after his marriage to the soignée and seductive widow, Josephine de Beauharnais. And although Napoleon's marriage was certainly not the whole story of his extraordinary life, it was one of the most fascinating aspects of it. Theirs was an attraction of opposites. The couple suited each other very well, with Josephine's charm and languor serving as an excellent foil for Napoleon's brusqueness and energy. Throughout his spectacular rise to power and years of triumph, Josephine proved a graceful and accomplished consort. Yet their relationship was anything but tranquil. Besotted by Josephine during the early years of their marriage, Napoleon - in the face of her indifference and infidelity - gradually became less obsessed by her, while she, in turn, became progressively more enamoured of him. As a result, their relationship developed into one of the most intriguing, tempestuous and touching in history. Napoleon, although disillusioned, never really ceased to love Josephine and it was only her inability to bear him a child, and so present his Empire with an heir, that led him to divorce her. 'If he was ever really stirred by any emotion, ' claimed one of the Empress Josephine's confidantes, 'it was by her and for her.' Their story remains, quite simply, one of the greatest love stories in the world. Theo Aronson, well known for his incisive and readable royal biographies, has found the ideal subject in the story of Napoleon and Josephine. By incorporating all the recent findings on the couple - such as the new view of Napoleon's parents, Josephine's love letters to Hippolyte Charles, Napoleon's complex sexual orientation - and by making full use of his own talent for narrative and characterisation, the author has been able to present this famous romance in a fresh and absorbing fashion.

Here, for the first time, is an all-embracing account of the loves of that royal womaniser, Edward VII, as Prince of Wales and King. It is also a study of the three women with whom the King was most deeply in love - his `official' mistresses, Lillie Langtry, Daisy Warwick and Alice Keppel. In their different ways, all three were exceptional personalities; Lillie Langtry, the socially ambitious girl from the vicarage, became a famous actress; Daisy Warwick, an immensely wealthy heiress and social butterfly, was converted to socialism; Alice Keppel, probably the King's greatest love, developed into an astute and fascinating figure in her own right. Spanning three decades and packed with incident, scandal and high romance, the story is set in the extravagant and hypocritical world of late Victorian and Edwardian society. It is full of colourful characters: Edward's beautiful and betrayed wife Alexandra; the three cuckolded husbands - Edward Langtry, the Earl of Warwick and the Hon. George Keppel; the flamboyant Oscar Wilde; the sensuous Sarah Bernhardt; the dissipated Prince Albert Victor; and the sexually complex W.E. Gladstone. The King in Love challenges long-established myths and reveals much that was hitherto unknown: not least the extraordinary scene that took place at the deathbed of King Edward VII. The result is a brilliant evocation of a world, and a way of life that has gone forever.

'This war', wrote Winston Churchill to King George VI at the height of the Second World War, 'has brought throne and people closer together than was ever before recorded.' Here is a full and fascinating account of that coming together. It is a study of the contribution made, not only by George VI and his redoubtable Queen, but also by the entire royal family during those turbulent years. And of how that contribution strengthened and popularized the monarchy. This is a family saga; an account of the lives, as much private as public, of all the diverse members of what George VI called 'The Firm'. Together with the tireless efforts of the King and Queen, it deals with such aspects as the Duke of Windsor's flirtation with Fascism, the ground-clearing obsessions of Queen Mary, the mysterious death of the Duke of Kent, the activities of the Athlones in Canada and the Gloucesters in Australia, and the imprisonment of the Princess Royal's eldest son, Viscount Lascelles. Occasionally tragic, often amusing, always interesting, it is a richly detailed panorama of the monarchy in one of its finest hours. Theo Aronson has been granted an unprecedented series of audiences with the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Princess Alice. Duchess of Gloucester, and the late Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, as well as interviews with many other members of the royal family and of the royal households. He has been permitted the use of previously unpublished letters, diaries and papers. The result is a colourful study by an author who has been consistently praised for his insight, scholarship and, above all, readability.

One would expect the rulers of England and France to have a relationship of some kind, if only political. But the personal relationships that developed between Victoria and Albert of Great Britain, and their counterparts across the channel, were rather surprising. Ambitious and flamboyant, Napoleon III of France and his wife the Empress Eugenie could hardly have been more different to the British monarch and her consort. And while Victoria was enchanted by that very difference, over the years their relationship was frequently strained by political and military events. But when the world of Napoleon III and Eugenie began to crumble, it was to their British friends that they fled. And when Eugenie lost her husband and her only child in swift succession, the publicly ice-cool Queen Victoria revealed her true character as she welcomed a heartbroken Eugenie into her own family. In Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes , Theo Aronson reveals a little-known aspect of Queen Victoria's life and deploys his skill as a writer and researcher to great effect, showing us the complex and often surprising characters behind the great names of history. Praise for Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes : 'Relying primarily on correspondence between the Queen, Empress, Emperor and other family members and officials (much of it previously unpublished), Aronson delivers another superbly readable and engaging history' - Shawn Day, Randomosity 'I enjoyed reading this book very much indeed, & would most certainly recommend it to those seeking a more human experience of history' - Goodreads review Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret . In the course of researching and writing these books he has interviewed major and minor members of Britain's royal family and members of the royal households, as well as various officials, servants, friends and others whose lives are in some way connected with the monarchy.

In 1863, Queen Victoria decreed that Edward, Prince of Wales, should marry Princess Alexandra, daughter of the obscure and unsophisticated heir to the Danish throne. The beauty, grace and charm of Prince Christian's daughter had prevailed over the Queen's intense dislike of the Danish royal house, and had even persuaded the embarrassingly difficult Bertie to agree to the match. Thus began the fairy-tale saga of a family that handed on its good looks, unaffectedness, and democratic manners to almost every royal house of modern Europe. For, in the year that Alexandra became Princess of Wales, her brother Willie was elected King of the Hellenes ; her father at last succeeded to the Danish throne; her sister Dagmar was soon to become wife of the future Tsar Alexander III of Russia; and her youngest sister Thyra later married the de jure King of Hanover. A Family of Kings is the story of the crowned children and grandchildren of Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark, focusing on the half-century before the First World War. It is an intimate, domestic study of a close-knit family, the individual personalities, and the courts to which they came. Without doubt, the chic and beautiful Alexandra epitomized the spectacular flowering of the Danish dynasty; and just as she brought an unprecedented popularity to the sobriety of the English court, so her brothers and sisters helped enliven the staid European scene. The outstanding success of Theo Aronson's last book, Grandmama of Europe, published in 1973, has confirmed his reputation as a chronicler of the fortunes of Europe's ruling houses. A Family of Kings bears the hallmark of the author's remarkable talent, and provides a fascinating evocation of the splendour and extravagance, and not infrequent tragedy, of nineteenth and twentieth century royalty.