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Kings & Queens of England & Great Britain
Provides a summary of the lives of all the kings and queens of England and Great Britain from the early Saxons to Elizabeth II
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1950
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 25, 2020
Twelve monarchs, Henry VII to Anne, plus Oliver Cromwell and 18 battles, Bosworth Field in 1485 to Malplaquet of the Marlborough Campaign in 1709, are chronicled in Eric Delderfield's survey of the Tudors and Stuarts in the 'Kings and Queens of England' series. And the National Portrait Gallery has raided their archives to provide portraits of eight of the monarchs. Perhaps surprisingly with all the monarchs being such high-profile personalities four of the artists are unknown.
What Delderfield does is to put into very brief form the principal dates, happenings and accomplishments of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. And looking over them, some of the Kings would appear to have been callous, blood-thirsty, even perhaps criminal but as the author says, '[they] must be judged by the standard of the times in which they lived'. Really?
To support that statement he cites Henry VIII with 'The careless abandon with which Henry VIII disposed of his wives seems atrocious, unless we are prepared to give him credit for a very real anxiety about an heir to the Throne for the good of England, as he saw it.' And he suggests that the reason that Elizabeth I got rid of Mary Queen of Scots was that 'the religious fanatics of the period had no doubt that there was not room for both'.
He explains his brevity away with 'in a precis of a whole reign, much has to be omitted and the remainder ruthlessly compressed' but having said that he still manages to get a goodly picture of each monarch and the principal events in their reign in turn.
As for the portraits he says that they may 'vary from our accepted ideas of the monarchs' but adds, 'care has been taken to select only those which are authentic likenesses'. Well for Henry VII the portrait 'After Holbein' has been chosen and indeed, Henry's face does look rather malevolent rather than the ones in which he is portrayed as a magnificent specimen of manhood!
For a 40-page survey of the periods it is a most entertaining account and it meets its purpose of, as the author says in his Foreword, setting out 'the material in easy form for quick reference'.
What Delderfield does is to put into very brief form the principal dates, happenings and accomplishments of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. And looking over them, some of the Kings would appear to have been callous, blood-thirsty, even perhaps criminal but as the author says, '[they] must be judged by the standard of the times in which they lived'. Really?
To support that statement he cites Henry VIII with 'The careless abandon with which Henry VIII disposed of his wives seems atrocious, unless we are prepared to give him credit for a very real anxiety about an heir to the Throne for the good of England, as he saw it.' And he suggests that the reason that Elizabeth I got rid of Mary Queen of Scots was that 'the religious fanatics of the period had no doubt that there was not room for both'.
He explains his brevity away with 'in a precis of a whole reign, much has to be omitted and the remainder ruthlessly compressed' but having said that he still manages to get a goodly picture of each monarch and the principal events in their reign in turn.
As for the portraits he says that they may 'vary from our accepted ideas of the monarchs' but adds, 'care has been taken to select only those which are authentic likenesses'. Well for Henry VII the portrait 'After Holbein' has been chosen and indeed, Henry's face does look rather malevolent rather than the ones in which he is portrayed as a magnificent specimen of manhood!
For a 40-page survey of the periods it is a most entertaining account and it meets its purpose of, as the author says in his Foreword, setting out 'the material in easy form for quick reference'.
April 10, 2020
A good overview of the monarchy, and good to use for reference, although I found it to be incredibly biased against and overly critical of certain monarchs, females especially. Also, due to a printing error (I assume) my copy is missing sixteen pages right in the middle. I'll keep it around for easy reference, but I'm keeping my eye out for a secondhand copy of something similar, but more comprehensive.
January 15, 2021
Kings and Queens of England
By Eric R. Delderfield
1972 edition
Reviewed January 14, 2021
At the beginning of the book, the author writes, “No attempt has been made to give anything but the broadest possible opinion, for on the main events of history two people rarely agree.” That “in a précis of a whole reign much has to be omitted and the remainder ruthlessly compressed.” So we’ve been warned!
The Kings and Queens of England (1972 edition) is a fast read and entertaining in its tabloid kind of way. It’s not a bad book, but I would definitely double check the facts if I were going to use it to write a report or a school paper.
The book opens with a very brief history of the Saxon kings. A paragraph is dedicated to the first king of England, Egbert (802-839). That’s followed by the West Saxon kings, and then the Norman Conquest.
The author describes William as “ruthless and cruel by our standards”, although I would suggest that even by the standards of his day, his cruelty and ruthlessness were considered excessive. According to Delderfield, only one person was executed by William, although that should actually say only one English aristocrat (Waltheof of Northumbria) because I’d bet you a dime to a doughnut that more than one commoner was executed for one reason or another. But even if he wasn’t executing lots of folks, “thousands were mutilated, especially for breaches of the game laws”.
The author also omits any mention of the Harrying of the North and the approximately 100,000 people, mostly civilians, who died as a result of his scorched-earth policies in subjugating peoples who quite understandably weren’t in the mood to be conquered. But that’s okay, I guess, because William “was a great administrator, and gave England the first foundations of a stable and effective form of government.”
From there we go to William’s sons. First was the “tyrannical, cruel and blasphemous” William II, called “Rufus” because of his flaming red hair. Sounds like the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree. He was followed by his brother Henry I, nicknamed “Beauclerk” and “The Lion of Justice.” And on we go, through the Anarchy, the Angevins, the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and so on down the line up to the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
There are some instances where Delderfield engages in hatchet jobs on monarchs who apparently don't live up to his standards. For example, “Edward II was Edward I’s greatest failure. Feeble and perverted, he did nothing to carry on his father’s work of consolidation,” and was “Addicted to worthless favourites.”
He similarly has little good to say about Richard, Duke of Gloucester, “of later, and greater, infamous memory” and opens his entry by saying that, “When he came to the throne in 1483, Richard was already credited with personal responsibility for the deaths of Henry VI, the latter’s on, and his own brother” – all of which were only “credited” to him after his death, when Henry VII needed to pretend that he had a valid reason for violently usurping the throne.
There are also times when Delderfield gets facts totally wrong. Back to Richard III, he writes that Richard was the “Second son of Richard, Duke of York and brother of Edward IV.” Wrong! He was the eighth and youngest son, and even if for some reason you wanted to discount those boys who died in childhood, there were still three others ahead of Richard – Edward, Edmund, and George.
He also states Richard was 33 when he died. Again wrong. He was 32 when he was slain on 22 August 1485; he wouldn’t have been 33 until October. Some might accuse me of quibbling over that last one, but it’s still wrong and makes me wonder – if Delderfield got those two things wrong, things that I happen to know off the top of my head, what else might be wrong in this book? (I see it’s been revised and updated several times over the years, so maybe later editions had these corrected.)
There’s also some inconsistency in how he portrays events. In the section about the Tudors, Delderfield writes, “Though the Tudor dynasty began in treason and bloodshed, it brought a new, more peaceful era.” Yet only a few pages later, he writes how this peaceful era was torn by religious conflict because of Henry VIII’s obsession with getting a son, how the country suffered economic hardships thanks to mishandling of the economy (Henry VIII, Edward VI), and that it was “plunged into a bitter blood-bath” by Mary I.
There’s much more as we run through the later dynastic houses, but I’ll leave you to read those sections for yourself and see what you think of them.
I was going to give the book 3 stars, but ended up bumping it down to 2 because of the errors.
By Eric R. Delderfield
1972 edition
Reviewed January 14, 2021
At the beginning of the book, the author writes, “No attempt has been made to give anything but the broadest possible opinion, for on the main events of history two people rarely agree.” That “in a précis of a whole reign much has to be omitted and the remainder ruthlessly compressed.” So we’ve been warned!
The Kings and Queens of England (1972 edition) is a fast read and entertaining in its tabloid kind of way. It’s not a bad book, but I would definitely double check the facts if I were going to use it to write a report or a school paper.
The book opens with a very brief history of the Saxon kings. A paragraph is dedicated to the first king of England, Egbert (802-839). That’s followed by the West Saxon kings, and then the Norman Conquest.
The author describes William as “ruthless and cruel by our standards”, although I would suggest that even by the standards of his day, his cruelty and ruthlessness were considered excessive. According to Delderfield, only one person was executed by William, although that should actually say only one English aristocrat (Waltheof of Northumbria) because I’d bet you a dime to a doughnut that more than one commoner was executed for one reason or another. But even if he wasn’t executing lots of folks, “thousands were mutilated, especially for breaches of the game laws”.
The author also omits any mention of the Harrying of the North and the approximately 100,000 people, mostly civilians, who died as a result of his scorched-earth policies in subjugating peoples who quite understandably weren’t in the mood to be conquered. But that’s okay, I guess, because William “was a great administrator, and gave England the first foundations of a stable and effective form of government.”
From there we go to William’s sons. First was the “tyrannical, cruel and blasphemous” William II, called “Rufus” because of his flaming red hair. Sounds like the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree. He was followed by his brother Henry I, nicknamed “Beauclerk” and “The Lion of Justice.” And on we go, through the Anarchy, the Angevins, the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and so on down the line up to the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
There are some instances where Delderfield engages in hatchet jobs on monarchs who apparently don't live up to his standards. For example, “Edward II was Edward I’s greatest failure. Feeble and perverted, he did nothing to carry on his father’s work of consolidation,” and was “Addicted to worthless favourites.”
He similarly has little good to say about Richard, Duke of Gloucester, “of later, and greater, infamous memory” and opens his entry by saying that, “When he came to the throne in 1483, Richard was already credited with personal responsibility for the deaths of Henry VI, the latter’s on, and his own brother” – all of which were only “credited” to him after his death, when Henry VII needed to pretend that he had a valid reason for violently usurping the throne.
There are also times when Delderfield gets facts totally wrong. Back to Richard III, he writes that Richard was the “Second son of Richard, Duke of York and brother of Edward IV.” Wrong! He was the eighth and youngest son, and even if for some reason you wanted to discount those boys who died in childhood, there were still three others ahead of Richard – Edward, Edmund, and George.
He also states Richard was 33 when he died. Again wrong. He was 32 when he was slain on 22 August 1485; he wouldn’t have been 33 until October. Some might accuse me of quibbling over that last one, but it’s still wrong and makes me wonder – if Delderfield got those two things wrong, things that I happen to know off the top of my head, what else might be wrong in this book? (I see it’s been revised and updated several times over the years, so maybe later editions had these corrected.)
There’s also some inconsistency in how he portrays events. In the section about the Tudors, Delderfield writes, “Though the Tudor dynasty began in treason and bloodshed, it brought a new, more peaceful era.” Yet only a few pages later, he writes how this peaceful era was torn by religious conflict because of Henry VIII’s obsession with getting a son, how the country suffered economic hardships thanks to mishandling of the economy (Henry VIII, Edward VI), and that it was “plunged into a bitter blood-bath” by Mary I.
There’s much more as we run through the later dynastic houses, but I’ll leave you to read those sections for yourself and see what you think of them.
I was going to give the book 3 stars, but ended up bumping it down to 2 because of the errors.
September 29, 2020
I had this sitting on my night table for months and have only read bits of it intermittently. It's more of a reference book than something that you can read straight through, but it is well researched and written, with copious illustrations that chronicle the Kings and Queens of the U.K. from the Saxon Kings of the Dark Ages up to the present monarchy.
It's a great book to have if you are reading say Ken Follett's "The Pillars Of The Earth" series, Shakespeare's historical plays, or watching a film that chronicles the life of a particular Royal, to check and see what was actually happening in Great Britain at the time.
It's a great book to have if you are reading say Ken Follett's "The Pillars Of The Earth" series, Shakespeare's historical plays, or watching a film that chronicles the life of a particular Royal, to check and see what was actually happening in Great Britain at the time.
April 24, 2025
It’s okay to use as a reference but nothing to write home about. I suggest, if you want to know more about particular things like say, Richard III, the war of the roses etc, that you purchase a book on that individual subject.
It’s also outdated now. Elizabeth II has subsequently past away along with her husband Prince Phillip
It’s also outdated now. Elizabeth II has subsequently past away along with her husband Prince Phillip
January 12, 2020
Very informative, but focuses a bit too much on Prince Charles' and Princess Diana's personal lives at the end. It sticks out because most monarchs in the book don't have so much detail describing them. It also make the last bit feel rather gossipy.
January 21, 2021
A quick tour through the history of England & Great Britain through brief biographies of each of the sovereigns from William the Conqueror to the present day. The good, the bad and the ugly. An easy and entertaining way to gain an understanding of British history in a short amount of time.
April 22, 2019
I read this book in a day, found it very interesting, although I would have liked more details on some of the monarchs.
May 14, 2021
Quick and easy reference, outdated now, but still useful.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 12, 2023
A great reference book to have on hand.
September 26, 2024
outdated, concise, fun, reference
January 3, 2015
Collections of brief sketches of the monarchs of Britain have long been a popular theme for British publishers; most of them, being repetitious and superficial, are not considered in this bibliography, but Delderfield’s is more popular, and more often purchased (and given as a gift), than most. Much more coverage is given to recent sovereigns — those, presumably, of more interest to readers — and biographies of earlier figures are extremely brief. Bare facts of events are given but not often the causes behind them. The nicely reproduced portraits, mostly from the National Portrait Gallery, are those that appear in every other book. While this volume might make a nice gift for an adolescent reader with an interest in royalty, it will be of little interest to serious students.
July 8, 2013
On the face of it, this looks like a quick and handy desk reference book. It does contain the bare bones of many kings and queens; but it is so cursory as to be of little actual value other than birth, death, reign, and burial. But otherwise, the material is too brief. The content is a little more thorough when discussing the Hanoverians and Windors. There is some odd favoritism towards the Tudors and Stuarts; but overall, there is so little concrete discussion about any of the rulers that the book is more of a tease than a resource. On top of it, there is not even a bibliography or works cited to refer readers.
July 3, 2017
ISBN? - 9780715308127
General Subject/s? - History / Monarchy / Politics
Title? - Basically what it says on the cover.
General Analysis? - A little boring in places, and a little too simplified for my tastes. I prefer Alison Weir's Britain's Royal Families: the Complete Genealogy. It has more substance to it. Delderfield's efforts seemed a little half-arsed.
Recommend? - It was merely ok, good for an introduction.
General Subject/s? - History / Monarchy / Politics
Title? - Basically what it says on the cover.
General Analysis? - A little boring in places, and a little too simplified for my tastes. I prefer Alison Weir's Britain's Royal Families: the Complete Genealogy. It has more substance to it. Delderfield's efforts seemed a little half-arsed.
Recommend? - It was merely ok, good for an introduction.
March 13, 2009
Great overall view of the history of England including where certain items or customs originated and by whom...sometimes the Queens were more involved than their husbands would have liked had they known.
December 26, 2015
Read the bios of the early kings (up until Tudors) because I didn't know much about them. Very cursory book, not all monarchs are given equal lengths of bios. The current one and her chldren got about 10-15 pages
April 30, 2008
An interesting overview that 'hits the highpoints.'
February 22, 2011
Brief detailed biographies of English monarchs dating back to the Saxons. I read this many years ago and have skimmed it from time to time.
September 25, 2014
Short summaries of each reign. Quick reference.
November 23, 2014
The very barest of bare bones info. If this was the first book I'd ever read about any of these kings and queens, I'd still know almost nothing about them.
December 25, 2014
A quick, clear overview of way more history than the States will ever have
December 8, 2023
A short history of British kings and Queens. Enjoyable reading and an introduction to British History. Much better than I expected.
June 2, 2008
very informative
July 17, 2014
A very good reference book on the history of the British royalty.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews