Aristocrats

by Robert Lacey

Examines the present lives and past histories of six aristocratic families, describing their homes, financial holdings, attitudes, and lifestyles

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction

248 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1983

About the author

Robert Lacey is a British historian noted for his original research, which gets him close to - and often living alongside - his subjects. He is the author of numerous international bestsellers.

After writing his first works of historical biography, Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert wrote Majesty, his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II. Published in 1977, Majesty remains
acknowledged as the definitive study of British monarchy - a subject on which the author continues to write and lecture around the world, appearing regularly on ABC's Good Morning America and on CNN's Larry King Live.

The Kingdom, a study of Saudi Arabia published in 1981, is similarly acknowledged as required reading for businessmen, diplomats and students all over the world. To research The Kingdom, Robert and his wife Sandi took their family to live for eighteen months beside the Red Sea in Jeddah. Going out into the desert, this was when Robert earned his title as the "method actor" of contemporary biographers.

In March 1984 Robert Lacey took his family to live in Detroit, Michigan, to write Ford: the Men and the Machine, a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic which formed the basis for the TV mini-series of the same title, starring Cliff Robertson.

Robert's other books include biographies of the gangster Meyer Lansky, Princess Grace of Monaco and a study of Sotheby's auction house. He co- authored The Year 1000 - An Englishman's World, a description of life at the turn of the last millennium. In 2002, the Golden Jubilee Year of Queen Elizabeth II, he published Royal (Monarch in America), hailed by Andrew Roberts in London's Sunday Telegraph as "compulsively readable", and by Martin Amis in The New Yorker as "definitive".

With the publication of his Great Tales Robert Lacey returns to his first love - history. Robert Lacey is currently the historical consultant to the award-winning Netflix series "The Crown".

Reviews

[Novall · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a mid-1980's FILMED version of this book and the families/dynasties covered by the author. The recording offers the interested public a quality insight (vs. tabloid rubbish) into the realm of the post-Charlemagne (i.e. 962 AD to present) social network of European nobility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c44U3...

BBC filmed the account here of the author's research into the nobility as presented in this worthwhile book. Though the BBC archive, London, has been evasive (incompetent?), there may exist a VHS tape of the documentary.

However, there is no known or accessible VHS version presently in the US (public library / archival resource) to be viewed by the general public.

Please, please, for US residents, search local libraries and used bookstores for the VHS tape. Submit the copy to the Library of Congress for the future.

When / if the filmed version becomes available, notify the public via YouTube.

[Adrienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

He analyzes the history and modern situation of the four oldest aristocratic families in Europe. Fabulous research, it taught me a lot. It has photos of the castles and people he talks about. Again, Lacey's writing exhibits his command of the language and the material.

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Countess Mariae Gloria [etc.] von Schonburg-Glauchau, who now goes by her married name of Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, is a 22-year-old mother of two daughters who is disarmingly aware of her principal function as a wife -- to produce a Thurn und Taxis male heir. (She got one on the third try, after this book was published.) One cannot become an aristocrat, she says; one can only be born one. But her family works at it. Besides being the largest landowners in Germany, they own farms in the U.S. state of Georgia, a big piece of the Matto Grosso, and eleven castles and palaces, among a great many other holdings. The Duke of Edinburgh, invited to a boar hunt, expressed disbelief that a private family could live so grandly without receiving (as the Windsors do) financial assistance from the state. "What do you expect?" responded Prince Johannes. "No workey, no money." Lacey gives a similarly witty, insightful, and fascinating view of the Duke of Westminster (the richest man in England), the Duchess of Medinaceli (owner of more than a hundred castles and fifty titles), Prince Franz Josef of Liechtenstein, and several more of their elite colleagues. There’s also quite a lengthy bibliography but this is worth reading for the anecdotes alone.

[Maryanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

From thugs to better dressed thugs what a lot of weird things they actually believe about themselves and we the peasants let them LOL