ineke.co.uk

I bought this book a few years ago I think, when I visited Hampton Court Palace, and thought it’d be interesting, but only just got around to reading it. Each king or queen has a double page spread with a picture or two, a quick fact file, “what kind of ruler?”, palace connections (because it’s published by Historic Royal Palaces (HRP)), and then some more wordy bits of info to give you an idea of their key points.

It was mostly good, definitely a decent way to get a general overview, or quickly look up someone specific. Just a couple of things bothered me:

Firstly, in my reading I found 2 typos and a sentence that had been written really clumsily, it just felt like it could have done with one more proof read.

Secondly, while this edition was published in 2016, and so obviously one monarch out of date, it refers early on to male succession without acknowledging that that law changed in 2013 and so is no longer the case (but does talk about Richard III being discovered in a car park that year, so the text has definitely been updated since then!).

The other thing that was a bit odd (but understandable) was the focus on their links with Kensington, the Tower of London, Hampton Court, and the couple of other properties under HRP, with links to other palaces (eg Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle) practically ignored, just a bit of a heavy weighting.

That all said, for me, as someone who really struggled with history at school, but would like to know a bit more now, this was pitched just right. Some high level details, enough basics for what you might want to know without being a heavy read. Bingo.