Author: Worsley, Lucy

United Kingdom, Great Britain

Published on 3 September 2026 by Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 400 pages, 2 x 8pp. colour plate sections
241 x 165 x 38 | 650g

The wildly engaging new history of the British monarchy from bestselling historian Lucy Worsley’Fabulously enjoyable… a great big treat of a book written in Worsley’s easy prose and informed by her very real scholarship.’SUNDAY TIMES’A glorious, glorious book, full of brilliant detail and behind-the-scenes wit and humour.’KATE MOSSE’A history of the British monarchy that only Lucy Worsley could have written’TOM HOLLANDWhen it comes to royal history, Lucy Worsley holds all the cardsLucy Worsley has lived and breathed royal history for more than twenty years. As Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, she worked in some of Britain’s most famous royal sites, from Hampton Court to the Tower of London, and even lived in one of them herself. Now she takes us behind closed doors to reveal some of the monarchy’s best-kept secrets.

In Queens and Kings, Lucy brings to life the rulers who have shaped Britain over the last thousand years, from Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn to Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II. What emerges is a royal world far stranger, funnier and more surprising than we might think: of intimate love letters, phantom pregnancies, unruly pet monkeys and fatal betrayals. Venturing through haunted staircases and into private bedchambers, she finds the details that make history feel gloriously human. With her trademark warmth and incisive scholarship, Lucy explores the full splendour, scandal and sorrow of royal life. The result is a wildly engaging history of the monarchy from one of our most beloved historians.

‘Warm, insightful, and full of heart, Worsley has distilled a lifetime of experience into this crowning achievement of a book.’HALLIE RUBENHOLD