I LOVE KINGS & QUEENS: 400 Fantastic Facts

Crowns, children and coronations, love, marriage and family, war, murder and peril, royal characters, religion, politics and money, mistresses, bastards and pretenders, the king is dead - long live the king! On 6th January 1066, Harold II became the first English king to be crowned in Westminster Abbey. William the Conqueror was next, crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day of 1066. At his Coronation his soldiers mistook the crowd's shouts of acclamation for the outbreak of a riot and in response set fire to the surrounding buildings. 400 gems of facts in one sentence or two and 2-4 per page accompanied by colour artwork such as portraits, photographs, graphic designs or a silhouette of Queen Victoria or an image of a royal residence or monument like the one to Queen Victoria's beloved Prince Albert in 1859. The 400th snippet is George V exclaiming 'God damn you!' and not as often claimed 'Bugger Bognor!' Did you know that after the Battle of Hastings King Harold's tattoos were used to identify his body or that Elizabeth of York was the model for the queen in the first deck of cards? Or that Henry VIII used a wheelchair and wore glasses? 100 colour illus, a royal paperback, 160pp.