BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • George V: Never a Dull Moment

    (By Jane Ridley)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 20 MB (20,079 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 570 times
    Last checked 7 Hour ago!
    Author Jane Ridley
    “Book Descriptions: From one of the most beloved and distinguished historians of the British monarchy, here is a lively, intimately detailed biography of a long-overlooked king who reimagined the Crown in the aftermath of World War I and whose marriage was an epic romance.

    The grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, King George V ruled the British Empire from 1910 to 1936, a period of unprecedented international turbulence. Yet no one could deny that as a young man, George seemed uninspired. As his biographer Harold Nicolson famously put it, he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps." The contrast between him and his flamboyant, hedonistic, playboy father Edward VII could hardly have been greater.

    However, though it lasted only a quarter-century, George's reign was immensely consequential. He faced a constitutional crisis, the First World War, the fall of thirteen European monarchies and the rise of Bolshevism. The suffragette Emily Davison threw herself under his horse at the Derby, he refused asylum to his cousin the Tsar Nicholas II during the Russian Revolution, and he facilitated the first Labour government. And, as Jane Ridley shows, the modern British monarchy would not exist without George; he reinvented the institution, allowing it to survive and thrive when its very existence seemed doomed. The status of the British monarchy today, she argues, is due in large part to him.

    How this supposedly limited man managed to steer the crown through so many perils and adapt an essentially Victorian institution to the twentieth century is a great story in itself. But this book is also a riveting portrait of a royal marriage and family life. Queen Mary played a pivotal role in the reign as well as being an important figure in her own right. Under the couple's stewardship, the crown emerged stronger than ever. George V founded the modern monarchy, and yet his disastrous quarrel with his eldest son, the Duke of Windsor, culminated in the existential crisis of the Abdication only months after his death.

    Jane Ridley has had unprecedented access to the archives, and for the first time is able to reassess in full the many myths associated with this crucial and dramatic time. She brings us a royal family and world not long vanished, and not so far from our own.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy

    ★★★★★

    Sally Bedell Smith

    Book 1

    Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor

    ★★★★★

    Andrew Lownie

    Book 1

    The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III

    ★★★★★

    Andrew Roberts

    Book 1

    The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication

    ★★★★★

    Alexander Larman

    Book 1

    George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

    ★★★★★

    Miranda Carter

    Book 1

    The Mountbattens: Their Lives & Loves

    ★★★★★

    Andrew Lownie

    Book 1

    The Windsors at War: The King, His Brother, and a Family Divided

    ★★★★★

    Alexander Larman

    Book 1

    Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II

    ★★★★★

    Robert Hardman

    Book 1

    Philip : the final portrait : Elizabeth, their marriage and their dynasty

    ★★★★★

    Gyles Brandreth

    Book 1

    Do Let's Have Another Drink!: The Dry Wit and Fizzy Life of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

    ★★★★★

    Gareth Russell

    Book 1

    Q: A Voyage Around the Queen

    ★★★★★

    Craig Brown

    Book 1

    Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story.

    ★★★★★

    Robert Hardman

    Book 1

    The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World

    ★★★★★

    Ben Macintyre

    Book 1

    The Quest for Queen Mary

    ★★★★★

    James Pope-Hennessy

    Book 1

    Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King

    ★★★★★

    Dan Jones