The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain - Tapa blanda

"He has the novelist's ability to conjure up context and background in a brief sketch, the journalist's knack of summarising arguments and issues, and the storyteller's gift for picking out those key actions or remarks that bring a person's character to life" Daily Telegraph "To read the Stuart story delivered as strongly and as plainly as this is unexpectedly exhilarating and full of anticipations of more recent national and political history" Guardian "[A] highly readable and impressively panoramic history" Scotsman "His prose is throughout intelligent, excellently paced, and inlaid with gems of direct speech that take us to the heart of things... It was a book Massie was born to write" Financial Times

The Royal Stuarts ruled for over 300 years in Scotland and for a century as the Royal Family of Britain and Ireland. They were leading actors in the foremost political dramas of British history - the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War and the Restoration - and remain the most controversial and divisive of royal families. Drawing on the accounts of historians past and present, novels and plays, Allan Massie tells the family's full story, from the salt marshes of Brittany to the thrones of Scotland and England, and then eventual exile. A book which gets beyond the received generalizations, The Royal Stuarts takes us deep into the lives of figures like Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I and Bonnie Prince Charlie, uncovering a family of strong affections and fierce rivalries, the brave and capable, the weak and foolish. Told with panache and pace, adventurous and opinionated, this is a nuanced history of that remarkable family who, for better or worse, shaped our history and made our country what it is.