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Lead book review

Game of thrones: five kings spanning five centuries launch a new series on royalty

Reviewing the latest Penguin series on our monarchy, Nigel Jones witnesses kings gradually morph into cabbages

3 January 2015

9:00 AM

3 January 2015

9:00 AM

It is a strange paradox of our egalitarian age that a progressive publisher like Penguin should commission — at considerable expense, since the series editor Simon Winder has netted some top academic authors — brief lives of all 44 English, and later British, monarchs, from Athelstan to his distant descendent, our own Queen Elizabeth.

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Penguin’s series on our monarchs — from Athelstan to Elizabeth II — will be completed in 2017. These first titles are available from the Spectator Bookshop at £9.49 each or £45 for all five.

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