White King: The Untold Story of Charles I - Hardcover

Leanda de Lisle is the highly acclaimed author of three books on the Tudors and Stuarts, including the bestselling The Sisters Who Would be Queen and Tudor: The family story. A former weekly columnist on the Spectator, Guardian and Daily Express, she contributes t onumerous national publications. She lives in Leicestershire.

"Fascinating" -- Andrew Marr * Evening Standard * "Humane and scholarly... De Lisle's deeply and originally researched book brings Charles alive not in kingly isolation but as a father and a husband. Both biography and subject deserve our fullest attention" -- Dan Jones * Mail on Sunday * "Engaging, well-researched and beautifully written... Emphatically not another book about the civil wars, this instead offers a nuanced and detailed examination of one of our most complex monarchs. It is probably the definitive modern work about Charles I" -- Alexander Larman * Observer * "De Lisle, who has long been an original voice in popular Tudor studies, is generous to Charles, but too sharp a reader of evidence to ignore his flaws... Pellucid, compelling and enriched by fresh evidence... Sympathetic but scrupulous to the last" -- Jessie Childs * Sunday Telegraph * "An impeccably researched and thought-provoking biography which reads as well as a fine novel... It also revives one of this country's greatest stories: a blinkered king, a warrior queen, a war that turned brother against brother and scandals caused by money, sex, espionage and power, woven together in the life of this extraordinary but flawed king" -- Gareth Russell * Daily Express * "Formidable... with remarkable clarity she unpicks the tangle of religious, political and economic conflicts that led to the Civil War... De Lisle draws on little-known and in some cases previously unrecorded letters to explore the important part that women played in Charles's story... This is not a story of a weakling or a villain: it's the tragedy of the right man in the wrong place in history" -- Andrew Taylor * The Times * "De Lisle effortlessly carries the reader along with her as she recreates the tragedy of Charles I and the Civil War. Her book is beautifully constructed, telling the story chronologically with a nice eye for detail, illuminating each period and major character by vivid tableau, but with plenty of analysis... This is the most gripping piece of revisionist history I have read for a long time" -- Desmond Seward * Spectator * "Elegantly written... the book proceeds at a cracking pace as the king's tragedy unfolds... Leanda de Lisle's splendid book is a timely reminder of the fascination of this turbulent period" -- Linda Porter * History Today * "A revelation... White King is that rare thing, a page-turning history that gently but insistently also asks provocative questions about a period on which our opinions have been all too fixed. Charles does not emerge with his reputation restored, but he emerges whole" -- Mathew Lyons * Financial Times * "Excellent -- clear, fair, sympathetic and detailed" -- Alan Massie * Wall Street Journal * "A riveting study that casts [Charles] as a blinkered idealist, and draws on previously unpublished royal letters that restore the humanity of his despised queen, Henrietta Maria" * Daily Telegraph * "Leanda de Lisle's very readable new biography of the king reveals the twisting path through love, politics and war that led him to his ultimate desintation" -- Nick Rennison * Daily Mail * "A grand tragedy related with searing pathos" * Good Housekeeping * "Britain's Stuart monarchs have long been overlooked in favour of their more flashy Tudor counterparts, but in White King Leanda de Lisle offers a case for Charles I being one of history's most compelling rulers... [a] revelatory account of Charles's unstable and ultimately tragic reign" * Radio Times * "Uses newly revealed letters and manuscripts to inform a new portrait of Charles I" * Choice Magazine *