How did the House of Windsor transform itself into " a wealth-creating machine" which has built up a huge private fortune from public funds? how did the (apparently) happy "family on the throne" turn dysfunctional, and a glitzy royal marriage degenerate into the ghastly "spectacle of two sad, spoiled, solipsistic individuals slugging it out in public? In this collection, the author offers dazzling brief overviews of topics ranging from class to divorce, private to patriotism, the rise and fall of Empire and the absurd cult of "Victorian values". He dissects the continuing crises of the monarchy and he reveals how even the most exceptional figures - Churchill and Nightingale, Mosley and Macmillan, Thatcher and A.J.P. Taylor - can only be understood in their full historical context. Few other writers have his skill at bringing the past to life and using it to illuminate the present.