SOURCE: "Chronicles of the Monarchy," in Times Literary Supplement, August 11, 1975, p. 893.

In the following review, Fulford outlines the contents of The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, a work edited by Fraser.

[The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England] is a businesslike and readable account of our kings and queens from William I to Elizabeth II. The authors are not, as the Victorians used to say, "viewy", and they spare their readers too much of those personal stories by which kings and queens are particularly afflicted. Antonia Fraser opens with a spirited defence of royal biography which, she trenchantly argues, gives us a theory of history. Certainly no one would dispute her emphasis on the popularity of royal biography, and she even calls in aid that industrious spinster Agnes Strickland, who seems to be the first serious royal biographer to cause offence at Windsor...