The Royal Family may indeed have had a particularly annus horribilis, but their history has long been fraught with crisis. In this provocative and wide-ranging account of the world's best-known family, the biographer, critic, novelist and outspoken social commentator A.N. Wilson surveys its history. He considers the question of whether the British crown is still the home of the Constitution or whether, in its dangerous love-hate relationship with the world's press, it has become nothing more than a house of cards. From Saxe-Coburgs to Squidgygate, from Cromwell to Camilla Parker-Bowles, Wilson examines how an institution which once ruled the waves has now become a magnet for divorce and disaster, ruling only a media battlefield where its members are hounded to the tabloid press.