Royal Babylon by Karl Shaw

Royal Babylon by Karl Shaw

An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy.

Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside?

Royally dishing on hundreds of years of dubious behavior, Royal Babylon chronicles the manifold appalling antics of Europe's famous families, behavior that rivals the characters in an Aaron Spelling television series. Here, then, are the insane kings of Spain, one of whom liked to wear sixteen pairs of gloves at one time; the psychopathic Prussian soverigns who included Frederick William and his 102-inch waist; sex-fixated French rulers such as Philip Duke D'Oreleans cavorting with more than a hundred mistresses; and, of course, the delightfully drunken and debauched Russian czars - Czar Paul, for example, who to make his soldiers goose-step without bending their legs had steel plates strapped to their knees. But whether Romanov or Windsor, Habsburg or Hanover, these extravagant lifestyles, financed as they were by the royals' badgered subjects, bred the most wonderfully offbeat and disturbingly unbelievable tales - and Karl Shaw has collected them all in this hysterically funny and compulsively readable book.

Royal Babylon is history, but not as they teach it in school, and it underlines in side-splitting fashion Queen Victoria's famous warning that it is unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses of Europe.

Karl Shaw is the author of many comedic books, including Gross, Royal Babylon: An Irreverent History of European Monarchy and the American bestseller Five Persons Who Died During Sex and 100 More Terribly Tasteless Lists. He worked as a journalist for NME and other publications. He lives in Staffordshire with his family and works in marketing for the country's largest manufacturer of stool jars.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780767907552
ISBN 10	0767907558
Title	Royal Babylon
Author	Karl Shaw
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2001-05-29
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.