More than 1,000 years in, the British monarchy is still going strong—despite the countless scandals, tragedies, and general public missteps that have plagued the royal family throughout its history. While the monarchy doesn’t hold as much political and cultural power as it once did, it still serves as a source of fascination for many in the U.K. and across the globe, as the current members of the family continue to carry out their public duties and grapple with their dwindling influence in a modern world.
Their extensive history makes for countless books about the royal family to devour and add to your to-read stack, whether you love, hate, or feel ambivalent toward the royals. Even if you've seen their lives full of abdications, divorces, deaths, and sibling schisms unfold on screen in movies about the royal family or across six seasons of The Crowd, many nonfiction books and captivating memoirs offer even more perspective. Read on for the best books about the British royals—all packed with shocking revelations, first-experience accounts, and illuminating tidbits.
This 1992 book shocked the world, as Morton laid out—with an unprecedented amount of help from Princess Diana—the struggles the young royal faced in both her royal and private lives. In a newly updated 25th anniversary edition, Morton added even more details about Diana’s tragically short life gathered from the tapes of their many extensive conversations throughout the original book’s creation.
Yes, that James Patterson. The prolific mystery-thriller author turned his focus to the late Princess of Wales and her relationship with her two sons in this 2022 book, which recounts Diana’s unshakeable devotion to William and Harry throughout her tumultuous final years, and the legacy she left behind that both sons have worked to uphold in their own adult lives.
Other books on this list detail the royal family’s struggles to modernize and stay relevant in the 21st century, but Scobie’s paints perhaps the bleakest picture of a monarchy scrambling to stay afloat. Based on decades’ worth of conversations with palace insiders and the royals themselves, the longtime royal correspondent describes a monarchy in crisis—thanks to Charles and Camilla’s unpopularity, the allegedly “power-hungry” heir apparent, Prince William, and Prince Harry’s ostracism from the family.
Rhodes was a first cousin to Elizabeth and Margaret. In addition to her close relationships with the sisters, she also had a strong bond with their mother, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, for whom she served as a lady-in-waiting and companion. The book’s titular curtsy describes Rhodes’ gesture of sympathy and respect to Elizabeth II after the Queen Mother died in 2002.
Anne Tennant, the Dowager Baroness Glenconner, grew up as a friend to then-Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and later served as a maid of honor at Elizabeth’s coronation and as an extra lady-in-waiting to Margaret for over 30 years. In this 2020 memoir, she recounted her life lived in parallel to the royals and shared previously untold stories about the royal family and her experiences as a high-ranking member of the British aristocracy.
In the 1930s, King Edward VIII met Wallis Simpson and opted to abdicate the throne to be with the twice-divorced American. Half a century after that earth-shattering move, the widowed Duchess of Windsor was living alone in France and, according to this troubling account of Blackwood’s attempts to reach Simpson for an article, was being taken advantage of in her old age by her lawyer, Suzanne Blum.
Crawford served as a nanny and governess to Elizabeth and Margaret throughout their childhoods, and she documented those tender years in this memoir. At the time of its 1950 publication, however, such insider tell-alls about the royal family were unheard of—how quaint!—and led both the public and the family itself to turn against Crawford.
Before casting a quirky light on Queen Elizabeth in his book Q, Brown first directed his signature wit and humor toward her younger sister in this 2017 compilation of anecdotes, articles, and other documents that paint a fresh and often-hilarious picture of the late Princess Margaret.
Prince Harry wasn't the first royal to pen a blockbuster memoir spilling previously stifled secrets about life in the royal family. Fergie beat him to the punch in 1996, the year she and Prince Andrew divorced, with this book detailing the monarchy’s habit of squashing any outspoken or free-spirited tendencies and her missteps that led to her fall from public favor.
Nicholl is a bonafide royal expert; she served as Vanity Fair’s royals correspondent and has published biographies of Princes William and Harry and Kate Middleton. She put that expertise to good use in this 2022 book, which details how those millennial members of the typically uptight, heavily traditional family have influenced the monarchy to adapt to modern sensibilities.
In 1951, 15 years after abdicating the throne to be with Wallis Simpson, the Duke of Windsor published a very tame, heavily ghostwritten memoir titled A King’s Story. More than half a century later, in 2023, Tippett put out this book, which combines a much more candid version of the memoir—written solely by Edward VIII and never before published—with additional insights from his ghostwriter, his wife, and others in his orbit during the years before and after his abdication.
Queen Elizabeth herself approved Kelly's compilation of photos and stories about her time as one of the ruler's closest collaborators and confidantes in this book. The Other Side of the Coin documents her 25-year career dressing the monarch—first as the senior dresser, then as a personal advisor, curator, wardrobe, and in-house designer—and sheds light on the uniquely close working relationship between the two women.
Brown’s 2022 tome is a deep dive into the post-Diana years at Buckingham Palace. It maps out how, despite Queen Elizabeth’s wish for things to calm down after the princess’ untimely death, the next quarter-century instead brought with it a nonstop stream of even more deaths, scandals, and relentless public scrutiny into the family’s every move.
Queen Elizabeth II’s standing as the longest-serving sovereign in British history—and her role itself—often overshadowed that of her husband, Prince Philip, who was the longest-serving consort. But Brandreth’s book finally puts the Duke of Edinburgh in the spotlight, fueled by several decades of conversations and correspondences with Philip illuminating his upbringing, personal relationships, and unique role within the monarchy.
Smith’s 2017 biography, published a few years before Charles finally ascended to the throne after his mother died in 2022, has been widely hailed as one of the first truly comprehensive accounts of the king’s life. It trawls through the seven decades he spent preparing for the role of a lifetime—complete with interviews with ex-girlfriends, palace insiders, spiritual gurus, and more—to paint a picture of the longest-serving heir apparent in the history of the British monarchy.
As a certain other member of the family published his memoir in 2023 detailing his decision to step away from royal duties, Prince Edward—a.k.a. the Duke of Kent and a first cousin to Queen Elizabeth—worked with historian Hugo Vickers to put out a tell-all later that year charting his decades spent in devoted service to the crown as a working royal.
The vast majority of the many, many biographies written during and after Queen Elizabeth II’s record-setting 70-year reign trod similar ground, following her rise to power as a young woman, her leadership in dragging the monarchy firmly into the 20th and 21st centuries, and her position as matriarch of an often unruly family. Brown’s more tongue-in-cheek approach takes a different tack, focusing instead on the often-overlooked quirks of the woman herself, as he digs up the most hilarious and bizarre anecdotes out there about the late queen.
Originally published in 2019 as The Duchess, this biography paints a much more expansive portrait of a woman who has too often been portrayed as little more than a high-profile mistress. Junor pitches Camilla as a woman who gave up her own ambitions to become a stalwart and much-needed source of love and support for Charles as he prepared to become king.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s life spanned the entire 20th century: She was born in 1900 and lived until 2002. So this biography of her long life also serves as a comprehensive compendium of a full century of the royal family’s turbulent history—told through the lens of a woman often regarded as “the most beloved British monarch” of the period.
Upon its release in early 2023, Prince Harry’s bombshell memoir quickly became the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time. And for good reason: In it, the prince spilled plenty of royal secrets and, perhaps most significantly, discussed his and Meghan Markle’s decision to formally and physically distance themselves from the royal family, including plenty of details about the turbulent family relationships that led to that decision.
In the 1940s, amid the turbulence of World War II, Elizabeth and Margaret were sent to live at Windsor Castle. Their neighbor there was Howard, who meticulously documented those years growing up alongside the teenaged queen-to-be in her diaries—published for the first time in 2021, two decades after Howard’s death.
