The Good, the Bad and the Unready by Robert Easton Read Free Book Online

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    After a regimented childhood during which his good looks had women wrapped around his little finger, Edward, or ‘Bertie’ as the prince was known, was sent to Cambridge University, where he lodged some four miles outside town to minimize any frivolous or dissolute behaviour. Four miles proved a mere step for Edward, who rapidly developed Rabelaisian appetites for food, cigars, gambling and female company. Midway through his studies he was sent to Ireland, where he was enlisted in the army. Here he also signally failed to reach expectations, most notably when Nellie Clifton, a local ‘actress’, was found one night in his quarters.
    His marriage to Princess Alexandra of Denmark did not appear to diminish his sexual appetite, and a long list of mistresses included society belle Lillie ‘the Jersey Lily’ Langtry, Daisy ‘Babbling’ Brook and French tragic actress Sarah Bernhardt, otherwise known as ‘the Divine Sarah’ or ‘Sarah Heartburn’. Once, when Bernhardt was playing Fedora in Paris, Edward confessed that he had always wanted to be an actor. Few in the audience the next night would have noticed that the corpse ofFedora’s dead lover was in fact none other than the heir to the British throne.
    For all his misdoings and dalliances, the British liked their prince immensely, especially after the death of his father, when Victoria slumped into a life of mourning. In a drab and dismal court, ‘Bertie’ was a splash of colour. His practical jokes raised giggles in a palace bereft of laughter, and his fashion sense and love of the good life set the trend for an English society eager for fun. In later life ‘Bertie’ –now Edward – helped to orchestrate the entente cordiale with France, and in recognition of his diplomatic efforts he was dubbed ‘the Peacemaker’. He was also known as ‘the Uncle of Europe’, and this was almost literally true as he was uncle to the German kaiser, the Russian tsar and the king of Spain.
    Less laudatory was another of Edward’s nicknames, ‘Tum Tum’, which referred to the monarch’s corpulence. On one occasion the chubby Edward gently admonished Sir Frederick Johnstone, one of his guests at Sandringham, with the words, ‘Freddy, Freddy, you’re very drunk’, to which Johnstone allegedly retorted, ‘Tum Tum, you’re very fat.’ The king did not appreciate the remark.
    Great Britain, on the other hand, did appreciate Edward. As the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey wrote, the bubbly king ‘had a capacity for enjoying life… combined with a positive and strong desire that everyone else should enjoy life too’.
    Edward Carnarvon
    Edward II, king of England, 1284–1327
    Given his inept soldiery (his ill-disciplined troops lost the famous battle of Bannockburn to Robert the BRUCE ), his alienation of the nation’s nobility, or even his alleged homosexuality, Edward could have been nicknamed many things. As it is, his soubriquet, like that of Henry BOLINGBROKE , derives from the castle in which he was born – in Edward’s case Carnarvon Castle in North Wales. Edward also died in a castle, namely Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where he was hideously murdered on the orders of his cruel wife, Isabella the SHE-WOLF OF FRANCE .
    The Catholic Kings
    Ferdinand II, king of Aragon, 1452–1516
    Isabella, queen of Castile and Aragon, 1451–1504
    The marriage of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile in 1469 united the two largest provinces of the lberian Peninsula and paved the way for the eventual unification of Spain. The Moorish kingdom of Granada finally capitulated to the couple in 1492, and two years later Pope Alexander VI granted them the title ‘Reyes Catolicos’, or ‘Catholic Kings’, signifying that Spain, united under their dual monarchy, was now subject to the Catholic faith. Both monarchs took their religion very seriously indeed.
    Underneath Ferdinand’s cold and flinty exterior burned an ardent passion for the