An evening with Valentine Low

The follow-up to the bestselling Courtiers, Power and the Palace lifts the lid on the intimate relationship between the sovereign and the government.

Examining how the relationship between the sovereign and the country's political leadership has changed over the last 200 years, Power and the Palace shows how even in relatively recent history, sovereigns were involved in politics in ways that would be regarded as totally unacceptable now.

Featuring every sovereign from Queen Victoria to King Charles, and looking forward to the future reign of King William, the book seeks to understand how Britain has gone from a country where the monarch assumed the right to appoint the prime minister of their choice to one where they go to almost extreme lengths to distance themselves from the process. At the same time the monarch retains a crucial role as head of the nation.

From the famous warmth between Queen Victoria and Disraeli to the icy chill between Queen Elizabeth and Thatcher, via the regular wartime meetings of King George VI and Winston Churchill (the origin of the weekly ‘audience’), we discover the vital importance of personal chemistry between sovereign and prime minister in a series of highly revealing behind-the-scenes vignettes.