"Fascinating"
Andrew Marr, Evening Standard

"Humane and scholarly...De Lisle's deeply and originally researched book brings Charles alive not in kingly isolation but as a father and a husband. Both biography and subject deserve our fullest attention"
Dan Jones, Mail on Sunday

"Engaging, well-researched and beautifully written...Emphatically not another book about the civil wars, this instead offers a nuanced and detailed examination of one of our most complex monarchs. It is probably the definitive modern work about Charles I"
Alexander Larman, Observer

"De Lisle, who has long been an original voice in popular Tudor studies, is generous to Charles, but too sharp a reader of evidence to ignore his flaws...Pellucid, compelling and enriched by fresh evidence...Sympathetic but scrupulous to the last"
Jessie Childs, Sunday Telegraph

"An impeccably researched and thought-provoking biography which reads as well as a fine novel...It also revives one of this country's greatest stories: a blinkered king, a warrior queen, a war that turned brother against brother and scandals caused by money, sex, espionage and power, woven together in the life of this extraordinary but flawed king"
Gareth Russell, Daily Express