Books by Gyles Brandreth

THE NO 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERA personal account of the life and character of Britain's longest-reigning monarch, from the writer who knew her family best'Compelling . . . Fascinating' DAILY MAIL'The writer who got closest to the human truth about our long-serving senior royals' THE TIMES'The book overflows with nuggets of insider knowledge' TELEGRAPHPaints a unique picture of the remarkable woman who reigned for seven decades. Fascinating insights' HELLO!__________Gyles Brandreth first met the Queen in 1968, when he was twenty.Over the next fifty years he met her many times, both at public and at private events. Through his friendship with the Duke of Edinburgh, he was given privileged access to Elizabeth II.He kept a record of all those encounters, and his conversations with the Queen over the years, his meetings with her family and friends, and his observations of her at close quarters are what make this very personal account of her extraordinary life uniquely fascinating.From her childhood in the 1920s to the era of Harry and Meghan in the 2020s, from her war years at Windsor Castle to her death at Balmoral, this is both a record of a tumultuous century of royal history and a truly intimate portrait of a remarkable woman.__________Praise for Gyles Brandreth's bestselling royal writing:'Beautifully written book. I have read many other books about Philip but this is the best' DAILY EXPRESS'Brilliant, totally inspiring . . . It's a joy to read a book that comes from a perspective of fondness' KIRSTIE ALLSOPP, THE TIMES'As a sparkling celebration of Prince Philip, the book will be hard to beat' TELEGRAPH'So readable and refreshing even after the millions of words that have been written about Prince Philip in the past couple of weeks' THE TIMES 'Brilliant . . . There is so much in this book you won't find anywhere else' LORRAINE

The ultimate anthology of theatrical anecdotes, edited by lifelong theatre-lover Gyles Brandreth in the Oxford tradition, and providing a wonderfully entertaining and revealing portrait of the world of the theatre across four hundred years.

Elizabeth, their marriage and their dynasty.

In OSCAR WILDE AND THE NEST OF VIPERS, the fourth in Gyles Brandreth's acclaimed Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries series featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, the Prince of Wales asks Oscar to investigate a scandalous crime at the very heart of Victorian high society. 'Intelligent, amusing and entertaining' Alexander McCall Smith The story opens in the spring of 1890 at a glamorous reception hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Albemarle. All London's haut monde is there, including the Prince of Wales, who counts the Albemarles as close friends. Although it is the first time Oscar and Bertie have met, Oscar seems far more interested in Rex LaSalle, a young actor, who disarmingly claims to be a vampire.However, what begins as a diverting evening ends in tragedy. As the guests are leaving, the Duchess is found murdered, two tiny puncture marks in her throat. No one has entered the house; no one has left. Desperate to avoid another scandal, the Prince of Wales asks Oscar to investigate the crime. What he discovers threatens to destroy the very heart of the Royal Family.

"e;Brandreth is the true Samuel Pepys of our day."e; Andrew Neil, BBC Radio Five Live "e;Brandreth, for my money, offers about the most honest, and the most amusing, account of the demented, beery futility of the Tory-ruled Commons in the 1990s."e; Boris Johnson, Daily Telegraph "e;Hilariously acute ... Irresistible."e; Matthew d'Ancona, Sunday Telegraph "e;Extremely touching ... Brandreth emerges as a decent, amusing, talented and charming man."e; Simon Heffer, Daily Mail "e;As a witty and insightful chronicler ... Brandreth is unsurpassed."e; Michael Simmons, The Spectator Gyles Brandreth's revealing journal paints an extraordinary portrait of Whitehall and Westminster in our time - warts and all. Brandreth - MP for Chester and government whip - enjoyed a ringside seat at the great political events of the 1990s, from the fall of Margaret Thatcher to the election of Tony Blair. With candid descriptions of the key figures of the era, from the leading players to the ministers who fell from grace, and a cast that includes the Queen, Bill Clinton and Joanna Lumley, these widely acclaimed diaries provide a fascinating insight into both the reality of modern government and the bizarre life of a parliamentary candidate and new MP. Controversially, Breaking the Code also contains the first ever insider's account of the hitherto secret world that is the Government Whips' Office. This new, complete edition features material previously excised for legal reasons, as well as additional diaries that take the story on another ten years to the departure of Tony Blair and the arrival as Tory leader of David Cameron - a bright young hopeful when Brandreth first meets him in 1993.

'No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.' Only words can do that. Words are magic. Words are fun.Join Gyles Brandreth - wit and word-meister, Just A Minute regular, One Show reporter, denizen of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, founder of the National Scrabble Championships, patron of The Queen's English Society, QI, Room 101, Have I Got News For You and Pointless survivor - on an uproarious and unexpected magic carpet ride around the awesome world of words and wordplay.Puns, palindromes, pangrams, Malaprops, euphemisms, mnemonics, acronyms, anagrams, alphabeticals, Tweets, verbiage, verbarrhea - if you can name it, you should find it here, along with the longest, shortest, wittiest, wildest, oldest, latest, oddest, most interesting and most memorable words in the English language - the richest, most remarkable language ever known.

One good thing about a recession is that we need to go back to making our own fun. Games are in the Brandreths' blood, they have spent thousands of weekends and rainy holidays playing them and now Gyles, Saethryd and eight-year-old Rory want to share the very best with you. THE LOST ART OF HAVING FUN picks out over 250 games, guaranteed to make even the grumpiest child or adult laugh, and then with all kinds of interesting stories and lovely illustrations, it shows you clearly (and very entertainingly) how to play them. There are classic parlour games alongside all kinds of interesting ones you might not have come across yet. Nine chapters cover pretty much every eventuality: Rainy Day Games, Car Journey, Analogue Fun in a Digital World, Music and Drama, Word Games and Brainteasers, Racing Games, Party Games (split between children's birthday parties and dinner parties), Country House Weekend and last but not least Seasonal Games: Christmas, New Year and Easter. Forget consoles and board games, this beautiful book is all you need. And Queen Victoria (whose favourite games are here too) would be amused. Very amused.

In OSCAR WILDE AND THE MURDERS AT READING GAOL, the sixth in Gyles Brandreth's acclaimed Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries series featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, Reading Gaol's most famous prisoner is pitted against a ruthless and fiendishly clever serial killer. 'Intelligent, amusing and entertaining' Alexander McCall Smith It is 1897, Dieppe. Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, novelist, raconteur and ex-convict, has fled the country after his release from Reading Gaol. Tonight he is sharing a drink and the story of his cruel imprisonment with a mysterious stranger. He has endured a harsh regime: the treadmill, solitary confinement, censored letters, no writing materials. Yet even in the midst of such deprivation, Oscar's astonishing detective powers remain undiminished - and when first a brutal warder and then the prison chaplain are found murdered, who else should the governor turn to for help other than Reading Gaol's most celebrated inmate?In this, the latest novel in his acclaimed Oscar Wilde murder mystery series, Gyles Brandreth takes us deep into the dark heart of Wilde's cruel incarceration.

In 1892 Arthur Conan Doyle, exhausted by his creation Sherlock Holmes, retires to the spa at Bad Homburg. But his rest cure does not go as planned. The first person he encounters is Oscar Wilde, and when the two friends make a series of macabre discoveries amongst the portmanteau of fan mail Conan Doyle has brought to answer - a severed finger, a lock of hair and finally an entire severed hand - the game is once more afoot. The trail leads to Rome, to the very heart of the Eternal City, the Vatican itself. Pope Pius IX has just died. These are uncertain times. To uncover the mystery and why the creator of Sherlock Holmes has been summoned in this way, Oscar and Conan Doyle must penetrate the innermost circle of the Catholic Church - seven men who have a very great deal to lose.

This is a diary packed with famous names and extraordinary stories. It is also rich in incidental detail and wonderful observation, providing both a compelling record of five remarkable decades and a revealing, often hilarious and sometimes moving account of Gyles Brandreth's unusual life -- as a child living in London in the 'swinging' sixties, as a jumper-wearing TV presenter, as an MP and government whip, and as a royal biographer who has enjoyed unique access to the Queen and her family. Something Sensational to Read on the Train takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride from the era of Dixon of Dock Green to the age of The X Factor, from the end of the farthing to the arrival of the euro, from the Britain of Harold Macmillan and the Notting Hill race riots to the world of Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton. With a cast list that runs from Richard Nixon and Richard Branson to Gordon Brown and David Cameron -- and includes princes, presidents and pop stars, as well as three archbishops and any number of actresses -- this is a book for anyone interested in contemporary history, politics and entertainment, royalty, gossip and life itself.

The latest in Gyles Brandreth's acclaimed series of Victorian murder mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. Paris, 1883. Oscar Wilde, aged twenty-seven, has come to the city of decadence to discover its charms, to rekindle his friendship with the divine Sarah Bernhardt and to collaborate with France's most celebrated actor-manager, Edmond La Grange. Oscar discovers dark secrets lying at the heart of the La Grange company, and is confronted by murders both foul and bizarre. To solve the crimes, to unravel the mystery, Oscar risks his life -- and his reputation -- embarking on a dangerous adventure that takes him from bohemian night clubs to an asylum for the insane, from a duel in the Buttes de Chaumont to the gates of Reading Gaol.

'I see murder in this unhappy hand...' When Mrs Robinson, palmist to the Prince of Wales, reads Oscar Wilde's palm she cannot know what she has predicted. Nor can Oscar know what he has set in motion when, that same evening, he proposes a game of 'Murder' in which each of his Sunday Supper Club guests must write down those whom they would like to kill. For the fourteen 'victims' begin to die mysteriously, one by one, and in the order in which their names were drawn from the bag...With growing horror, Wilde and his confidantes Robert Sherard and Arthur Conan Doyle, realise that one of their guests that evening must be the murderer. In a race against time, Wilde will need all his powers of deduction and knowledge of human behaviour before he himself -- the thirteenth name on the list -- becomes the killer's next victim.

London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark, stifling attic room, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime -- but it is Wilde's unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms and the bohemian demi-monde to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation of what turns out to be a series of brutal killings. The Oscar Wilde Murders is a gripping detective story of corruption and intrigue, of Wilde's growing success, of the breakdown of his marriage, and of his fatal friendship with Aidan Fraser, Inspector at Scotland Yard...Set against the exotic background of fin-de-siecle London, Paris, Oxford and Edinburgh, Gyles Brandreth recreates Oscar Wilde's trademark sardonic wit with huge flair, intertwining all the intrigue of the classic English murder mystery with a compelling portrait of one of the greatest characters of the Victorian age.

Gyles Brandreth, acclaimed biographer of the Queen and Prince Philip, presents a unique portrait of their son, Charles, Prince of Wales, and of the one 'non-negotiable' love of his life, Camilla Shand, now Duchess of Cornwall. What are Charles and Camilla really like?