The story of the Stuart dynasty is a breathless soap opera played out in just a hundred years in an array of buildings that span Europe from Scotland, via Denmark, Holland and Spain to England.

The book takes as its starting point the argument that the only way to understand fully a building such as Hampton Court is to set it in the political and social context of its time and to explore the lives and motivations of its builders. The picture that emerges is on the one hand intensely personal - one of architects and builders fulfilling the whims of kings and princes. On the other hand, it is bureaucratic: Hampton Court is revealed first as the royal household, then as a palace claimed by grace-and-favour residents and finally, by visitors and tourists as their own. The history of the building is taken right up to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The twentieth-century story of Hampton Court is one of conservation and of changing attitudes towards opening up the complex to the public - it covers everything from the agonising discussions as to whether to build public lavatories to an account of the private enterprise that caused an octogenarian to make a personal fortune out of opening the maze to the public. It includes also the story of the terrible fire of 1986 and its aftermath. Social history and architectural history sit side by side in this intriguing account. New and important attributions are made to the architects Hugh May, Nicholas Hawksmoor, William Talman, Colen Campbell and Edward Blore amongst others. Moreover, the palace and its setting are placed in their European context and their long-term architectural significance is gauged. The book is lavishly illustrated with original paintings, prints and drawings, while a specially commissioned suite of plans and reconstructions reveals the evolving form of the buildings.

The massive kitchens at Hampton Court were built to supply the entire household of Henry VIII. They were the first professional kitchens organised on such a scale. Brears provides a practical guide to their running, dispelling many of the misconceptions about the cooking and eating of meals in Tudor England. Including authentic recipes from the period, adapted for modern kitchens, such as Chicken Farced and Smothered Rabbit and White Leach (a form of cool jelly), All the King's Cooks is fully illustrated with colour photographs recreating the life of the kitchens. With the author's own detailed drawings, no other book gets so close to the sights, sounds and smells of the Tudor kitchen.

Hampton Court Palace, to the south-west of London, is one of the most famous and magnificent buildings in Britain. The original palace was begun by Cardinal Wolsey, but it soon attracted the attention of his Tudor king and became the centre of royal and political life for the next 200 years. In this new, lavishly illustrated history, the stories of the people who have inhabited the palace over the last five centuries take centre stage. Here Henry VIII and most of his six wives held court, Shakespeare and his players performed, and Charles I escaped arrest after his defeat in the Civil War. William III and Mary II introduced French court etiquette, and Georgian kings and princes argued violently amid the splendid interiors. Alongside the royal residents, there have been equally fascinating characters among courtiers and servants. Queen Victoria opened the palace to the public in the nineteenth century, and since then millions of visitors have been drawn to Hampton Court by its grandeur, its beauty and the many intriguing stories of those great and small who once lived here.