Published on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, this book tells the story of the royal inheritance of diamonds from the time of Queen Adelaide in the 1830s to Elizabeth II.

The French Queen, Anne of Austria, gives her lover, the irresistible duke of Buckingham, a fabulous diamond necklace. Louis XII commands his Queen to wear the necklace at the royal ball. Three musketeers begin desperate race to England and back to retrieve the necklace from Buckingham and save the Queen's honour. But the Duke's jealous mistress, Lucy Percy, steals two of the diamonds and takes them to the Queen's enemy, Cardinal Richelieu. Oxford historian Roger Macdonald uncovers the true, extraordinary tale of intrigue, sex and revenge that inspired Alexandre Duma’s immortal novel.

Presents the English monarchy's family-owned jewels and details the history of the collection.

What would Tim Diamond, the world's worst private detective, dowithout his quick-thinking brother Nick? The bumbling detective and his kid brother are at it again in these three hilarious, fast-paced mysteries. Whether it's finding out who flattened a philanthropist with a steamroller in The Blurred Man, outsmarting Parisian drug smugglers on a vacation gone miserably wrong in The French Confection, or catching the murderer behind a deadly class reunion in I Know What You Did Last Wednesday, there's never a dull moment with this crimesolving duo around. Find out if Nick can get to the bottom of these mysteries before Tim messes everything up, or worse, gets them both killed.

African American women have played a pivotal part in rock and roll—from laying its foundations and singing chart-topping hits to influencing some of the genre's most iconic acts. Despite this, black women's importance to the music's history has been diminished by narratives of rock as a mostly white male enterprise. In Black Diamond Queens, Maureen Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and the 1980s. Mahon details the musical contributions and cultural impact of Big Mama Thornton, LaVern Baker, Betty Davis, Tina Turner, Merry Clayton, Labelle, the Shirelles, and others, demonstrating how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected their careers. By uncovering this hidden history of black women in rock and roll, Mahon reveals a powerful sonic legacy that continues to reverberate into the twenty-first century.

From the internationally acclaimed and bestselling historians William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, the first comprehensive and authoritative history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, arguably the most celebrated jewel in the world. On March 29, 1849, the ten-year-old leader of the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the center of the British fort in Lahore, India. There, in a formal Act of Submission, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company swathes of the richest land in India and the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond, otherwise known as the Mountain of Light. To celebrate the acquisition, the British East India Company commissioned a history of the diamond woven together from the gossip of the Delhi Bazaars. From that moment forward, the Koh-i-Noor became the most famous and mythological diamond in history, with thousands of people coming to see it at the 1851 Great Exhibition and still more thousands repeating the largely fictitious account of its passage through history. Using original eyewitness accounts and chronicles never before translated into English, Dalrymple and Anand trace the true history of the diamond and disperse the myths and fantastic tales that have long surrounded this awe-inspiring jewel. The resulting history of south and central Asia tells a true tale of greed, conquest, murder, torture, colonialism, and appropriation that shaped a continent and the Koh-i-Noor itself.

"The history of royal jewels told through the destiny of the queens who wore them." Serving as a resplendent symbol of regal power and grandeur, royal jewels have been treasured assets of monarchies for centuries. Whether hidden or flaunted, sold or stolen, the stories behind crown jewels mirror the history of the rise and fall of the world's most legendary families. In this stunning, lavishly illustrated volume, royalty expert Vincent Meylan draws readers into the fascinating tales of passion, mystery, adventure and intrigue that surround royal jewel caches, and shows what these dazzling treasures have meant to both the royals who wear them and the public that admires them. Beginning with the state of royal jewels today, Queens' Jewels looks back in time to chronicle the history--sometimes glamorous, sometimes gruesome--of the glittering regalia of monarchs in Russia, Iran and all across Western Europe. From the Bonapartes to the Romanovs to the Windsors, Queens' Jewels "recreates a mythical universe of which these jewels are the most powerful symbol, the silent witness of times of glory and times of tragedy."