A BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF 2023

‘A fascinating chronicle … brilliantly researched…a history of the British monarchy seen through the prism of Hampton Court’ THE TIMES

‘Riotously readable … Russell gives a tender and affectionate account of a royal palace that is less about bricks and mortar than the men and women who down the centuries have breathed it into glamorous, scandalous and tragic life’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘Scintillating…it’s hard to imagine anyone writing a better version of the book Russell sets out to write than the racy delight we have here’ SPECTATOR

‘A serious, densely researched and fascinating portrait of Hampton Court Palace, focusing on the people who lived and loved there. His historical narrative, continental in its political scope, ranges from the Tudors to the Windsors and is informed by lively social history… he is an engaging storyteller’ COUNTRY LIFE

'If a house could gossip, this is the book that Hampton Court would whisper. An enjoyable and readable stroll through 500 years of Hampton Court history: royal residents, common visitors, thieves, invaders and ghosts’ PHILIPPA GREGORY

'Rollicking, gossipy and effortlessly learned, The Palace is what Hampton Court would say if its walls could talk. Gareth Russell is a born storyteller and this is a wonderful human history of one of Britain’s most captivating buildings.'

DAN JONES

‘Vibrant, exciting, enthralling a superb panoramic history, bursting with scholarship, wit and riveting detail. A beautifully written, fascinating book about those who have lived and loved at Hampton Court’ KATE WILLIAMS

‘With scholarly accuracy but also a novelist’s eye for a telling detail or anecdote, he shows how the palace constitutes a long, broad and golden thread running through over half a millennium of British history’

ANDREW ROBERTS