Sex with the Queen : 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics	In this follow-up to her bestselling Sex with Kings, Eleanor Herman reveals the truth about what goes on behind the closed door of a queen's boudoir. Impeccably researched, filled with page-turning romance, passion, and scandal, Sex with the Queen explores the scintillating sexual lives of some of our most beloved and infamous female rulers. She was the queen, living in an opulent palace, wearing lavish gowns and dazzling jewels. She was envied, admired, and revered. She was also miserable, having been forced to marry a foreign prince sight unseen, a royal ogre who was sadistic, foaming at the mouth, physically repulsive, mentally incompetent, or sexually impotent -- and in some cases all of the above. How did queens find happiness? In courts bristling with testosterone -- swashbuckling generals, polished courtiers, and virile cardinals -- many royal women had love affairs.
Anne Boleyn flirted with courtiers; Catherine Howard slept with one. Henry VIII had both of them beheaded. Catherine the Great had her idiot husband murdered, and ruled the Russian empire with a long list of sexy young favorites. Marie Antoinette fell in love with the handsome Swedish count Axel Fersen, who tried valiantly to rescue her from the guillotine. Empress Alexandra of Russia found emotional solace in the mad monk Rasputin. Her behavior was the spark that set off the firestorm of the Russian revolution. Princess Diana gave up her palace bodyguard to enjoy countless love affairs, which tragically led to her early death. When a queen became sick to death of her husband and took a lover, anything could happen -- from disgrace and death to political victory. Some kings imprisoned erring wives for life; other monarchs obligingly named the queen's lover prime minister. The crucial factor deciding the fate of an unfaithful queen was the love affair's implications in terms of power, money, and factional rivalry. At European courts, it was the politics -- not the sex -- that caused a royal woman's tragedy -- or her ultimate triumph.
Sex with Kings : 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge	Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman's Sex with Kings takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe's most powerful monarchs. Alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humor, and stirring poignancy, this glittering tale of passion and politics chronicles five hundred years of scintillating women and the kings who loved them. Curiously, the main function of a royal mistress was not to provide the king with sex but with companionship. Forced to marry repulsive foreign princesses, kings sought solace with women of their own choice. And what women they were! From Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, who kept her position for nineteen years despite her frigidity, to modern-day Camilla Parker-Bowles, who usurped none other than the glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales. The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. Wearing a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts, she was never to be exhausted, complaining, or grief-stricken.
True, financial rewards for services rendered were of royal proportions -- some royal mistresses earned up to $200 million in titles, pensions, jewels, and palaces. Some kings allowed their mistresses to exercise unlimited political power. But for all its grandeur, a royal court was a scorpion's nest of insatiable greed, unquenchable lust, and vicious ambition. Hundreds of beautiful women vied to unseat the royal mistress. Many would suffer the slings and arrows of negative public opinion, some met with tragic ends and were pensioned off to make room for younger women. But the royal mistress often had the last laugh, as she lived well and richly off the fruits of her "sins." From the dawn of time, power has been a mighty aphrodisiac. With diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches, Eleanor Herman's trailblazing research reveals the dynamics of sex and power, rivalry and revenge, at the most brilliant courts of Europe. Wickedly witty and endlessly entertaining, Sex with Kings is a chapter of women's history that has remained unwritten -- until now.

Related Items:

• Keith Haring

  Graffiti were the most beautiful things I ever saw,' commented Keith. The kids who were doing it were very young and from the streets, but they had this incredible mastery of drawing which totally blew me away. I mean, just the technique of drawing with spray paint is amazing, because it's incredibly difficult to do. And the fluidity of line, and the scale, and always the hard-edged black line that tied the drawings together! It was the line I had been obsessed with since childhood!

• Carlos Alonso

  Master Argentine contemporary artist, Carlos Alonso began his career as a social realist but is best known for his latter new realist works. Like most prestigious South American artists, Carlos Alonso spent a large part of his career working and exhibiting in Europe.

• Helmut Newton

  Following his recent death, Helmut Newton's position as one of the world's pre-eminent fashion photographers is assured. But to many he was much more than that. His controversial and beautiful pictures have broken down taboos, documenting and, to an extent, shaping society's changing attitudes to sex and female empowerment. Indeed author JG Ballard has argued that Newton was in fact nothing less than the world's greatest visual artist.

• Guido Argentini

  The sculpture of Michelangelo, Rodin, and Brancusi, serve as the inspiration for Guido Argentini's masterly photographs of the female nude. Published together for the first time in this breathtaking collection taken over a period of seventeen years, Argentini's astute focus on the female form achieves the transformation of bodies into objects of art.

• Latex & Nudes

  Latex & Nudes Burlesque beauties, sizzling centerfolds, bondage babes and rubbery cuties! For the first time in one book, here is a compilation of the world's most famous pin up stars here in James and James' debut collection of photographs.