The King’s Bed: Sex and Power in the Court of Charles II - Don Jordan, Michael Walsh Audiobook

Written by Don Jordan, Michael Walsh
Read by Steve West
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: March 23, 2016
Duration: 12:28:25

From two veteran historians comes an intelligent and spirited history of Charles II’s dissolute life and surprising legacy.

To refer to the private life of Charles II is to abuse the adjective. His personal life was anything but private. His amorous liaisons were largely conducted in royal palaces surrounded by friends, courtiers, and literally hundreds of servants and soldiers. Gossip radiated throughout the kingdom.Charles spent most of his wealth and his intellect on gaining and keeping the company of women, from the lowest of society such as the actress Nell Gwyn to the aristocratic Louise de Kerouaille.

Some of Charles’ women played their part in the affairs of state, coloring the way the nation was run. The authors take us inside Charles’ palace, where we will meet court favorites, amusing confidants, advisors jockeying for political power, mistresses past and present, as well as key figures in Charles’ inner circle, including his “pimpmasters” and his personal pox doctor. The astonishing personal life of Charles II reveals much about the man he was and why he lived and ruled as he did. The King’s Bed tells the compelling story of a king ruled by his passion.

“While amply fulfilling the salacious promise of its title, this very listenable history of the Merry Monarch and his crew turns out also to be well researched and well written. Narrator Steve West delivers all this in the most proper English, and with subdued relish. Britain probably had no livelier or more colorful reign, or one more fraught with problems: plague, fire, a Dutch invasion, cynicism and corruption in government, the king fecund everywhere but in his queen’s bed. Here is an era when theater, wit, politics, and sex were each a high art–and as history, provide the highest entertainment value. Interestingly, Charles’s bloodline persists in British royals not through the legitimate but the illegitimate line–via Diana Spencer.”—Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

Georgette Heyer wrote a novel, “Royal Escape” about the young Charles after the Defeat at the Battle of Worcester. It is uploaded on Biography Audiobooks.