Quite to the contrary, they were eminently unsuited to lead a PTA meeting, much less globe-spanning empires. King George V of Great Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were not great men. The absurdity of the crown runs like a black joke throughout Miranda Carter’s triple biography, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I. It is the same blood as runs through our veins. There is nothing special about royal blood. For centuries, kings and queens have ruled vast nations based solely on the notion that their blood is somehow “royal.” It’s utter wash, of course, as countless failed leaders have proven. Of all the ways that man has devised for cornering power, none is as breathtaking as the hereditary monarchy. I have a joke for you: hereditary monarchies. The second in the series, The Infidel Stain, is due for publication in January 2015. In 2014 her first thriller, The Strangler Vine, the first in a series set in the first years f Queen Victoria's reign, will be published. Her second book, The Three Emperors (US title, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm), was published in 2009 and was shortlisted for the LA Time Biography prize and the Hesse-Tiltman History prize. In the US it was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the seven best books of 2002. Anthony Blunt: His lives (2001), her first book, won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Orwell Prize, and was shortlisted for many other prizes, including the Guardian First Book Award and the Whitbread Biography Award.

She lives in London with her husband and two sons. She worked as a publisher and journalist before beginning research on her biography of Anthony Blunt in 1994. Paul's Girls' School and Exeter College, Oxford. M J Carter, biographer, historian and thriller writer, was educated at St.

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