A very interesting read about how the British royal family get their income, how they like to spend their money, what they collect, how they keep the assets within the family and how they sometimes have to dispose of some. Interspersed in all these are stories about their relationships and their lives in general from 1901 onwards.

I did find less compelling the chapters on government discussions and actions on the civil list, and also chapters where too much detail was given. But overall, well worth a read.

Despite a factual error on the first page (the Duke of Edinburgh's age), I persevered with this book and found it to be an interesting account of the wealth of the Royal Family. The available wills of members of the family provide interesting facts, but it is what is not known that proves most intriguing. Careful inheritance planning and concealment mean that the public will probably never know the true extent of their wealth - the best guess is it is far more than they would like us to know about.

Thank you to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

This was quite dense, and some parts became quite a slog, but the topic itself was interesting. Who doesn’t want to know about the financial situation of the Royals? Even if the final answer is “we don’t actually know how much money they have”, we do know that they’re cash poor and asset rich. For this reason, the book was quite difficult to follow because for the most part, the author follows jewellery through the royals, and circles back to the point that the majority of royal wills are sealed, which kind of made this book feel a bit pointless.

It was also a bit confusing because the book tends to jump between royals without really explaining who they are and it also jumps backwards and forward in time, which made this book difficult to follow.

I have always been interested in the Royal Family. I found this to be particularly good to read about a subject that is less known about them and the ways in which they ensure that the wealth they have accumulated stays with them. Really good read and very interesting.