ROYAL BABYLON(ISBN=9780767907552) 英文原版 115盘 下载 pdf txt 电子版 mobi snb docx

　　Anyone who loves scandal, particularly the juicy dish on

royalty, will inhale this gossipy account by British writer Shaw

(The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists). In a style reminiscent of

low-end tabloids, the author presents a litany of negative and

sometimes disgusting details about the personal lives of the men

and women who ruled Britain, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Spain,

Portugal, Poland and Austria. Leaving the late 20th century mostly

behind (his only mention of Charles and Diana is in the

introduction), the author concentrates instead on royal misbehavior

back to the 1700s. Entertaining overall, many entries are

indisputably not for the faint of heart, such as the truly gross

story of Russia's Peter the Great ("`Great' was generally a

recognition of power or brute strength, no matter how they lived,

how many people they had killed or how repulsive they were"),

described by Shaw as a "paranoid sadist." This tsar was an

alcoholic who tortured people for fun and once forced an attendant

to bite into the flesh of a corpse. This chronicle is replete with

royal sexual activities, including those of the Bourbons of France,

whom Shaw credits with possessing "extraordinary appetites." Irony

is Shaw's strong suit, which lends a great deal of humor to often

humorless anecdotes. For example, he notes that Spain's King Philip

IV fathered 30 illegitimate children "but being a good Catholic

always felt bad about it" and forced his wife to have sexual

relations three times daily. Like Michael Farquhar's A Treasury of

Royal Scandals..., this irreverent and amusing exposé of royal

indiscretions will appeal especially to those who like their

history "lite." Illus. not seen by PW.

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书籍介绍

An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy.

Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside?

Royally dishing on hundreds of years of dubious behavior, Royal Babylon chronicles the manifold appalling antics of Europe's famous families, behavior that rivals the characters in an Aaron Spelling television series. Here, then, are the insane kings of Spain, one of whom liked to wear sixteen pairs of gloves at one time; the psychopathic Prussian soverigns who included Frederick William and his 102-inch waist; sex-fixated French rulers such as Philip Duke D'Oreleans cavorting with more than a hundred mistresses; and, of course, the delightfully drunken and debauched Russian czars - Czar Paul, for example, who to make his soldiers goose-step without bending their legs had steel plates strapped to their knees. But whether Romanov or Windsor, Habsburg or Hanover, these extravagant lifestyles, financed as they were by the royals' badgered subjects, bred the most wonderfully offbeat and disturbingly unbelievable tales - and Karl Shaw has collected them all in this hysterically funny and compulsively readable book.

Royal Babylon is history, but not as they teach it in school, and it underlines in side-splitting fashion Queen Victoria's famous warning that it is unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses of Europe.