A Royal Life [Paperback] HRH The Duke of Kent and Vickers, Hugo

Before he was the Duke of Kent, he was Prince Edward — a boy raised in the shadow of war, royal duty, and his cousin, the Queen. Hugo Vickers charts a life lived in service: from Sandhurst and the Army to decades representing the Crown at ceremonies most of us will never see. This is not a tell-all memoir. It's quieter than that. Edward opens up about his parents (including his father's fatal 1942 plane crash), his marriage to Katharine Worsley, and the strange, often isolating machinery of being a working royal. Vickers, one of Britain's sharpest royal biographers, keeps the tone measured but intimate. You get a sense of what it costs to be "the spare's spare" — always present, rarely spotlighted. For anyone fascinated by the inner workings of the monarchy or the weight of inherited obligation, this is a rare insider view.