Book excerpt: In a series of moving portraits of the monarchs and their advisors, Charles Douglas-Home and Saul Kelly examine the tasks with which recent crowned heads have been troubled, and the virtues that enabled them, by and large, to act for the common good. Incisive, evocative and informed by a magisterial vision of the scope of political power, this work offers a persuasive answer to the critics of monarchy, and an account of a unique form of government that will give confidence and inspiration to the British people, as they enter a new century of shifting powers and uncertain prospects.