Being born a member of the royal family is not a choice a person can make. It is not a career that can be decided upon and it is not something that can be done in isolation from the outside world. People have always been interested in the lives of the royals, past and present, and how they each have coped with being in the most famous family in Britain. Frank Prochaska, who is the author of many books on monarchy and the royal family, has carefully selected various former kings and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, private secretaries and royal mistresses from the archives of the "Dictionary of National Biography" to go into this collection.