To Play the King
Newly elected Prime Minister Francis Urquhart takes on the new King, in the controversial No 1 bestselling second volume in the Francis Urquhart trilogy – now reissued in a new cover.After scheming his way to power in ‘House of Cards’, Francis Urquhart made a triumphant return in ‘To Play the King’ – a Sunday Times No 1 bestseller that became a hugely successful BBC TV series, with Ian Richardson resuming his award-winning role as Francis Urquhart.Its highly controversial and uncannily topical storyline – in which the role of the monarchy in modern Britain comes under scrutiny as Prime Minister Francis Urquhart threatens to expose Royal secrets when his plans are blocked by the idealistic new King – coincided with a huge increase in public interest in the future of the Royal Family following a series of Royal scandals.
Читать To Play the King онлайн беплатно
MICHAEL DOBBS
TO PLAY THE KING
This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the authorâs imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollâinsPublishers 1992
Copyright © Michael Dobbs 1992, 2014
Michael Dobbs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover design © HarperCollâinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content or written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006471646
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 © ISBN: 9780007397617
Version: 2018-10-08
Praise for To Play the King:
âWith a friend like Michael Dobbs, who on earth needs enemies? Gloriously cheeky. Dobbsâ books grab because of their authenticityâ
The Times
âHighly readableâ¦a model of its kind and impeccably timedâ
Daily Mail
Lucy and Andrei
For Medford 1971. For Fiskardon 1981.
For Villars 1991.
For Everything.
Contents
When I wrote To Play the King in 1990 as a sequel to House of Cards, it was partly because I believed that the Royal yacht was heading for turbulent waters. And so it proved to be. I wrote about fractured marriages, financial scandal, political controversy and public humiliations, and for the next few years the Royal Family seemed to follow the script with breathless tenacity. At times it seemed as though various individuals were openly auditioning for parts in the story. If my book was intended to be by way of a warning, as I suppose it was, it failed completely. The House of Windsor was to endure some of its worst moments. The yacht nearly sank and some members of the crew were thrown overboard.
My fictional king isnât simply a version of Prince Charles â there have been many heirs to the throne who have got themselves into difficulties and I took a little inspiration from more than one â but it was inevitable that some comparisons would be made. At the time I began writing, it was clear that his marriage was falling apart, despite all the official denials, so I decided that my kingly character would have no wife. I hope none of what I wrote amounted to disrespect because that is not what I intended.
In any event, despite those dire years, both he and the institution have displayed their tenacity and powers of recovery, and today they stand higher in public esteem than they have for decades. The Royal yacht sails on.
And so does FU. Nearly thirty years after I created him, he has developed a life of his own, in books, on global television, as a character who has been quoted both in Parliament and the press. Do you suspect he might even have been muttered about in the corners of various palaces? Well, you might say that but I am not going to commentâ¦
M.D. 2013
Away with Kings. They take up too much room.
It was the day they would put him to death.
They led him through the park, penned in by two companies of infantrymen. The crowd was thick and he had spent much of the night wondering how they would react when they saw him. With tears? Jeers? Try to snatch him to safety or spit on him in contempt? It depended who had paid them best. But there was no outburst; they stood in silence, dejected, cowed, still not believing what was about to take place in their name. A young woman cried out and fell in a dead faint as he passed, but nobody tried to impede his progress across the frost-hard ground. The guards were hurrying him on.
