There have been countless biographies of Bertie, and the proof that he is a complex character is that they are so very different. But what interested me more were the opinions of him while he was still alive, and descriptions by his contemporaries of the people and places he knew, especially by the French, who knew him best. By hunting around in newspaper archives, it is also possible to get a direct insight into how Bertie’s contemporaries saw him and talked about him.
Below is a selection of the books that have been most useful to me, or simply the most entertaining about Bertie’s times. Most of them have been cited in the text. The out-of-print French books can mostly be found on the Bibliothèque Nationale’s website: gallica.bnf.fr.
All English translations of excerpts from French sources are my own.
Gordon Brook-Shepherd, Uncle of Europe: The Social and Diplomatic Life of Edward VII (1975)
Virginia Cowls, Gay Monarch: The Life and Pleasures of Edward VII (1956)
Émile Flourens, La France Conquise: Edouard VII et Clemenceau (1906)
Christopher Hibbert, Edward VII (1976)
Philippe Jullian, Edouard VII (1962)
André Maurois, Edouard VII et son Temps (1933)
Jane Ridley, Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (2012)
Giles St Aubyn, Edward VII: Prince and King (1979)
Stanley Weintraub, Edward the Caresser (2001)
H. E. Wortham, Edward VII: Man and King (1931)
James de Chambrier, La Cour et la Société du Second Empire (1904)
Henri Château & Georges Renault, Montmartre (1897)
Jacques Debussy, L’Impératrice Eugénie (1913)
Gaston Jollivet, Souvenirs de la Vie de Plaisir sous le Second Empire (1927)
Adrien Marx, Les Souverains à Paris (1868)
Comte de Maugny, Souvenirs du Second Empire: la Fin d’une Société (1890)
Xavier Paoli, Leurs Majestés (1911)
Irène de Taisey-Chantenoy, À la Cour de Napoléon III (1891)
Emma Valadon, Mémoires de Thérésa, Écrits par Elle-même (1865)
Horace de Viel-Castel, Mémoires du Comte Horace de Viel-Castel sur le Règne de Napoléon III (1883)
A. C. Benson & Viscount Esher (editors), Letters of Queen Victoria, 1837–1861 (1907)
Catalogue Officiel: Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1878 à Paris (Volume 4 has all the details of British exhibitors)
Ludovic Halévy & Henri Meilhac, La Vie Parisienne (libretto, 1866)
Napoléon III et Eugénie Reçoivent à Fontainebleau (exhibition catalogue, 2012)
Paul Reboux, Le Guide Galant (1953)
Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria (1921)
Émile Zola, Nana (1880)