The Kings and Queens of England - John Player & Sons 1066-1935

I discovered this yellowing relic of our past, from the days when royalty seems to have been a useful incentive to encourage smoking. (I'm sure Sir Walter Raleigh, who helped popularise smoking tobacco at the Elizabethan Court, would have approved!)

Most of the portraits are engravings by George Vertue FSA (1684 – 24 July 1756) an English engraver and antiquary, who produced over five hundred portraits in his lifetime, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

i was interested to see Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves and Catherine Parr are left out because they were never crowned as Queen of England, which is a shame.