Royal Murder Mysteries

During WW2, Kenya's Happy Valley was a hedonistic hideaway for society's Aristocratic elite. It was a place where casual sex, drug-taking and general debauchery were commonplace and the upper classes could misbehave far away from the gaze of those at home who might disapprove.

In the early hours of 17th July 1918, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was marched into a cellar of a house in Yekaterinburg and mown down by a Bolshevik firing squad.

The death of the Duke of Kent - the Queen's uncle - in a plane crash in 1942 has never been fully explained. The mysterious circumstances surrounding the crash and the almost total lack of acknowledgement of it - or him - by the royal family has led to accusations that the Prince has been deliberately airbrushed from history.

King Ludwig of Bavaria was gay, wildly eccentric and built fairy tale castles that today rate as Germany's leading tourist attractions - he was not, it must be said, a conventional man or king. His unstable behaviour saw him declared insane and deposed from the throne - and in June 1886, just three day later, he showed up dead in a lake south of Munich.

Prince Albert Victor - Queen Victoria's Grandson -was certainly a fascinating man. Rumour, speculation and scandal constantly surrounded the short life of the man known as 'Eddy' and his memory has not been treated any differently.

At five minutes before midnight on the 20th January 1936 King George V of England was pronounced dead. The way in which the King died was kept secret for 50 years.