Theodore Ian Wilson Aronson (13 November 1929 – 13 May 2003) was a royal biographer with an easy manner which enabled him to meet and earn the trust of his subjects.

The son of a Latvian Jewish storekeeper, he was born at Kirkwood

Kirkwood, Eastern Cape

Kirkwood is a town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is situated on the banks of the Sundays River in the eponymously-named Sundays River Valley, which forms part of the Sundays River Valley Municipality in the Cacadu District of the Eastern Cape....

, South Africa and educated at Port Elizabeth High School before studying Art at Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

 University, where he acted with Nigel Hawthorne

Nigel Hawthorne

Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne, CBE was an English actor, perhaps best remembered for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary in the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister and the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. For this role he won four BAFTA Awards during the 1980s in the...

. He became a commercial artist with J. Walter Thompson

JWT

JWT is one of the largest advertising agencies in the United States and the fourth-largest in the world. It is one of the key companies of Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP Group and is headquartered in New York. The global agency is led by Worldwide Chairman and Global CEO Bob Jeffrey who took over the...

 in Johannesburg, then transferred to London, where he also worked part-time as a waiter. His interest in royalty began when he was a schoolboy. He saw the King and Queen and the princesses Elizabeth

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...

 and Margaret

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II and the younger daughter of King George VI....

 at a siding near Kirkwood in 1947, and was bowled over by Queen Elizabeth's charm and skill with the crowd. Some years later, after visiting the mausoleum of Napoleon III at St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire, he decided to write about royal subjects.

Charming, highly intelligent, well versed in his subjects, he became known as a devoted, if sometimes quizzical, admirer of British royalty. His research included interviewing several members of the royal family, including Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone

Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone

Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone was a member of the British Royal Family. She was the longest-lived Princess of the Blood Royal of the British Royal Family and the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria...

 (about whom he published a biography shortly after her death in 1981), the Queen Mother

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...

, and Princess Margaret, as well as numerous courtiers. All were charmed by the small, dapper man who listened respectfully, had a light touch with flattery, yet was not tediously deferential.

The author of twenty-three books, he died at Frome

Frome

Frome is a town and civil parish in northeast Somerset, England. Located at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills, the town is built on uneven high ground, and centres around the River Frome. The town is approximately south of Bath, east of the county town, Taunton and west of London. In the 2001...

in Somerset, aged 73.

Books by Theo Aronson

• The Golden Bees: The Story of the Bonapartes (New York Graphic Society - 1964)
• Royal Vendetta: The Crown of Spain 1829-1965 (Bobbs-Merrill - 1966)
• Defiant Dynasty: The Coburgs of Belgium (Littlehampton Book Services - 1969)
• The Fall of the Third Napoleon (Bobbs-Merrill - 1970)
• The Kaisers (Bobbs-Merrill - 1971)
• Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes (Bobbs-Merrill - 1972)
• Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descedants of Queen Victoria (MacMillan Publishing - 1974)
• Royal Ambassadors: British Royalties in Southern Africa 1860-1947 (Littlehampton Book Services - 1975)
• A Family of Kings: The Descendants of Christian IX of Denmark (Weidenfeld Nicholson - 1976)
• Victoria and Disraeli: The Making of a Romantic Partnership (McMillan Publishing - 1978)
• Kings Over the Water: Saga of the Stuart Pretenders (Littlehampton Book Services - 1979)
• Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone (Littlehampton Book Services - 1981)
• Royal Family: Years of Transition (Salem House - 1984)
• The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses: Lillie Langtry, Daisy Warwick, Alice Keppel and Others Harper Collins - 1988)
• Crowns in Conflict: The Triumph of the Tragedy of European Monarchy 1910-1918 (Horizon Book - 1988)
• Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (St. Martins Press - 1990)
• Queen Victoria's Scotland (with Michael J. Stead, Cassell Illustrated - 1992)
• Heart of a Queen: Queen Victoria's Romantic Attachments (John Murray Publishers - 1992)
• The Royal Family at War (John Murray Publishers - 1994)
• Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld (John Murray Publishers - 1996)
• Princess Margaret: A Biography (Regnery Publishing - 1997)
• Royal Subjects: A Biographer's Encounters (Sidgwick & Jackson - 2000)
• A Family of Kings (Royalty Digest - 2004)