Royal roots of sub-prime default

Far from being a 20th-century innovation, our taste for leverage could date back to the Middle Ages. In fact, two UK-based academics are looking into whether 14th-century English monarchs were the original sub-prime borrowers.

While the Queen Mother’s fabled overdraft at Coutts was fodder for the tabloid press, professors Chris Brooks and Adrian Bell of the University of Reading’s International Capital Market Association centre are embarking on what promises to be an exciting investigation of royal finances.