El valimiento y el gobierno de la Monarquía Hispánica (1640−1665) examines the last years of Philip IV’s reign through Don Luis Méndez de Haro and other ministers of a period that is traditionally considered to be marked by failure and decline but is viewed more positively today in the light of extensive research in European archives. Malcolm shows how Haro, unlike his predecessors, used royal favour wisely and effectively, fully performing his court duties and acting as an impartial mediator between the monarch and the nobility. Even so, his situation was precarious. To justify his status as royal favourite he needed a brilliant team of collaborators to rely on while embarking on a foreign policy of grand designs. The efforts of Haro and other ministers turned the 1659 Peace of the Pyrenees into a diplomatic triumph, the last major success of a long and eventful reign. 

Alistair Malcolm studied History at the universities of St Andrews and Oxford and is currently head of the History Department at the University of Limerick. His research into royal favouritism in the Modern Age is focused on the global effects of that form of government and on political decision making in seventeenth-century Spain. Having specialised in teaching the cultural history of this period, he is preparing the English edition of a corpus of documents for studying the Spanish Golden Age at universities.