Queen Anne

‘Proves no period of history is ever dull… A wonderfully pacy and absorbing read.’ John Harding, Mail on Sunday

‘One of the most enjoyable biographies I’ve read in the past year, elegantly written and with an encyclopaedic grasp of the period. I loved every page of it’ Literary Review

‘It has taken immense patience and skill ….to create a new and subtler image of the last of the Stuart monarchs. Anne Somerset has done a real service both to us and to her namesake.’ Sunday Times

“With a great deal of literary panache … Queen Anne emerges as intelligent and sympathetic despite the cruelty of her gynaecological history” Antonia Fraser, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year

‘This magisterial new biography paints a fascinating picture of an often-overlooked monarch….on the basis of this incisive and compelling portrait, none could argue that she did not keep the interests of her people close to her heart.’Country Life

‘A scholarly account of a truly dreadful woman’ Jane Ridley

Anne Somerset was born in 1955 and read History at King’s College, London. Her first book, ‘The Life and Times of William IV’, was published in 1980. This was followed in 1984 by the bestselling ‘Ladies-in-Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day’, an acclaimed biography of Elizabeth I in 1991, and ‘Unnatural Murder: Poison in the Court of James I: The Overbury Murder’ in 1998. Her most recent work is ‘The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV’.