"The formidable Anne Somerset !.in this admirably objective study sets out to rescue Anne's unfortunate reputation from her critics!.and restate the case for this shy and sickly ruler as one of our most unexpectedly effective monarchs!.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 "Somerset !..goes a considerable way towards overturning !.the negative judgment attached to Anne, both during her lifetime and later!.in this well-argued biography". Daily Telegraph "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!.Somerset guides us expertly and effortlessly through the labyrinthine party politics of the reign!.with flair and scholarship" Literary Review

Anne Somerset is the acclaimed biographer of Elizabeth I and the author of many books including Unnatural Murder, an account of the sensational Overbury murder, which was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger award for non-fiction; and The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV.