Anne Somerset

Anne Somerset read history at King’s College London, graduating in 1976. In 1980, her first book, The Life and Times of William IV was published in Weidenfeld & Nicolson’s Kings and Queens of England series. This was followed in 1984 by Ladies-in-Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day, which examined the role of women at the English royal court over four centuries. In 1991 Anne Somerset’s biography of Elizabeth I was received with acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Her next book, Unnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James I – an account of the sensational scandal arising from the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613 – was shortlisted in 1997 for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger award for non-fiction. The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV was another well received study of seventeenth-century criminality and court scandal, and her biography of England’s last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion, was awarded the 2013 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. Her recent book Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers: A Personal History was published by William Collins in March 2024. Anne Somerset has spoken or been interviewed at numerous literary events, including the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival, the Cheltenham Literary Festival, Dartington Hall Literary Festival, the Althorp Literary Festival, Chalke Valley History Festival, Blenheim Palace Literary Festival, the Theatre Royal Bath, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, and Oxford University Historical Association.