Kate Williams is an author, social historian and broadcaster. She fell in love with history whilst studying for her BA and DPhil at the University of Oxford and has MAs from Queen Mary and Royal Holloway. She is a Professor of History and appears regularly on television - she recently presented The Stuarts, is the in-house historian and royal expert for CNN, and has appeared on programmes from The Great British Bake Off to election coverage and comedy panel shows. She has written five historical biographies and a series of historical novels, and loves nothing more than a spending her time in dusty archives.
The perfect combination of scholarship and storytelling, meticulous research and emotional insight, Kate Williams brings Mary vividly to life in all her complexities and contradictions. -- Kate Mosse, author of The Burning Chambers Brings us a fresh Mary, set in a gloriously rich context, a tragic heroine - irresistibly real and relevant... There isn't a line wasted in this taut, dramatic and utterly beguiling biography. -- Charles Spencer * author of Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I * Scintillating, provocative... An elegant synthesis of royal biography and political thriller. * Daily Telegraph * What makes [Rival Queens] special is William's understanding of how gender shaped Mary's life. This is a feminist history, but not a clumsily theoretical one. Theory and sophisticated analysis never smother the pacey narrative * The Times *