Gunpowder Plots

Antonia Fraser is the author of several, major, internationally acclaimed historical biographies: Mary Queen of Scots (James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1969); Cromwell: Our Chief of Men; King Charles II; the Six Wives of Henry VIII; and her recent bestseller The Gunpowder Plot. She has also written two highly praised books focusing on women in history; The Weaker Vessel; Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (which won a Wolfson Award for history 1984) and The Warrior Queens; Boadicea's Chariot. She is the editor of the series Kings and Queens of England, recently reissued, and wrote the volume James VI of Scotland, I of England. Antonia Fraser has also written seven mysteries and two books of crime short stories featuring Jemima Shore, Investigator. She is married to Harold Pinter and lives in London.

Sir David Cannadine is Dodge Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University, and was the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography from 2014 to 2026. He is the author of many books, including The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, Ornamentalism, Class in Britain and The Undivided Past, as well as of biographies of G.M Trevelyan, Andrew W. Mellon, Margaret Thatcher, King George V and Queen Elizabeth II. He is the general editor of two major series: The Penguin History of Britain and The Penguin History of Europe. Victorious Century, 1800-1906 is his volume in the former series.