Anne Somerset

Anne Somerset is a British historian whose biographies recover the political judgment and private pressures surrounding women at court. The Politics of Passion refers to her full-scale study Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion, first published by HarperPress before Knopf issued an American edition. Somerset follows Anne from a childhood marked by dynastic upheaval through the 1707 union of England and Scotland, the War of the Spanish Succession, and the rivalries that shaped her ministry. She also gives sustained attention to Anne's friendships with Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham, treating them as relationships with political as well as personal consequences. The biography received the 2013 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. It belongs to a wider body of work that includes Elizabeth I, Ladies in Waiting, Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers, and The Affair of the Poisons, all grounded in close attention to court records and character.