Sophie Shorland has a PhD in early modern literature, with a focus on the cultural history of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. A former Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, she is interested in queenship, celebrity, and the geopolitics of the past. In 2019, she was a semi-finalist in the BBC New Generation Thinkers programme. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize for a first-time biography proposal. Her biography of Catherine of Braganza, The Lost Queen, was published in the UK by Atlantic Books in June 2024 and by Pegasus in the US.

Twitter: @sophie_shorland

‘This lively, fascinating book retrieves an overlooked queen from a historical siding and restores her to the centre of European politics and Charles II's London.’ – Suzannah Lipscomb, author of What is History, Now?

‘A confident, cosmopolitan and always accessible life of the Queen Consort who brought England nothing less than the first toeholds of a truly global empire, and the habit of tea-drinking.’ – Ophelia Field, author of The Favourite

‘A splendidly sympathetic and sparky portrait, filled with unexpected images of a courageous woman who wasn't afraid to create her own circle and defend her beliefs at an English court dominated by her husband's mistresses. Wittily written and rich in detail.’ – Miranda Seymour, author of I Used to Live Here Once