Queen's Lender

Jean Findlay was born in Edinburgh and studied Law and French at Edinburgh University and theatre in Kraków, Poland. She has worked as a playwright and as a journalist has written for The Scotsman, The Guardian, The Independent, and the BBC. She is the author of Chasing Lost Time - The Life of C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator published in 2014 by Chatto & Windus, London 2014, by Vintage paperback 2015 and by FSG, New York 2015. For writing The Queen's Lender she won a Hawthornden Fellowship 2017 and a Lavigny International Fellowship 2018.

'A joy to read. In George Heriot – Edinburgh goldsmith, royal jeweller, and philanthropist – Findlay has found an everyman through whom we all get access to the weird world of royalty. Her novel captures the domestic wit and warmth, alongside the casual brutality of the court of James VI of Scotland and I of England. Beautifully pitched between the homeliness and the haughtiness of the Shakespearean era – and often very funny.' - Sarah Fraser, author of The Prince who would be King