Veronica Buckley – författare

The groundbreaking biography of one of the most progressive, influential and entertaining women of the seventeenth century, Christina Alexandra, Queen of Sweden.In 1654, to the astonishment and dismay of her court, Christina Alexandra announced her abdication in favour of her cousin, Charles. Instrumental in bringing the Thirty Years War to a close at the age of 22, Christina had become one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe. She had also become notorious for her extravagant lifestyle.Leaving the narrow confines of her homeland behind her, Christina cut a remarkable path across Europe. She acted as mediator in the Franco-Spanish War and, in return for financial support, was received into the Roman Catholic Church despite the fierce condemnation of her protestant countrymen. Christina settled in Rome at the luxurious Palazzo Farnese where she established a lavish salon for Rome's artists and intellectuals. More than once she was forced to leave Rome while one scandal or another died down; she was painted a lesbian, a prostitute and even a hermaphrodite. Her most impassioned affair was with a well-connected Cardinal. Later, when financial support from the Pope and the Spanish crown dried up, Christina began to court French favour, eventually even plotting with them to overthrow the Spanish at Naples, where she hoped to be installed as queen.Despite her political vacillations and a lifelong refusal to restrain her appetites, Christina ended her days in Rome relatively free from disfavour and financial strife. At the express order of the Pope, she was buried, with full ceremony, in the walls of St Peter's Basilica, one of only two women to be so honoured.Reminiscent of Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Claire Tomalin's Jane Austen: A Life, Buckley combines a personal approach with a lively interest in the social and historical world of seventeenth-century Europe to bring this remarkable personality to life.

Twilight of the Romanovs opens a door onto the world of pre-revolutionary Russia in original photographs taken during the last decades of Romanov rule. They include many remarkable colour images created using an early three-colourplate technique; these bring the remote past to life with an especially vivid jolt. We discover a world of exceptional diversity, seemingly timeless, almost archaic, marked by persistent poverty, yet also abundantly rich and often surprisingly modern. These photographs are snapshots of a vanished world. The Russian Empire was soon to be destroyed, and, in the ensuing blood-soaked decades, rendered unrecognizable. Yet these images reveal a surprising continuity: despite the subsequent cataclysm, faces, postures, buildings and landscapes still resonate with those who see them a century and more later.

Francoise d'Aubigne, born in a bleak provincial prison, her father a condemned murderer and traitor to the state, rose from the depths of poverty to life at the vortex of power at Versailles. Married at fifteen to a tragically disfigured and scandalously popular poet, in his salon Francoise encountered all the brilliant characters of the seventeenth century's glitterati. After her husband's death, she led the life of a merry widow in the colourful Marais quarter of Paris, before becoming governess to the King's growing brood of royal batards. This is the extraordinary story of one woman's daring journey from beggar-girl, West Indian colonist and salonniere to royal mistress and thence, in secret, to the compromised position of Louis' uncrowned Queen. Through the rags-to-riches tale of the marquise de Maintenon, Veronica Buckley reveals every layer of the vibrant and shocking world that was France in the age of Louis XIV.