Kate Williams studied her BA at Somerville College, Oxford where she was a College Scholar and received the Violet Vaughan Morgan University Scholarship. She ten took her MA at Queen Mary, University of London and her DPhil at Oxford, where she received a graduate prize. She was also one of Andrew Motion’s students on the Royal Holloway College/University of London MA in Creating Writing – where Kate’s debut book was England’s Mistress: the Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (Hutchinson and Ballantine 2006) – it was Book of the Week on Radio 4, a boo of the year in the Times and the Independent and shortlisted for Marsh Prize for Biography.
Her second book, Becoming Queen (Hutchinson and Ballantine 2008), about the passionate youth of Queen Victoria and Princess Charlotte which was serialized in the Sunday Telegraph Stella Magazine, and was a Book of the Year in the Tatler and Spectator. Simon Sebag Montefiore prised Becoming Queen as “passionate, exuberant and entertaining, a treasure trove of royalty, intrigue and politics.” Kate was also a consultant on the movie Young Victoria which starred Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend.
She is currently writing a biography of Josephine Bonaparte, Mistress of Empires, for delivery in May 2011 and publication in Spring 2012 by Hutchinson in the UK, Ballantine in the US, and McClelland & Stewart in Canada. Prometheus will publish Mistress of Empires in The Netherlands.
The Pleasures of Men marks the beginning of an exciting parallel career for Kate as a novelist. She already has intriguing ideas for her second and third novels. The Pleasures of Men will be the first of a number of dark edgy historical novels – the second one will be delivered in early 2012.
