Kate Williams, historian and author

The Pleasures of Men shares with Wolf Hall an ambitious, challenging concern with form combined with a pitch-perfect historical ear... This intoxicating and disturbing novel is properly thrilling and extraordinarily well-written. Kate Williams is already an accomplished biographer; The Pleasures of Men shows a soaring talent let loose.' Independent on Sunday

‘intense, intelligent and hugely entertaining..it will add Williams to the ranks of queens of contemporary fiction’, The Guardian.

‘wonderfully imaginative, gripping....a spine-tingling atmosphere of menace and suspense. The Times

‘sumptuous period detail and a narrative crammed with intrigue and speculation, this is the debut novel Kate Williams was born to write’, Sunday Telegraph

'A dark story of murder and obsession', Elle.

I am an expert on social, constitutional and royal history and the author of England's Mistress (2006), which was Book of the Week on Radio 4, and Book of the Year in the Times and the Independent. Becoming Queen (2008) was Book of the Year in the Tatler and Spectator. I co-authored The Ring and the Crown (2011).

My historical novel, The Pleasures of Men, is set in an 1840s London on the brink of collapse. Nervous Catherine Sorgeiul becomes obsessed with a series of murders in the East End – and unearths the terror in her soul that she has tried to forget.

I discuss history, politics and culture regularly on television and radio, including Newsnight and the Today programme, and was the social historian on the BBC's Restoration Home. I appeared over sixty times on national TV and radio in 2011.

'An outstanding talent', Matthew D'Ancona, Spectator Books of the Year

'Kate Williams has perfected the art of historical biography..her pacy writing is underpinned by the most impeccable scholarship. I cannot recommend it highly enough', Alison Weir

'History at its best', Guardian

'One of our finest young historians', Independent

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