Evelyn Farr read English with French and Italian at University College London. Her M.Phil thesis on the influence of 18th century French and English fiction in Jane Austen’s novels led to her first book on Fanny Burney, and it was Burney’s marriage to a French émigré that resulted in a journey through the byways of French history which have fascinated her ever since. She is currently working on another biography for Peter Owen on Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV and the French Queen at the centre of The Three Musketeers.