Prof. Nadine Akkerman is an archival detective, biographer, cryptographer, editor and spymistress. An acclaimed literary historian, she is the award-winning author of Invisible Agents. Her latest book is Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration, which she co-wrote with Dr Pete Langman.

Nadine is also the author of Queen of Hearts, the authoritative biography of the sometime Queen of Bohemia Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI/I, and editor of The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart (3 vols) – it has been said that the only person who has read more of Elizabeth’s letters than Nadine is Elizabeth herself. If historians take one thing from these works, it is that Elizabeth Stuart should never be called ‘The Winter Queen’ again.

A popular public speaker in the UK, Nadine has been a guest on Woman’s Hour, Histories of the Unexpected podcast and on the SkyArts series Treasures of the British Library (with Julia Donaldson) to name but a few.

Nadine is Professor in Early Modern Literature and Culture at Leiden University, the Netherlands, where she lives in a seventeenth-century canal house with her partner, novelist Pete Langman (when they’re not in the UK), and hopes to have a cat soon.