JANE RIDLEY is professor of history at the University of Buckingham in England, where she teaches a course on biography. Her previous biographies include The Young Disraeli and The Architect and His Wife: A Life of Edwin Lutyens, which won the prestigious Duff Cooper Prize. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Ridley writes book reviews for The Spectator and other newspapers, and has also appeared in several television and radio documentaries. She lives in London and Scotland.