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'Brilliant and revelatory...a superb biography, which paints a vivid picture of the times and of her subject*****' Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Born in the West Highlands of Scotland, Anna Keay read history at Magdalen College, Oxford, where she won two academic scholarships. She was awarded her PhD on the reign of Charles II by the University of London. She was formerly a curator for Historic Royal Palaces, Curatorial Director of English Heritage and is currently Director of the Landmark Trust. She is married with two children and divides her time between London and King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

Reviews

Here is Monmouth, and here is his world. It is a considerable achievement
*The Times*

Beautifully written ... Anna Keay has provided not just a great life of a long forgotten royal rebel and revived his place in popular politics, but also a compelling account of British history during one of its most dangerous and tumultuous eras
*Tristram Hunt*

Written with the flair of a novelist and the punctilious skill of a forensic historian … It is the best royal biography I have read in years
*A. N. Wilson*

Fascinating, compelling, outrageous and ultimately tragic The Last Royal Rebel delivers, with scholarly authority, political acumen, exciting narrative and a worldly, playful eye for drama, character and detail a vivid political–personal portrait of the hitherto-neglected Monmouth but also a shrewd study of Charles II, his dangerous, seductive, amoral court and Restoration England – and of a golden youth doomed
*Simon Sebag Montefiore*

Anna Keay has effectively turned [the] old-fashioned, censorious judgment of Monmouth on its head by making him the hero of his own story. It is a bold approach, and this vividly told story will remain in the reader’s memory long after the last page of Keay’s book has been turned. No one can deny that Monmouth’s life was anything other than dramatic … Keay’s real achievement in this book is not so much a re-evaluation of Monmouth himself, though that may be well overdue, but her deft analysis of 17th-century personalities and politics … Keay has brought a period almost lost to popular history compellingly alive
*Literary Review*

Brilliant and revelatory … Anna Keay has written a superb biography, which paints a vivid picture of the times and of her subject. She has an instinctive feel for character and place, and combines elegant prose with a novelistic gift for narrative. Above all, she has rescued this much-traduced and forgotten royal rebel from the backwaters and set him once more at the centre of one of Britain’s great historical whirlpools
*Daily Telegraph*

Powerful … [A] penetrating and superbly researched biography
*Country Life*