As mother of Mary Queen of Scots, Mary of Guise is often overshadowed by her more famous daughter. However, this intelligent and energetic woman also led an intriguing life of her own. Daughter of a powerful French family, a staunch Roman Catholic and subtle politician, she acted as Regent for her young daughter and was keen to ensure that Scottish loyalties lay with France rather than Protestant England. This is the story of a strong-willed woman who lived through turbulent times.
I've been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1974 and am also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. I'm currently Chairman of Council of the Scottish Record Society, Chairman of the Virtual Hamilton Palace Trust and Honorary Historian of the Edinburgh Incorporation of Bonnetmakers.I did an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Scottish Historical Studies at Edinburgh University, winning the Senior Hume Brown Prize in Scottish History and the Jeremiah Dalziel Prize for my Ph.D. thesis, which became my first book, The Days of Duchess Anne, published by Collins in 1973 and St Martin's Press in 1974. A new edition by Tuckwell Press appeared in paperback in 2000. Since then I've written another fifteen sixteenth- and seventeenth- century biographies and works on social and women's history, along with a large number of scholarly articles. I contributed more than fifty entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, of which I was a Research Associate. From 1973 until 1999 I combined my writing activities with my career as Historian at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where I organised historical exhibitions such as The Winter Queen and was Head of the Portrait Archive.
