Kate Williams is a historian, author and broadcaster.

She is the New York Times bestselling author of three biographies—Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte, England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton, and Becoming Queen Victoria: The Unexpected Rise of Britain’s Greatest Monarch—as well as a novel, The Pleasures of Men. Her articles and essays have been published in a wide range of books and journals

She studied her degree and DPhil at Somerville College, Oxford and is now the Director of Life Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

She appears weekly on television and radio, discussing social history, royal history and general politics and culture. She was the social historian on BBC2’s Restoration Home and her BBC 2 documentary ‘Young Victoria’ is often repeated. She is CNN’s in-house historian and analyst. She reviews and writes often for newspapers and magazines and lives in London.

In 2019, Kate chaired the Women’s Prize for Fiction.