MacLeod says: ‘If like me, you’re gripped by the heart rending riches to rags story of Marie Antoinette, you’ll understand why I’ve spent ages reading everything I could get my hands on about this unfortunate queen. For years, while my babies were small, I scoured dusty university book shelves to find 200 year old books of letters and memoirs – to read, and sometimes to translate, while they slept.’

This book is the product of these years of research. It is based on contemporary letters and memoirs – written by Marie Antoinette and those closest to Marie Antoinette – her mother, her love Fersen, her unsurprisingly embittered daughter Marie Therese, her maid, the governess of her children. And a roll call of many others.

Now a teacher, her children grown, MacLeod lives in Lanarkshire, Scotland with her family.