"Niece to Mary, Queen of Scots, grandaughter to the great Tudor dynast Bess of Hardwick, Lady Arabella Stuart was born and bred in the belief that she would oneday inherit her cousin Elizabeth 1's throne. Many at home and abroad anticipated she could be crowned Queen. However Arabella's fate was to make a forbidden marriage, to die a lonely squalid death in the Tower and to be written out of history. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, including Arabella's own extraordinary, passionate letters, Sarah Gristwood's acclaimed biography paints a vivid and powerful portrait of a woman forced to tread a precarious path through one of the most treacherous periods in British history, and inso doing rescues this 'lost queen' from obscurity."