Miranda Seymour is a biographer, novelist, and reviewer. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and recipient of the Pen Ackerley Memoir of the Year Prize for Thrumpton Hall, her extraordinary account of life at the family manor, which she now runs as a successful conference and wedding business. Her other acclaimed biographies include lives of Mary Shelley, Henry James, Robert Graves, Ottoline Morrell, and Helle Nice, the Bugatti Queen. Her interest in the history of the relationship between England and Germany was triggered by her own background. In 1931, her English uncle was (inadvertently) almost responsible for Hitler's death. His marriage to a German woman led Miranda on a quest for her family's German links, which had been neglected and forgotten following World War II.