‘Magnificence and gallantry were the soul of this court’; in writing about Louis XIV and his women, this is the contemporary verdict that I have borne in mind. Certainly, I have hoped to convey magnificence in this book. How else could one write about the man who created Versailles in the early part of his personal rule and made it his official seat in 1682?

And I have certainly depicted gallantry in all the many contemporary senses of the word: from friendship shading to love; the subtle art of courtship; the more frivolous and even dangerous pursuit of flirtation; down to sensual libertinage ending in sex. It is easy to understand why seventeenth-century France was popularly supposed to be a paradise for its women, who enjoyed ‘a thousand freedoms, a thousand pleasures’. But if gallantry – or sex – is one of my themes, then religion is another. It is in the connection between the two that I believe the fascination of Louis XIV’s relationships with his mistresses properly lies.

My study is not, however, entirely limited to the mistresses of Louis XIV, possibly Marie Mancini, principally Louise de La Valliére, and Athénaïs de Montespan as well as the enigmatic, puritanical, Madame de Maintenon, whose precise status was doubtful. I had once intended this before my researches led me on to the richer story of his relationships with women in general. These include his mother Anne of Austria, his two sisters-in-law who were Duchesses d’Orléans in succession, Henriette-Anne and Liselotte, his wayward illegitimate daughters and, lastly, Adelaide, the beloved child-wife of his grandson. Inevitably, therefore, the story also reflects something of the condition of women of a certain sort in seventeenth-century France. What were their choices and how far were they, mistresses and wives, mothers and daughters, in control of their own destinies?

A portrait will emerge of Louis XIV himself, the Sun King, and like the sun the centre of his universe. But as the title and sub-title indicate, this is not a full study of the reign. It was Voltaire, in the first brilliant study of ‘le Grand Siècle’, published twenty-odd years after the King’s death, who wrote: ‘It must not be expected to meet here with a minute detail of the wars carried on in this ages. Everything that happens is not worthy of the record.’ This is a sentiment that one can only humbly echo.

From the introduction to Love and Louis XIV

“I never planned to be an author. But after retiring as a diplomat, with the active encouragement of my family, I decided to put down on paper some of the interesting things that had happened to me, before I forgot them.”

“My favourite hero is Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe (with an honourable mention for Wodehouse's Lord Emsworth) and my favourite villain is George MacDonald Fraser's Harry Flashman.”

As a young researcher at Barnard College, Elaine Pagels changed forever the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement.

Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt. Known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library, the manuscripts show the pluralistic nature of the early church and the role of women in the developing Christian movement. As the early church moved toward becoming an orthodox body with a canon, rites and clergy, the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were suppressed and deemed heretical.

“I don't want to be too melodramatic about this, but in the last 18 months my iPod has become much more than a portable music carrier. It has not only become my constant companion, but it's something of an emotional crutch, too. I have squeezed a lifetime of music into my little white plastic music box, uploading some 5,000 songs, from Abba, The Beatles and The Clash right through to XTC, Yello and Frank Zappa. My 40GB iPod has become my personal musical library, a vast, almost exponential jukebox that has the capacity to sooth me when I'm uptight, excite me when I'm feeling exhausted, and lift me up (where I belong) when I'm down.”
Dylan Jones, Independent 4 July 2005

“I live in Cairo, for the adventure and desert.”

“Basic body language doesn't change. If you look at paintings over hundreds of years, you can see that basic expressions and way we communicate with our bodies are the same. But we now understand more about what those gestures mean.”

“There is a great treasury of bucolic, nostalgic, rather rosy books written about the quaintness and eccentricity of England, but they are not a place I recognise, except as a literary conceit. What I wanted to write about was not a geographical place but the English as a people.”

“Invest in a good bra. Spend money on underwear and if you've got a tummy, suck-in knickers. What you wear on the inside counts more than you think.” Susannah Constantine

“If you want to be stylish, it's about knowing what to avoid. If you know what to avoid then you will inevitably look stylish because you will wear things that people say 'God you look wonderful', they won't say, 'oh, that's a really odd pair of trousers.” Trinny Woodall

“Each night before I close my eyes I run through the day and remind myself of all the miracles I have encountered.”

“Sean Davoren believes that the most important thing is to make learning about etiquette fun, and while manners are always important some of the old-fashioned Debretts-style 'rules' have no place in today's world.”

“Diana Souhami has traced these lives of ‘double-being’, and given us a double biography – the two lives of her subjects, and the two worlds living side by side in Paris, the one so well-known, and the other a tantalising possibility of difference, a virtual world, made real for a time, and disappearing like so much else, under the brutality of war.” Jeanette Winterson in The Times

The Battle of Blenheim has fascinated Charles Spencer since he was a boy. It was even his History ‘O’ Level special project, partly because of the Spencer-Churchill direct link to the engagement's prime victor, John, Duke of Marlborough.

“Blenheim is a judicious and compelling account of an important but little-known battle.” Daily Telegraph

“Pacy and enjoyable... this is a fine, intelligent, patriotic book.” Spectator

Lorne Spicer is the acknowledged Queen of the Car Boot Sales, and is familiar to millions of viewers thanks to her programmes, such as Cash In The Attic and Car Booty on the BBC and Bootsale Challenge on ITV.

In Find a Fortune Lorne reveals how to maximise profits buying and selling the sort of junk everyone has at home. She gives tips on:

“When at school I wrote an exposé of the illegal exploitation of newpaper delivery boys by newsagents for the school magazine. It made the local newspaper and I was launched on a career in journalism!”

“Philosophy is nothing less than the adventure of trying to understand ourselves and the universe. Although the questions of Philosophy are typically hard, the effort to answer them is a marvellous adventure, endlessly fascinating and absorbing. I believe part of a philosopher's responsibility is to participate in the debate humanity has with itself about the difficult ethical and social problems it perennially faces.

Some academic philosophers have their technical specialisms in which they exclusively engage with other philosophers, while others are also committed to taking philosophy and philosophical styles of thought into the public arena, with the desire to participate in society's efforts at progress. I'm one of the latter, and that's why I'm so passionate about philosophy, and was keen to get involved with human rights initiatives.”

A consultant and teacher in health, fitness and well-being, Carole works alongside professionals from both conventional and complementary medicine and has gained the respect of both sectors during her 25 years in the business. Carole started teaching remedial body conditioning and toning classes alongside her mother, Sylvia, in her late teens. She has also worked as a dancer, singer, model, fashion buyer, stylist and teacher of communication skills, attitudinal and inspirational training and goal-setting.

In her early 20s, a variety of serious health problems, exacerbated by being overweight, bad eating habits and smoking heavily, led her to research extensively complementary medicine as well as various exercise and nutritional regimes, from which she developed an integrated health system called Holistix. Holistix spawned a successful book, a video and the first of Carole’s frequent appearances in the media.

Many of the principles she developed then laid the foundations for her training company, LifeSmart, which she established in the 1990s. Carole and her team at LifeSmart use their extensive experience to take a whole body and mind approach to the full spectrum of health, fitness and well-being. It is these extraordinarily effective and thorough principles that are now available for everyone to try with the help of this new and exciting book. Carole is a patron of Kidscan, TOAST (The Obesity Awareness and Solutions Trust) and a spokeswoman for the Consumers for Health Choice Save Our Supplements Campaign.

She currently writes a weekly column for the Mail on Sunday.

Asterix books have been translated into 107 languages and sold over 320 million copies worldwide.

“I would never work on a magazine that celebrated shooting Bambi.”

How do you write your work of non-fiction?
“Do a bit each day. Like digging the garden.”