Stella Tillyard was educated at Oxford and Harvard Universities and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

She is the author of 8 books, including The Impact of Modernism, Aristocrats, Citizen Lord, and, most recently, The Great Level. Her work has been translated into several languages and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Her bestselling book Aristocrats was made into a 6 part BBC/Masterpiece

Theatre series that was sold in 22 countries. Her book A Royal Affair was the inspiration for the 2012 Danish film of the same name.

Aristocrats won the History Today Prize, the Fawcett Prize and the Meilleur Livre Etranger, Citizen Lord was short-listed for the Costa Prize and Tides of War was long-listed for the Orange Prize.

She is the author of numerous book chapters and articles, the most influential of which, ‘Paths of Glory: Fame and the Public in Eighteenth Century London’, was the starting point of an international conference in Oxford in 2014.

She has been a judge for the Costa Prize, the Samuel Johnson/Baillie Gifford Prize, the Hessel Tiltman/PEN History Prize, and the PFD/Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

She is a regular contributor to radio and television, and currently presents A Point of View on BBC Radio4.

She has been Knox Fellow at Harvard University, Writer in Residence to the Irish Government and is Visiting Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London.

She has 2 children and lives in London and Florence.