H. Noel (Hugh Noel) Williams

Born in Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1870, Hugh Noel Williams studied at Clifton College and then at St John's College, Oxford, where he took honors in modern history. He wrote under the name H. Noel Williams and built a career as a prolific author of historical works and novels.

Williams is especially remembered for books on French history and biography. His subjects included Marguerite of Angoulême, Madame du Barry, Madame de Pompadour, the Bonaparte family, the Condés, and the great actresses of the French stage. Again and again, he returned to court life, politics, romance, and reputation, finding vivid human stories inside formal history.

He died in 1925. Today, his work offers readers an older but still engaging style of popular history: rich in anecdote, drawn to memorable personalities, and especially appealing to anyone who enjoys European royal and cultural history.