H F M Prescott was born in Cheshire. Hilda Prescott read Modern History at Oxford and later received MA degrees there and at Manchester, as well as an honorary doctorate at Durham. She is best known for her historical novel THE MAN ON A DONKEY and her biography of Mary Tudor which won the James Tait Black Prize in 1941. The daughter of a clergyman, she was a committed member of the church of England, and her wide-ranging interests included travel and a deep love of the English countryside that lasted all her life. She died in 1972.

Notorious for her persecution of Protestants, Queen Mary I has been vilified by generations of historians as Bloody Mary. But this award-winning biography offers a more humane and measured perspective on the life of this tormented woman. With sympathy, Prescott examines just how Mary, who was swept to the throne on a wave of popular acclaim, fell so far in her countrymen's esteem that just five years after her coronation, her death was greeted with universal relief.