The Favourite: The Life of Sarah Churchill and the History Behind the Major Motion Picture - Softcover

Ophelia Field was born to American parents in Australia in 1971. She read English at Christ Church, Oxford, and gained a Master's in Development Studies at the London School of Economics. She subsequently worked as a policy analyst for several refugee and human rights organizations. Until 2008, she was Director of the Writers in Prison Programme of English PEN. Her first book, The Favourite, was published to wide acclaim in 2002, followed by The Kit-Kat Club in 2008.

Nowhere is the subtlety of Ophelia Field's historical understanding more apparent than in her delicate reading of the relationship between Sarah and Anne. That it is Field's first book is something of a wonder ... An outstandingly accomplished debut―GUARDIAN

She is a marvellous subject for a biography and Ophelia Field's book, capacious and beautifully detailed, does her full justice. It is the first work by a writer who is a master of her craft―INDEPENDENT

Other historians have skirted around the true nature of Sarah and Anne's passionate friendship, with its lesbian overtones, but Ophelia Field tackles the subject courageously ... During her long life Sarah managed to quarrel with almost everyone and took great care in editing her papers to ensure that posterity would know her side of the story, which is covered exhaustively by Field in this impressive debut―THE TIMES

Scholarly, highly articulate, and above all never dull―SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Field has created an unforgettable picture of a remarkable figure ... Instead of fictionalizing her, Field shows how Sarah became a kind of fictional and artistic icon, a symbol of certain kinds of power that remained free of the checks and balances that the new settlement and constitution was bent on establishing. Even after 250 years, she fascinates like nobody else of her time―SUNDAY HERALD

A quite astonishing tale―LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

Once you have started reading Ophelia Field's splendid book, it is hard to put it down―THE LADY

Scholarly but never less than fascinating, Field's debut truly brings to life the complex character of Sarah Churchill and the last of the Stuart courts―ABERDEEN EVENING EXPRESS

Field draws effectively on Sarah's letters and self-justifying memoirs to produce a remarkable portrait―SUNDAY TIMES