John Campbell is one of Britain’s leading political biographers. Born in 1947, he was educated at Edinburgh University and took his PhD there in 1975.

His first book, LLOYD GEORGE:THE GOAT IN THE WILDERNESS, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1977 and was runner-up in that year’s Yorkshire Post award for the best first book by a new author. Since then he has written F.E.SMITH, FIRST LORD OF BIRKENHEAD (Cape 1983); ROY JENKINS (Weidenfeld 1983); NYE BEVAN AND THE MIRAGE OF BRITISH SOCIALISM (Weidenfeld 1986); EDWARD HEATH (Cape 1993), winner of the 1994 NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction; MARGARET THATCHER: THE GROCER'S DAUGHTER (Cape 2000); and MARGARET THATCHER: THE IRON LADY (Cape 2003).

He has also edited a number of books, most notably THE EXPERIENCE OF WORLD WAR II (Harrap 1989), and reviewed regularly for The Times, Independent, Sunday Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere.

He is married with two grown-up children and lives in Notting Hill. His other interests include the theatre, music, cricket, golf and tennis.

In the summer of 1911, David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, hired a young school teacher called Frances Stevenson to tutor his daughter in the summer holidays. He was forty-eight, and married with four children. She was twenty-two and had recently graduated with a degree in classics. She was highly intelligent as well as very attractive, and Lloyd George soon began to employ her as his secretary.

At the beginning of 1913 they became lovers, on terms spelt out by Lloyd George with ruthless clarity: he would not leave his wife for her, nor would he risk his career. She was to become his private secretary, run his office and share his life as fully as his family and the need to avoid a scandal would allow.

Their secret relationship was to last for thirty years until his wife's death finally allowed Lloyd George to marry her in 1943, less than two years before his own death.

John Campbell's compelling new book is the first detailed study of this extraordinary relationship - one that was known about by everyone in politics but never revealed in the press - and of the strains that it placed on both parties. Frances longed to come out of the shadows and, even more, to have a child. In 1929 she finally gave birth to a daughter. But who was the father? Combining sex, romance, family feuds and high politics, this book tells a remarkable tale.

John Campbell has based his account on letters, diaries and a vast range of material, published and unpublished. The book shows once again his particular ability to synthesize a wide variety of sources into a story that is at once riveting and wholly convincing.