Welcome to the website of Sarah Fraser – author, broadcaster, speaker and historical consultant. Sarah Fraser writes and broadcasts on the British Stuart era – from the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, to the doomed Jacobite rising of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in 1745.

In 2012, she published The Last Highlander Scotland’s Most Notorious Clan Chief, Rebel and double Agent (HarperCollins). It won the 2012 Saltire Society First Book Prize, and became a New York Times ebook bestseller. A documentary on its unruly, colourful subject is now available on the HIstory Hit. TV Channel titled The Mystery of the Headless Man

In 2017, she published The Prince Who Would be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart.  Acclaimed as a TLS Book of the Year for 2017, it was also one of The Telegraph History Books of the Year and the BBC History Magazine Book of the Month, May 2017.  A BBC documentary based on the book (title, The Best King We Never Had) aired Nov 30 2017. Presented by Paul Murton, Sarah is the historical consultant, contributed to the writing of it, and appears in it.

Sarah is currently working on a true crime 13 year kidnapping, set between Enlightenment Edinburgh and the wilds of the Highlands; and a book set in the reign of King James VI & I Queen Anna of Denmark.  She is also producing a series of podcasts for Dan Snow’s History Hit on the beginning of the Stuart dynasty after 1603, and also it’s violent and catastrophic end following Bonnie Prince Charlie’s 1745 rebellion.

Sarah speaks regularly at festivals, and contributes to television and radio programmes on this tumultuous 150 years of history. It is a transformational era for these islands and the larger world the British explored. In her writing, Sarah brings to life the gripping personal stories that unfold against the backdrop of game changing major historical dramas of war, revolution, and social upheaval.

 

“Sarah Fraser deserves to be acclaimed as a notable biographer” The Spectator

 

“Fraser tells her story well, and genuinely succeeds in bringing her characters to life, as the best biographies do… at times it feels like we are in the room!” Tim Harris, Literary Review