Mrs Jordan's Profession

Mrs Jordan's Profession is the acclaimed biography of Dora Jordan by bestselling author Claire Tomalin

'Intelligent, finely made and wonderfully readable. As gripping as the best fiction' Independent on Sunday

Acclaimed as the greatest comic actress of her day, Dora Jordan lived a quite different role off-stage as lover to Prince William, third son of George III. Unmarried, the pair lived in a villa on the Thames and had ten children together until William, under pressure from royal advisers, abandoned her. The story of how Dora moved between the worlds of the eighteenth-century theatre and happy domesticity, of her fights for her family and her career makes a classic story of royal perfidy and female courage.

From the acclaimed author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman, this celebrated biography is one of history's most astonishing untold stories.

'The strangest and most sensational story Tomalin has told so far. A miraculously detailed portrait - as brisk, unsentimental, good-humoured and fairminded as its subject' Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph

'Compelling, shrewd in its judgements, exceptionally well written, and informed by a vivid sense of the past' John Gross, Sunday Telegraph

'Fascinating, affecting. A compelling story and Tomalin tells it with clarity and warmth' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times