Virginia Rounding is an author, editor, proofreader and indexer, and a professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. Her most recent book is The Burning Time, an investigation of the circumstances, motivations and deaths of the men and women burnt at the stake - and of those who set fire to them - in London in the mid-16th century.

Her previous book was a fresh examination of the lives of the last Emperor and Empress of Russia: Alix and Nicky: The Passion of the Last Tsar and Tsarina. A reviewer commented in the Washington Times: ‘she has brought them to life in flesh and blood perhaps better than any previous writer on the subject. This is partly a result of her skill in rooting out and quoting commentary on them by those who knew them well and put their impressions down in letters and diaries. But she has a knack for building on these insights with her own, and so has produced a more rounded portrait than we have ever had before.’

Virginia’s has also written a biography of the Empress Catherine II (Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power, 2006, described in the Daily Telegraph as ‘a thumping great triumph of a book’). This was preceded by a study of French courtesans (Grandes Horizontales, 2003, in the Independent as ‘impeccably researched, a flirt of a book, enjoyable and sexy’).

Virginia is also the joint author, with Martin Dudley, of a series of books on church administration, and has reviewed widely for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Daily Telegraph, FT Magazine, Independent, Daily Mail and Moscow Times. She currently lives in Birmingham.

She was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art from 2008 to 2011.

She was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School for Girls, Great Crosby, and at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London.