Philip Mansel (Introducer) Philip Mansel is one of Britain's leading historians of France and the Middle East. His previous books include Louis XVIII (1981), The Eagle in Splendour: Napoleon and his Court (1987), The Court of France: 1789-1830 (1988), Paris Between Empires, 1814-1852 (2001) and Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (2005). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature, the Institute of Historical Research and the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 1995 was a co-founder of the Society for Court Studies, whose journal, The Court Historian, he edited for twenty years. He is President of the Conseil Scientifique at the Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles and a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2012, he received the London Library Life in Literature Award.