Meet the Author: Ophelia Field - The Favourite

Visit Queer Britain Museum to meet author Ophelia Field, interviewed by Lisa Power, as they explore the history behind the award-winning film starring Rachel Weisz with Olivia Colman and Emma Stone.

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, was as glamorous as she was controversial. Politically influential and independently powerful, she was an intimate, and then a blackmailer, of Queen Anne, accusing her of keeping lesbian favourites - including Sarah's own cousin Abigail Masham.

Ophelia Field's masterly biography brings Sarah Churchill's own voice, passionate and intelligent, back to life. Here is an unforgettable portrait of a woman who cared intensely about how we would remember her

We have a limited number of ‘Pay What You Can’ tickets, as well as the option to pre-order a signed copy of ‘The Favourite’.

London Events Queer Britain Literary Books Talk

The Lineup

Ophelia Field, Author

Ophelia Field was born to American parents in Australia in 1971. She attended schools in Queensland and Sydney, before she and her mother emigrated to Britain. Ophelia read English at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a First, and gained a Masters in Development Studies at the London School of Economics, with Distinction. She won the national T.E. Utley Prize in 1994.

In 2000, Ophelia started to research The Favourite, a historical biography of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744), which was originally published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton and in the US by St Martin’s Press. A new edition was published in November 2018 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

In 2003, Ophelia received the inaugural Elizabeth Longford Grant for the writing of historical biography, and was commissioned by HarperCollins to start work on her second book, The Kit-Cat Club, published in 2008. This is a group biography, again set in the early 18th century, and was selected as one of The Financial Times' History Books of the Year.

Ophelia has written for The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Literary Review and many others. She has taught a course on 'The Art of the Essay' a the Idler Academy, creative writing to parent care-givers, writing biography to MA students at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (UCL) and is currently Programme Director of MA/PhD Biography at the University of Buckingham. She compiled an online Essay Library of 100 important English essays for Notting Hill Editions, and has contributed an article about political essays in English literature to ON ESSAYS (OUP, 2020).

Ophelia is currently working on a book about several people in or close to the English Court of King James I, and on a collection of semi-personal essays. She lives in London, with her partner and children.

Lisa Power, Host

Lisa is a lifelong campaigner on LGBTQ+ rights and HIV. Co-founder of Stonewall, she spent 14 years volunteering with helpline Switchboard LGBT+ and 17 years working for Terrence Higgins Trust, culminating as Policy Director.

As Secretary-General of the International Lesbian & Gay Association she was the first out queer person to speak on our rights at the UN in New York and continues to support grass roots organisations across the world and in the UK.

Author of a history of the London Gay Liberation Front, she was historical advisor to the acclaimed series "It's A Sin"