Anne Somerset was born in England in 1955, and was educated in London, Gloucestershire, and Kent. She read history at King's College, London, and began her professional career as a research assistant to several historians. She published her own first book in 1980; it was a popular biography of King William IV, which was reprinted in 1993. She has gone on to write four further works, all focused on English history, mainly in the Tudor and Stuart periods.