Deborah McDonald

Deborah McDonald is a biographer who has now joined forces with Jeremy Dronfield to research and write the story of Moura Budberg: Russian spy, lover to writer Maxim Gorky, and HG Wells. Moura knew everyone: the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson, Winston Churchill, Guy Burgess, Joseph Stalin, Alexander Korda, Charlie Chaplin, Somerset Maugham and almost every other prominent person in London and Russia during the first half of the 19th century. She worked for the Russians and she worked for the British. She was a true Red Mata Hari, but through all of this ran an enduring love for her first lover - Robert Bruce Lockhart, the British Agent in Revolutionary Russia.

The book is called, 'A Very Dangerous Woman' and was published on 7 May 2015 in Britain and the Commonwealth and 9 June in the USA.

Deborah's previous work includes, 'Clara Collet: 1860-1948, An Educated Working Woman,' which records the life of this amazing Victorian statistician/economist who had a close association with the author George Gissing and who engaged in a war of words with HG Wells. It contains a bibliography of Collet's work invaluable for students of Victorian/Edwardian Britain.

Her second book,'The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper,' unravels the truth about Jack the Ripper and the Royal connection based on factual primary material. McDonald looks at the life of Ripper suspects JK Stephen and Prince Eddy and studies the mystery surrounding the death of Montague Druitt.

For more about the author and to see her reviews go to www.deborahmcdonald.co.uk