Annelise Freisenbruch was born in Bermuda in 1977. After moving to the UK with her family, she studied Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and was awarded a PhD in 2004. She is the author of The First Ladies of Rome (Jonathan Cape), a highly-acclaimed history of Rome's empresses, which was published in the US as Caesars' Wives: Sex, Power and Politics in the Roman Empire (Free Press) and has been translated into eight languages. Her first novel Rivals of the Republic - which previously appeared Amazon e-book Blood in the Tiber - was published by The Overlook Press (US) and Duckworth (UK) in 2016. In March 2021, her debut children's book Circus Maximus: Race to the Death (Zephyr/Head of Zeus) was published under the name Annelise Gray. She lives with her partner in Dorset where she teaches Latin.
