L. Stone

Like all Discworld books, this is a terrific read, entertaining and funny and at the same time, great at relating a lot of fundamentally true things. If you're a banking and economics fan, you'll particularly enjoy this one.

The reader is excellent, too.

This is a adequate book if you can forget that it's meant to be actual history. It is filled with speculation about things that the author cannot possibly know, and reads more or less like a not very exciting novel. But if you're used to well-researched history, you will cringe frequently. For example, there is really NO way of knowing what Emma Hamilton may or may not have felt when she first saw London, or how she in fact felt about anything at all early in her life, which is not at all well-documented. I found myself saying, "how do you KNOW that" again and again and again.

Also, the reader should NOT be trying her hand at accents that she cannot do well (that would be all of them), which is both unnecessary and also makes you want to cringe. It's distracting at best and annoying most of the time.