For nearly forty years David Nairne was actively involved in the administration of Jacobite politics. A member of the exiled courts of the Stuart Kings James II and James III, he worked for and with a succession of Jacobite secretaries of state, conducting the Jacobite correspondence, deciding on Jacobite policies and negotiating with the courts of Versailles, Lunéville and Rome. Moreover, he enjoyed particularly close relations for most of the period with both of the exiled kings. Despite this, his name is not well known to most historians of the period, so this completely new and original biography will restore him to the prominent and influential position which he occupied at the time. Nairne was both an observer and a participant in the struggle of the exiled Stuart monarchs to regain their kingdoms between 1689 and the end of the 1720s. The chance survival of many of his papers has made it possible to reconstruct a full account of his life from his birth in Scotland in 1655 until his death in Paris in 1740.

Edward Corp lives in France, and is now retired. He was Professor of British History at the University of Toulouse. He has published extensively on the exiled Stuarts, including a three-volume history of the Stuart court in exile. He has also curated two major exhibitions on the Stuarts in exile, at the Château-Vieux de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.