From 1861 to 1908 a woman - the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi, born the daughter of a minor mandarin - held the supreme power in China. Opportunist, ruthless, malicious, she ruled over 400 million people. This biography explores her complex personality - her extreme conventionalism, her hatred of "foreigners", her passion for power and intrigue, her vanity and her delight in ritual, her extravagance and corruption, and her love of gardens, painting and the theatre. The book also portrays a China in rapid decline, as poverty, civil war and foreign exploitation and invasion brought about the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty. Since this, her first book, was first published in 1972, the author has written novels and other non-fiction works on images of women, iconography and art. They include "Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism", "Alone of All Her Sex: the Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary", "The Lost Father" (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and "Indigo".