Bringing Greek mythology vividly to life, The King Must Die and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea, tell the amazing adventures of Theseus, famous for slaying the Minotaur, defeating the Amazons and rescuing Persephone from the underworld.

Mary Renault was educated at Clifton High School, Bristol and St Hugh's College, Oxford. Having completed nursing training in 1937, she then wrote her first novel Promise of Love. Her next three novels were written during off-time duty whilst serving in the war. In 1948 she went to live in South Africa but travelled widely. It was her trip to Greece and her visits to Corinth, Samos, Crete, Delos, Aegina and other islands, as well as to Athens, Sounion and Marathon, that resulted in her brilliant historical reconstructions of Ancient Greece. Mary Renault died in 1983.