Una McIlvenna is Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.

Focusing on representations of scandals in popular culture and print, Una McIlvenna explores Catherine de Medici's legendary 'flying squadron', the ladies-in-waiting of the sixteenth-century French queen mother who allegedly seduced politically influential men to further their mistress's Machiavellian purposes. In tracing how the legend came about