For the last five years, Amanda Foreman has been living with another woman. A member of the nobility and a relative of Diana, Princess of Wales. She is a Duchess, no less.

Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire, to be precise - the subject of Amanda's praised-to-the-skies biography, which has just been published.

At 29, Amanda Foreman has produced a work which manages to tap-dance daintily across that tightrope which spans critical acclaim and scholarly achievement.

And she does it without a safety net, either - because her biography of the woman, dubbed 'the first celebrity royal' is as boldly, readably entertaining as it is learned.

She walks into the Randolph Hotel wearing a handsome leather jacket and leggings. Blonde hair tumbles to her shoulders like a pale waterfall and she's got a smile that could light up a coalmine.

With her peaches and cream complexion and Anglo-American roots, Amanda Foreman is both an English rose and a homecoming queen for the last days of the 20th century.

Her father was Carl Foreman, the Hollywood screenwriter responsible for several cinema classics, including Guns of Navarone, Bridge On The River Kwai and High Noon - which Amanda names as her three favourite movies. "I think everyone, at some point in their lives, wants to be like Gary Cooper and throw down their badge and say 'I'm going to do it my way!'" she laughs.

But then Amanda has been doing things her way all her life. Born in London and raised in England and the United States, she had a tough time of it at school.

"It's true that I applied to 26 colleges and they all turned me down," she says.

"My dad died during my O-levels and although I can't blame my poor results on that, I did get depressed for a couple of years. I was bullied at school too, and I never fitted in.

"My dad was blacklisted during the McCarthy witch-hunts. They took his passport away and they took his writer's credit off Bridge On the River Kwai. John Wayne boasted that he'd run my dad out of town. Wayne was a real squealer and he hated my father who, in turn, despised him as a weakling and a coward.

"I'm more confident since the book was published, but I'm sure that everyone has been through a time in their life when they look at themselves and ask, 'What do I see?'

"At 18, I saw failure. My brother had been accepted by Cambridge, my father had been so successful and then there was me. I was a joke."

It was her mother who suggested that since Amanda was half-American, she should apply to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She did, was accepted - and immediately started to shine. "Sarah Lawrence was so different," she explains. "We designed our own courses, there were no exams and you made a personal contract with your don and arranged a course which was just right for you."

After a further year at Columbia University, Amanda was accepted by Oxford's Lady Margaret Hall, where she handed in her PhD thesis four weeks ago.

She also worked as a researcher and says she hopes to stay on - perhaps in a tutorial role.

"I love Oxford and I'm so grateful to LMH for taking me."

She describes her book on Georgiana as 'A labour of love' and admits to identifying strongly with her subject.

"Georgiana couldn't say 'no' to people and I'm like that, too. I'm terrified of disappointing people. When I was writing the book, I found myself getting depressed whenever Georgiana was depressed - I'd act out her emotions. It was very strange. When I'm writing, I try to keep office hours. I'll start at 9am, write until lunch and then until 6pm - although Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays meant Star Trek - and I'd always stop work for that!"

Television is one of her hobbies - and she admits to also identifying closely with Ally McBeal, the heroine of the new hit C4 comedy drama.

Ally's intelligent but insecure, and for all Amanda's poise and assurance, there's a vulnerable quality to her which only serves to make her more likeable.

She confesses to being 'amazed' at the success of her first book (it was on the non-fiction best seller lists quicker than you could say 'reprint') and she has already planned her next opus.

"My next book will be a historical crime novel set in 1802, but Georgiana is still inside me and she has to go before I start the new one." Amanda Foreman was 15 when her famous father died. She describes herself at that time as 'Little Miss Contrary'.

"I went through a phase where I thought my parents were stupid and old fashioned, but I would never have been a rebellious teenager if I'd known my father was dying. I finally realised that we'd run out of time."

In the list of acknowledgements at the start of her book, Amanda dedicates the work to her father and adds poignantly: "Had he lived, by now we too would be friends."

And by now, Carl Foreman would surely have been proud of his gifted daughter.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.