Charles Saatchi is an Iraqi-British businessman and the co-founder, with his brother Maurice, of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led the business, the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s, until they left the agency in 1995. Born: 9 June 1943 (age 82 years), Baghdad, Iraq

Founding the Saatchi Gallery in 1985 – which now registers over 1.5 million visitors a year – is of course just one side to the story. In addition to his art ventures, the now-multimillionaire created an advertising empire which grew to become the largest in the world in the space of a few years. And through it Saatchi extended his influence yet further, creating original campaigns that went down in history and helped shape the future of the advertising world.

The "Winter Queen of Prague" refers to Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662), daughter of England's King James I, who briefly reigned as Queen of Bohemia with her husband, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, from 1619 to 1620, enduring only one winter before being deposed, sparking the Thirty Years' War, and spending the rest of her life in exile, though her lineage eventually led to the Hanoverian succession in Britain. Elizabeth Stuart was also known as Elizabeth of Bohemia.

Broadcaster and lecturer Leslie Primo expertly places art history in the wider political contexts of xenophobia and influence, addressing both foreign artists working in Britain and British-born artists affected by foreign cultures. From Hans Holbein to Artemisia Gentileschi, from William Hogarth to Angelica Kauffman, familiar masters and lesser-known creators are situated within the multiculturalism inherent to, yet commonly dismissed by, the art world at this time.

Weaving together artists’ experiences of both acclaim and adversity, The Foreign Invention of British Art not only demonstrates how immigration and diversification are so often the driving force behind creative innovation but also reveals the true heritage behind some of the nation’s defining artworks.