Her latest biography is The Lost Tudor Princess. She has published seventeen history books, including Elizabeth the Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Lady in the Tower and Elizabeth of York, and five historical novels. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Life Patron of Historic Royal Palaces, and is married with two adult children.Īlison Weir is the top-selling female historian in the United Kingdom, and has sold over 2.7 million books worldwide. She is soon to publish Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen, the first in a series of novels about the wives of Henry VIII. Her latest biography is The Lost Tudor Princess, about Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox. Alison has also published five historical novels, including Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth. She has published seventeen history books, including The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Princes in the Tower, Elizabeth the Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry VIII: King and Court, Katherine Swynford, The Lady in the Tower and Elizabeth of York. A historian uses such inventiveness at her peril – but a novelist has the power to get inside her heroine’s head, which can afford insights that would not be permissible to a historian, yet can have a legitimate value of their own – although I believe that the fictionalised version must be compatible with what is known about the subject.Īlison Weir is the top-selling female historian (and the fifth best-selling historian overall) in the United Kingdom, and has sold over 2.7 million books worldwide. I want to seek out the truths that lie behind the historical evidence and, for this, fiction is a versatile medium because it offers scope to develop ideas that have no place in a history book, but which can help to illuminate the lives of these queens. In all the romancing, for example, has anyone noticed the evidence that tells us what Anne Boleyn felt about being pursued by Henry VIII? Or that Henry VIII, an overprotected teenager, was prudish when it came to sex? I could go on… The extensive research I have done has afforded new insights into their lives. The lives of the six wives make for dramatic stories. It was an obvious choice, for I have studied Henry’s queens over several decades, and published books on them, notably a collective biography in 1991, which I am now re-researching and rewriting. The idea of writing a series of six novels about the wives of Henry VIII came suddenly to me as I was discussing another proposal with my agent.

Katheryn howard the tainted queen