Alison Weir - The Official Site of Author and Historian Alison Weir (original) (raw)

Welcome to the official website of the British author and historian Alison Weir.

Dr Alison Weir is the biggest-selling female historian (and the fifth best-selling historian) in the United Kingdom since records began in 1997. She has published thirty-two titles and sold more than 3 million books - over a million in the UK and 2.2 million in the USA. She is now working on two concurrent series of books: the Tudor Rose trilogy of novels about Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII and Mary I, and England's Medieval Queens, a quartet of historical works of non-fiction.

ABOVE - RECENT, NEW AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS

Top row, left to right:

HENRY VIII: THE HEART AND THE CROWN UK paperback, 18th January 2024

THE KING'S PLEASURE: A NOVEL OF HENRY VIII US paperback, 7th May 2024

MARY I: QUEEN OF SORROWS UK hardback, 9th May 2024

THE PASSIONATE TUDOR: A NOVEL OF QUEEN MARY I US hardback, 28th May 2024

MARY I: QUEEN OF SORROWS UK paperback, 16th January 2025

Bottom row, left to right:

THE PASSIONATE TUDOR US paperback, 6th May 2025

THE CARDINAL: THE SECRET LIFE OF THOMAS WOLSEY UK hardback, 22nd May 2025

THE CARDINAL: A NOVEL OF LOVE AND POWER US hardback, 27th May 2025

QUEENS AT WAR UK hardback, 18th September 2025

QUEENS AT WAR US hardback, 2nd December 2025

THE SIX TUDOR QUEENS SERIES

Win the whole set! A competition for US readers, open until 23rd May 2021! To enter, please visit:
https://sweeps.penguinrandomhouse.com/enter/alison-weir-tudor-queens-library

Historical biography, especially of people who lived centuries ago, is more often than not the piecing together of fragments of information and trying to make sense of them. We cannot know our subjects as we know those of our own time: we can only infer so much about them from the sources of the period and memorials they left behind. My favourite novelist, Norah Lofts, could not have put it more succinctly when she wrote, in The Brittle Glass (1942): 'And so out of the bits and pieces I could gather, out of my own imaginings and speculations, I built up a picture and a story... After all, how much nearer, even with much documentary evidence, can we come to understanding any one of the myriad dead who have gone to their graves, carrying their real secrets, of motive and essence and personality, into the silence with them?"

“Underpinned by extensive reading of original sources.” (The Washington Post),