Alison Weir

The author of a number of historical works, both non-fiction and fiction..

Alison Weir is a Londoner, born and bred at Westminster. although she has also lived in Norfolk, Sussex and Scotland, and now resides in Surrey. She has been married to Rankin Weir since 1972, and has two children. She was educated at the City of London School for Girls and the North Western Polytechnic, training to be a teacher with history as her main subject.

Before becoming a published author in 1989, she was a civil servant, then a housewife and mother. From 1991 to 1997, whilst researching and writing books, she ran her own school for children with learning difficulties, before taking up writing full-time.

During the early 1970s, she wrote historical novels and the original version of her second published book, The Six Wives of Henry VIII - 1,024 pages long, and single-spaced - and had it rejected on the grounds that there was a world paper shortage! She also researched the lives of all the mediaeval Queens of England, research she has since drawn on for several of her books, and for Eleanor of Aquitaine in particular.

After suffering several rejections, she finally found a publisher - the Bodley Head - in 1988. Later, that imprint was taken over by Random House and became obsolete, at which point she was transferred to Jonathan Cape, her present UK publisher.

As a non-fiction author, she writes 'popular' history, about which she says:

"The term has sometimes been used in a derogatory sense by a few people who should know better, because all historians use much the same sources. History is not the sole preserve of academics, although I have the utmost respect for those historians who undertake new research and contribute something new to our knowledge. History belongs to us all, and it can be accessed by us all. And if writing it in a way that is accessible and entertaining, as well as conscientiously researched, can be described as popular, then, yes, I am a popular historian, and am happy to be one."

Fact file

Name: Alison Weir

Education: North Western Polytechnic

Place of birth: London

Current home: North London

Similar authors: Lisa Jardine, Antonia Fraser, Richard Starkey, Peter Ackroyd