Alison Weir's Reading List

"It’s a bit cheeky to choose a trilogy, I know. But if you read them all as one book—and you can—it is the most outstanding historical novel that I have ever read. It is effectively the history of England, seen through the eyes of each generation of the owners of a medieval house, from 1380 through to the 1950s. Yes, but it’s not just that. There are wonderful vivid characters, sinister undercurrents, and so many different story lines and themes. Sometimes there is a little gap between the stories where the reader is wondering what’s happened in between, and there are dark hints… The whole thing is a joy. I’ve been instrumental in getting it republished, and all three books are now available."

"This is one of my all-time favourite historical novels; it’s absolutely inspirational. Every sentence is a joy. It was written in 1954 and is, of course, of its time – bodice rippers came later. But it’s written with such integrity, and I see it as a benchmark for historical novels. Anya Seton was an American author and she spent four years in Britain researching this novel. Given the sources available to her at the time, it’s brilliant. It has inspired so many people. In 2003 the BBC did a poll, ‘The Big Read’, of all-time favourite books, and Katherine came in the top 100. It’s never been out of print. It’s not accurate by modern standards, but it’s so well done that it convinces. The second half of it is largely fiction. The earlier part is based closely based on historical sources, but where there are gaps in Katherine Swynford’s life, Seton fills them credibly. To me, it evokes that medieval period, which I have long studied as a historian. I mean it is not accurate compared to what we know about Katherine Swynford today. There has been a lot of research on her since 1954. No, today, I’m afraid, the bar has gone way down. That’s why you have so many dumbed-down historical novels. There are one or two honourable exceptions, but not many. Possibly, but not only that. It’s an absolutely inspirational book to read, one of those people love to go back to. I do go to a lot of events, and when my biography was in preparation my audiences would ask me, ‘What are you doing next?’ And I would say, ‘I am writing a book about Katherine Swynford,’ and you’d hear a frisson in the audience, and afterwards people would come up and they’d all say, ‘I read Katherine .’"

"This book is now out of print. It dates from the early 1960s. Hilda Lewis is my third favourite novelist of all time (you’ve got the other two in the list). She wrote a wonderful series of historical novels. This one is based on the famous poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London, in the early 17th century. It has a rich cast of rogues and royal characters at the Jacobean court. It’s a tour de force, and you could actually rely on it as history. They just don’t write them like that now. It’s a page-turner that has everything – witchcraft, sex, scandal and murder. Incredibly so. I do feel quite strongly about that. I think that historical novels should be written with integrity. Even if the author is taking dramatic licence, it’s got to be credible in the context of what is known about the subject. As a historian, I quickly abandon historical novels if I realise that whoever wrote them hasn’t done very much homework. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter She was a great British novelist. She didn’t just write historical fiction, she wrote modern novels, including a book based on the Dr Crippen case, right from the 1940s until her death in the 1970s. One or two of them were filmed. The film Mandy was based on her book The Day is Ours , about a deaf and dumb child growing up in London in the early 1950s. It’s searing. All three of these novelists – Lofts, Seton and Lewis – have an incredible grasp of character, and I know that Nora Lofts has been the subject of a recent university thesis, because there is a growing body of opinion that her work has been underrated. It’s an epic tale. And it wasn’t the only one of its kind. Lofts wrote another called Bless This House , in a single volume, which was about an Elizabethan house through the centuries, and that was later followed by A Wayside Tavern , about the history of an inn, from Roman times to the present day. I have all 63 of her books, and nearly all of Hilda Lewis’s. I am still trying to track them down, as some are pretty rare."

"Green Darkness was written in 1968 by Anya Seton. It’s a time-slip novel with reincarnation as its central theme. A group of people gather in an old farmhouse near historic Midhurst in Sussex for a weekend in the country, but there are chilling undercurrents beneath the social interaction. As the plot unfolds, the reader realizes that all these people are reincarnated from characters who lived in the area at the time of Wyatt’s Rebellion in the 16th century. The story is based around the actual discovery of a skeleton walled up in a fourteenth-century house called Ightham Mote in Kent. This book is about how the skeleton came to be there. As the story progresses, the conflicts of the Tudor period are resolved in one way or another in the modern age. Yes, but the greater part of the book is set in the mid-16th century, and it’s the most accurate and vivid account that I’ve read of Wyatt’s Rebellion, which was a revolt against Mary Tudor. It’s utterly gripping."

"Yes, it’s set in Saxon and Viking times, in the tenth century, at the corrupt court of King Edgar of England, long before the Norman Conquest. It’s based on the obscure legend of a saint, Rumon, about whom very little is known. He is the central character. It is also about the lady he loves, Merewyn – and what happens to her. The story takes us along to Greenland – which the Vikings colonised, and where Merewyn was forced to make a new life. It’s just a beautiful love story. I read it first as a teenager, and found it quite striking and moving, and I still think it holds up very well now. Again, it’s credible. Some of the characters are historic and it’s very, very well done. Seton has focused on people about whom hardly anything is known – which is a gift to any historical novelist because one can use one’s imagination creatively. And she’s done it well."

"I love this book. I was absolutely bowled over by it. There’s a lot of mystery to it. A group of people convene in Kent for a house party in the 1960s. It turns out they are all reincarnations of people who lived in Tudor times, in the reign of Edward VI. It’s all linked to the legend of a walled-up body, a skeleton that is said to have been found in Victorian times at Ightham Mote in Kent. You have to work out who was who in a previous life, with all the dramas and tensions of their earlier existence being played out in the modern world. It’s a magical, brilliant book. I recommend it too because it’s also got one of the best descriptions of Wyatt’s Rebellion that I’ve ever read in history or fiction. A lot of people, including me, came to history through fiction. I’ll finish a novel then go shooting off into the history books. Some don’t. That’s why I think it’s important to make it as accurate as possible. Some history books are readable as novels, but academic history can be quite dry. That’s the rigour of research, which is why many like their history fictionalised."

"Well, it was the first novel I read on Anne Boleyn, in the 1960s, and it’s excellent. It really sums up Anne. It’s so beautifully written that you can forgive the inaccuracies in it. There’s a fictional nurse in it, who gives her poppy juice in difficult times—but that’s one tiny detail. Norah Lofts is my favourite author. I have all 63 of her books. She did a later one called The King’s Pleasure about Katherine of Aragon, which is excellent. But it’s only now that academic historians are starting to lend more credence to Lofts’ work. There have been a couple of theses on her books. But I’ve always admired that mid-twentieth-century type of fiction. I think the books of Norah Lofts were just dismissed as romantic fiction. But that was down to the way the books were marketed. Nowadays publishers try to make historical fiction look as smart as possible, but in those days the jackets could be quite lurid and over-romanticised. This happened to Anya Seton as well and it quite upset her. Years of research went into her books, and they are very authentic for the time in which they are written. I can see why she got fed up with being classified as a romance writer. In America today, historical fiction is still classified as romance . Yes. And at the time of Seton and Lofts, a lot of lightweight historical fiction was being published. The genre became very, very popular in the wake of the film Anne of the Thousand Days and the TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Once it proliferated, the genre died. It wasn’t actually revived until the publication of The Other Boleyn Girl in 2000. At the moment, there’s still a mania for the Tudors . Even in 2014, when I pitched my six-book series on the wives of Henry VIII, there was a lot of interest from publishers. I thought no one would take six books, but in fact there was competition for it. Katherine Parr, The Sixth Wife came out last year. Then there was a volume of short stories, In the Shadow of Queens: Tales from the Tudor Court . And I have more books still to come out. The Tudor Rose series looks at three generations: Elizabeth of York: The Last White Rose comes out in May; next year will see a book on her son, Henry VIII, and the third, on his daughter Mary, will be published the year after. I have lived with them for many, many years!"

"Yes. This was published in 1967. It’s a wonderful book, an evocation of what it was like to be a nun dispossessed when the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII. It’s set in the 1530s and is a beautifully told story. I remember loving it when I was young, and I managed to get a copy a couple of years ago after it was republished. I couldn’t put it down and really recommend it. Absolutely. The same goes for my next choice, which is on a similar subject."

"It’s based on the life of the Anne Askew, who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1546, and is about how ordinary people suffered quite genuinely for their faith. The detail in the book makes you feel like you are really there. Well, some haven’t. The first historical novel I ever read was Henry’s Golden Queen by Lozania Prole. It had a very lurid jacket . I found it because my mother marched me into a library and said, ‘get a book.’ And I found this! I think it was the colourful jacket that drew me to it. I was bored. I had graduated from books from comics, but I devoured this in two days. It was about Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and that was it. My interest in history was born. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I actually managed to get hold of a copy recently for sentiment’s sake. I’d been talking about it in interviews, when asked how I got into history. I thought, I’ve got to have another look at it. But I couldn’t read it! So not everything stands the test of time. But I went back to these— Tudor Pilgrimage and The Heretics —after many decades and I thought, my goodness, these are so well done. They ought to be better known."

"It’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I know Mavis Cheek, she’s a fantastic author and her books have me creased up with laughter. It’s about Anne of Cleves’ portrait coming to life, intertwined with a story of a woman who’s been widowed—but is actually a merry widow because she’s so pleased to be rid of her boring old duffer of a husband. She sees the portrait and feels a kinship with Anne, who nightly talks to the other woman in the portraits in the room. It’s brilliantly researched. Mavis Cheek came to speak on the historical tours I run and gave a really enjoyable talk. She really knows her stuff. So if you want the history in a very quirky and amusing way, then this is a great book for you. No. But this is so well done. It really packs a punch, calls a spade a spade. Publishers tend to steer you that way. Actually, I’m writing my novel about Henry VIII at the moment. People ask how I’m managing to write from the point of view of a man, but the sources are so rich. I’m overwhelmed with source material, but I’ve lived with Henry for a long, long time. We have so many insights into his character through his letters and reports of conversations with him. So I’m not finding it a problem. I’ve actually wanted to write about men before. During my six-book series, it became a running joke: ‘Oh, Henry has to get his say’—because each book was written from each queen’s point of view. It’s changed a little; it’s still Henry’s story, but it’s not going to focus on the wives so much."