Q&A: Alison Weir

By Wilda Williams -- Library Journal, 1/15/2007

Specializing in the medieval and Tudor periods, popular British historian Alison Weir has chronicled the tumultous lives of Britain's monarchs in such best-selling biographies as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Elizabeth the Queen. Now she turns to fiction to tell the tragic story of Lady Jane Grey (1537–54), known to all as England's “Nine Days Queen.” Her debut novel, Innocent Traitor (LJ 12/06), launches this March.

After ten works of nonfiction, why did you decide to write a novel?

I first started writing historical novels when I was a teenager. But then I got on the route of nonfiction. Eight years ago, while I was researching Eleanor of Aquitaine, it suddently occurred to me that here I was piecing together fragments of information about long-dead women and not being allowed to let my imagination run riot because I had to keep to the contraints of the resources. I thought it would be very liberating to write a novel in which I could write what I wanted while keeping to the facts.

I had to choose a subject who didn't have a very long life and about whom there wasn't a great deal of material and whom I actually researched. So Lady Jane Grey presented the ideal subject. When I sent Innocent Traitor to my agent, he said it was a riveting tale but it was “faction.” He told me, “You really have to come off the fence, and you have to let go a little more as a historian.” But I didn't have time after that so I put it away. And then suddenly, boom, historical novels built around real-life characters became popular. And it was at that point I thought, “I am going to resurrect this,” and I did.

What is it about Lady Jane Grey's story that attracted you?

First of all, it is a very tragic story: the tale of a 16-year-old girl who is pushed into the position of committing treason and is beheaded as a result. Also, Jane was an abused child with appalling parents who forced her into a loveless marriage. Tudor England has a perennial fascination for me because the period featured larger-than-life characters. Jane, in spite of her youth, was a very strong character. We have lots of letters and accounts of her that revealed her to be a very feisty teenager. In some ways, you could present her as a modern character, and I felt that would give the book broader appeal.

How does writing a novel differ from writing biographies or histories?

There is a heady sense of freedom. You can get into the head of your characters, which a historian can only do at his or her peril. You can make things up, which I have done only when I felt I could legitimately do so. When the facts are there, I have kept to them.

You touched on the recent revival of historical fiction, which was big in the 1950s and early 1960s but then disappeared during the 1970s. Why is that?

There had been some wonderful authors like Anya Seton, who wrote the most stunning historical novels, as well as Norah Lofts, Jean Plaidy, and Margaret Irwin. The bodice rippers came in the 1970s, and I think the genre got very debased over the years and killed itself off because of that. But things come around come full circle, and we're seeing historical fiction again.

Caroly Erickson, another popular historian, also made her fiction debut with The Secret Diaries of Marie Antoinette. Is this a growing trend?

I know quite a few historians in Britain who are being asked by their publishers to consider writing a novel. It is going all accross the board. Academic historians are now trying to write popular history, and popular historians are trying historical fiction. I don't know where it will all end.

What is your next book?

I am just about finished a biography of Katherine Swynford, who is the subject of Anya Seton's novel Katherine. She was the mistress of John of Guant for 25 years and then his wife. This is a medieval love story and quite an extraordinary one. And then I am going to write a second novel, which originally was going to be about about Catherine Howard [Henry VIII's ill-fated fifth wife], but there have been a couple of novels about her published recently, and I feel that it is a crowded market. So I'll have to think of something else. And then I am going to write a nonfiction book about Anne Boleyn's 17 days in the Tower, but that won't come out until about 2010.