Guest Post for HFC by Best-selling Author, Alison Weir
Author Bio:
I am a Londoner, born and bred at Westminster, although I have also lived in Norfolk, Sussex, and Scotland, and now reside in Surrey. I have been married to Rankin Weir since 1972, and have two children, John (born 1982) and Kate (born 1984). I was educated at the City of London School for Girls, obtaining A-levels in English Literature, Art, and History (English and European medieval history, with twelfth-century monasticism in the West as my specialist subject), then at the North Western Polytechnic of London, where I trained as a teacher with History as my main subject, studying world history, English medieval history, and the Italian Renaissance. I did not pursue that career, however, because I quickly became disillusioned with trendy teaching methods.
Before becoming a published author in 1989, I was in Civil Service management, then a housewife and mother. From 1991 to 1997, while researching and writing books, I ran my own school for children with learning difficulties, before taking up writing full-time.
I have been interested in history since the age of fourteen, when I read my first adult novel, the rather lurid Henry's Golden Queen, by Lozania Prole, about Katherine of Aragon. I was so enthralled by it that I dashed off to read real history books to find out the truth behind what I had read, and thus my passion for history was born. By the time I was fifteen, I had written a three-volume reference work on the Tudor dynasty, a biography of Anne Boleyn based partly on contemporary sources, and several historical plays; I had also started work on the research that would one day take form as my first published book, Britain's Royal Families.
During the early 1970s, I wrote historical novels and the original version of my second published book, The Six Wives of Henry VIII - 1024 pages long, and single-spaced - and had it rejected on the grounds that there was a world paper shortage! I also researched the lives of all the mediaeval Queens of England, research I have since drawn on for several of my books.
After suffering several rejections, and then finding a fantastic literary agent, whose client I am fortunate to remain to this day, I finally found a publisher - the Bodley Head - in 1988. Later, that imprint was taken over by Random House, at which point I was transferred to Jonathan Cape, my present U.K. publisher. I've been published in the U.S.A. by Ballantine (Random House) and Grove Weidenfeld/Grove Atlantic, in Canada by McLelland and Stewart, and by numerous publishers all over the world, with my books having been translated into French, Spanish, Korean, Czech, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Chinese and Italian, to name a few! To date (2018), I have published twenty-six titles, and have seven more on contract. In 2006, I published my first novel, Innocent Traitor, for Hutchinson, another imprint of Random House; this was published by Ballantine in the U.S.A. in 2007. Since then, I have published seven more novels. In 2014 I was delighted to sign a contract with Headline for six novels on the wives of Henry VIII. I have been fortunate throughout in having the support of wonderful publishers and editorial teams on both sides of the Atlantic. I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2003 (I resigned in 2016) and made an honourary life patron of Historic Royal Palaces. I`m still pinching myself to make sure that I`m not dreaming it all!
As a non-fiction author, I write 'popular' history. The term has sometimes been used in a derogatory sense by a few people who should know better because all historians use the same sources. History is not the sole preserve of academics, although I have the utmost respect for 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 proud and happy to be one.
History is full of wonderful stories and amazing characters. I feel very privileged to be able to bring them to life in both my non-fiction books and my novels. In both cases, I feel that an author has a responsibility to be as true to the facts as is possible. And in an age in which history is increasingly perceived to be 'dumbed down' in schools, on television, and on film, we can all learn from a study of the past. We can discover more about ourselves and our own civilisation.
From my heart, I should like to thank those of you who have bought my books, borrowed them from libraries, attended my events, or written to me. I do so appreciate your support and encouragement, your creative comments, and also the occasional criticisms, which I do take very seriously, and which - I hope - help me to become a better writer. Thanks are also due to everyone who has sent me information, photographs, and ideas for forthcoming books, and to those who just wrote and said how much they enjoyed the ones I'd already written. I was so touched that you`d taken the trouble to write and tell me so.
I am delighted to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an honourary Life Patron of Historic Royal Palaces, and Patron of the Barnet Medieval Festival, Red Rose Chain, and Anne of Cleves' House, Lewes.
Newest Book: The Last White Rose of England - a Novel of Elizabeth of York
Book Buy Link: https://mybook.to/lastwhiterose
Writing Historical Fiction
When writing a historical novel you can develop ideas and themes that have no
place in a history book, but which - based on sound research and educated guesses
- help to illuminate the story and explain motives and actions. A historian uses such
inventiveness at their peril - but a novelist has the power to get inside the subject`s
head and actually be him/her, and that can afford insights that would not be
permissable to a historian, and yet can have a legitimate value of their own. A
historian has to work within the strict constraints imposed by the source material and
credible speculation. A novelist, however, is able to use imagination to fill in the
gaps, although I strongly feel that what is invented must be credible within the
context of what is known about the subject.
While it is liberating to be able to use your imagination, you cannot indulge in flights
of fancy. That sells short both those who know nothing about the subject and those
who know a great deal. Many people care that what they are reading in a historical
novel is close to the truth, given a little dramatic licence. Because lots of people –
myself included – first come to history through historical novels, and many rely on
the novelist to tell it as it was, and to set the story within an authentic background,
with authentic detail.
Thus you have a great responsibility towards your readers. You want them to trust
you, so adhere to the facts where they exist and use your informed imagination
where they don’t. History does not always record people`s motives, emotions and
reactions, or the intimate details of their relationships or their love lives, so there is
plenty of scope for invention there.
The setting should be authentic. Some historical novels fall down because the author
has not done enough background research. They know the story superficially, but
they don’t know the period and they have a simplistic view of the characters. So do
all the research you can, not only on your characters but on the historical context
and the world they inhabit.
How far dare you make things up or manipulate the facts in a novel about a real
historical personage? My feeling is that you should have some historical evidence,
however flimsy, on which to base that aspect of the plot. For a historian, such
evidence may not be convincing, but it might be a gift to a novelist. For example, in
The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory has Anne Boleyn, desperate to have a son,
contemplating committing incest with her brother because he is the only man who
can safely be relied upon not to betray their intimacy to others. The historical Anne
was charged with incest in the indictment drawn up against her, and while other
evidence strongly suggests that these were trumped-up charges, a novelist may use
them as the basis of a good plot. I have no argument with that. Again, the issue of
Elizabeth I`s much-vaunted virginity has been endlessly debated by scholars, so in
my view, it is quite legitimate for novelists such as Susan Kay in Legacy and Robin
Maxwell in The Queen`s Bastard to depict the Queen having a physical relationship
with the Earl of Leicester. I myself took a similar liberty, going against what I believe
as a historian, in my second novel, The Lady Elizabeth. What I wrote there was
based purely on unreliable gossip and coincidental dates but had this contemporary
evidence not existed, I would not have ventured so far. But it does exist, and even
though, as a historian, I would discount it, as a novelist, I have the freedom to ask,
what if?
Always explain what is fact and what is fiction in an Author`s Note at the end of each
book. If the book is largely fictional, say so. It matters when you are writing about
real people and events because many people accept historical fiction as fact.
The major challenge to any author embarking on a historical novel is the use of
language. There are tough choices, and you will never please everyone. You could
adopt pseudo-Tudor speak and alienate your readers with words and phrases such
as `prithee` or `hey nonny nonny`; or you could go to the other extreme, as
Suzannah Dunn does in her wonderful book, The Queen of Subtleties, where she
has Anne Boleyn calling her father `Dad`. Or you could use modern, plain speech to
the same effect.
Having spent many years studying Tudor sources, I’m familiar with the idioms of
language in use then - although we can never know how people actually spoke, only
how their words were written down, which may not be the same thing. Wherever
possible, I use my characters’ own historical quotes, or the quotes of others, lifting
them from historical sources, but modernising them slightly so that they do not stand
out awkwardly in modern text. In order to appeal to as wide - and as young - an
audience as possible, I confess to using a few modern idioms where I think they
sound better than their Tudor equivalent, even if they are anachronistic. But it’s
impossible to please everyone: while one reviewer deplored the anachronistic
language in my first novel, another said I had got it just right!
Writing in the first person affords a narrower view, unless you use several narrators,
as I did in that book. The challenge there is to differentiate the voices. The present
tense makes the story more immediate. In my later novels, I have used the past
tense and the third person, which allows for greater versatility in telling the story.
Above all, SHOW rather than TELL. The reader has to see things happening.
Alison Weir
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Thank you so much, Ms Weir, for your guest post for The Historical Fiction Company!
Your book, The Lady Elizabeth, is still one of my favorites, and we appreciate the time you took out of your busy schedule to provide some insightful writing tips for our historical fiction community.
Dee Marley
HFC CEO