Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alison Weir's first published book was Britain's Royal Families, a genealogical overview of the British royal family, published in 1989 by The Bodley Head. She had revised the manuscript eight times over a twenty-two-year period before it was accepted for publication.
Alison Weir writes in two genres: popular history non-fiction and historical fiction. Her non-fiction focuses on biographies of English royal women and families, while her fiction series includes the Six Tudor Queens novels covering each of Henry VIII's six wives.
At age fourteen, Alison Weir read Lozania Prole's novel Henry's Golden Queen, a fictional account of the life of Catherine of Aragon, which sparked her interest in history. She went on to train as a history teacher at City of London School for Girls and North Western Polytechnic.
The Six Tudor Queens is a six-novel series by Alison Weir, each book covering one of Henry VIII's six wives in turn. The series began with Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen, published in May 2016, and concluded with Katharine Parr, The Sixth Wife, published in May 2021.
Alison Weir has called the Tudor period "the most dramatic period in our history, with vivid, strong personalities". She points to it as the first era with a rich visual record through portraiture, and detailed written sources on the private lives of kings and queens.
Alison Weir's first historical fiction novel was Innocent Traitor, published in 2006, based on the life of Lady Jane Grey. She chose Grey as her subject because Grey's short life and limited source material gave her freedom to write within the historical record.