Quotes from Alison Weir

Remove the crown and the fine clothes, and you're left with a fairly ordinary man.

I would rather a simple ploughman could read it and make up his own mind than see the Church continue to manipulate the Bible to its own ends.

Because, when it came down to it, power depended only on a woman's body not letting her down.

Clytemnestra

He never lost an opportunity to proclaim "his zeal for the faith with all the resources of his mind and body,"23 and one of his gold chains bore the inscription PLUS TOST MORIR QUE CHANGER MA PENSEE (I prefer to die rather than change my mind).24

between Scylla and Charybdis

But, in this life, we have too few chances of happiness to throw any away.

time is of all losses the most irrecuperable, for it can never be redeemed.

Madam, I pray you, be governed by me, or some other wise person. With respect, you are a woman and in need of masculine guidance.

conversation – about the weather, as that is what you like to talk about in England, other subjects being, er, forbidden, eh?

In my view, sire, anyone who actively campaigns for public office disqualifies himself for holding any office at all!

Woman is the confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest and a hindrance to devotion," fulminated the misogynistic Vincent de Beauvais in the thirteenth century.

only one man could have been responsible for their deaths: Richard III.

'Britain's Royal Families' became my first published book, in 1989, from The Bodley Head, and the rest of the story is - dare I say it? - history!

When I started researching history in the 1960s, a lot of women about whom I've subsequently written were actually footnotes to history. There was a perception that women weren't important. And it's true. Women were seen historically as far inferior to men.

The first Elizabeth film was an absolute travesty historically. It really was sloppy. Things like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' and 'The Tudors,' people's perception is distorted because of these. It matters to me as a historian, because I spend my life trying to get it right.

At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about Acts, Trade Unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history.

Many people have told me that my books read like novels. Perhaps this is because, when I write, I feel I am really there, so strong is my feeling for my subject. On occasion, I have been so moved by the events I have been describing that I have felt like crying.

I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.

If people really want to know and learn from history, why do they want bad history? Why don't they want good history? Wouldn't you rather know the truth, rather than the legend?