Alison Plowden:

Alison Plowden was a history writer, who specialised in engaging and readable studies of the Tudor and Stuart periods. She was born in India, and worked as a scriptwriter and editor for the BBC before leaving to work full-time as a writer. She had a great many books published, and the lively narrative style that made her so popular was clear right from her first book, The Young Elizabeth (1971). Critically applauded throughout her career, The House of Tudor (1976) was praised by A. L. Rowse as “simply excellent on every count… impossible to fault in scholarship or writing”.

Her other books include The Stuart Princesses (1996) and Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s Indomitable Queen (2001), and she is probably best known for the collected Elizabethan Quartet, published in a single volume in 2002. More recently she wrote Lady Jane Grey: Nine Day Queen (2003), and In a Free Republic: Life in Cromwell’s England (2006), and at the time of her death she was working on The Winter Queen, a definitive study of Elisabeth Stuart. She had also written radio scripts and two series for television, one of which, Mistress of Hardwick, won the Writers’ Guild Award for best Educational Television. Devoted to animals throughout her life, she lived in Oxfordshire with her cats until her death in August 2007.

Recent books:

In a Free Republic: Life in Cromwell’s England (Sutton: 2006)
Lady Jane Grey: Nine Day Queen (Sutton: 2003)
Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s Indomitable Queen (Sutton: 2001)