Alison Weir lives in Surrey, England with her husband and two teenaged children. She has been passionate about history since the age of 14, when she read an historical novel about Katherine of Aragon and was inspired to research the Tudor period. Since then, her field of interest has broadened to encompass the whole of the British Monarchy. She is the author of Britain's Royal Families (1989), The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1991), The Princes in the Tower (1992), The Wars of the Roses (1994), The Children of Henry VIII (1996), The Life of Elizabeth I (1998), and Eleanor of Aquitaine (1999).

Alison also loves art, music of all kinds, poetry, reading, and visiting historical houses. She is deeply interested in education. Until four years ago, when she began writing full time, she ran a specialist school for children who could not cope in mainstream schools. She is at present researching another historical 'whodunnit' entitled Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley.