Thus it was wonderful to be creative, and even provocative, at the same time as being historically accurate to a degree.

No longer was I tied to sources and to the strict discipline of historical interpretation, but I could give my imagination free reign. Having been the victim of abuse in childhood, she was sold into an unhappy marriage and forced to accept a crown she did not want, then tragically paid the price of her so-called treason.' 'After publishing nine history books, writing this novel filled me with a heady sense of freedom. She was a young girl of royal blood who was used by greedy and unscrupulous men to satisfy their own ambitions. Alison Weir states: 'Lady Jane Grey's story is compelling and shocking. Her honesty, intelligence and strength of character carries the enthralled reader through all the vicious twists of Tudor power politics, to her nine-day reign and its unbearably poignant conclusion. The story takes place during the stage of the English succession, a point where she was to marry Edward VI, son of Katherine Seymour. Growing up with the future Queen Elizabeth and her reluctant nemesis, Mary, she soon learns the truth of the values imparted to her by Henry VIII's last Queen, Katherine Parr.

Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother for whom she is a pawn in a dynastic game with the highest stakes, she lived a life in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour. Lady Jane Grey was born into the most dangerous of times. She has chosen as her subject the bravest, most sympathetic and most wronged woman of Tudor England, Lady Jane Grey. Alison Weir, our pre-eminent popular historian, has now fulfilled a life's ambition to write historical fiction.

Innocent traitor