Amy Licence

With 30 books to her name, articles in publications including the Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and The New Statesman, and appearances on television and radio, Amy Licence is achieving recognition for her insights into the medieval and Tudor eras, and the lives of women in particular. ...

Licence wrote her first novel in her early teens and while at university penned one about the death of Robert Dudley’s wife – exploiting the fascination with the era that saw her go on to achieve an MA in Medieval and Tudor history in 1995. She worked extensively with a literary agent but while they praised her five novels inspired by a love of Woolf, Dostoevsky, Gorky and Nabokov a publishing contract proved elusive.

Undeterred, Licence continued to create articles, poems and stories while working as a teacher, achieving a breakthrough in 2012 with the publication of a non-fiction title, In Bed with the Tudors. A flurry of histories reflecting her interest in the lives of Tudor women soon followed, with titles offering insights into Henry VIII’s wives as well as lesser-known individuals such as Anne Neville and Elizabeth of York.

In 2017 Licence finally achieved success with her fiction, debuting with Son of York which follows an adolescent Edward as he tries to firm his grip on the crown. Its sequel, The York King, would not appear until 2022 when Licence had seen through many more ideas for history books, including 2018’s Tudor Roses: From Margaret Beaufort to Elizabeth I and 2020’s examination of Henry VIII’s extravagant meeting with Francis I in northern France, 1520: The Field of the Cloth of Gold.

While fiction has been the focus of Licence’s recent publications, with the release between 2022 and 2024 of a four-part saga centring on a young lady-in-waiting at the centre of opposing factions when Anne Boleyn arrives in the court of Henry VIII, she continues to promote an awareness of the Tudor era and has been accepted as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.