Historian and novelist Alison Weir will be in York tomorrow as part of the Festival of Ideas to talk about her new book – a delicious historical mystery featuring the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey. STEPHEN LEWIS reports.

LADY Jane Grey is one of the saddest figures in English history. The great-granddaughter of King Henry VII and grand-niece of Henry VIII, she reigned as Queen of England for nine days in 1553 following the death of Henry’s ailing son and successor, King Edward VI.

Raised to the throne by the ambitious Duke of Northumberland, she was quickly imprisoned in the Tower of London when the Privy Council decided to support the claims of Henry’s daughter Queen Mary instead. She was convicted of High Treason and executed in 1554, at the age of 16 or 17.

The story of the ‘Nine Days Queen’ is well known. That of her younger sister Lady Catherine Grey is less often told.

Alison Weir, the popular historian and novelist, aims to change all that. She will be in York tomorrow as part of the Festival of Ideas to talk about her latest novel, A Dangerous Inheritance, which tells Catherine’s story.

It is a story that is scarcely less tragic than that of her elder sister, says Alison. She, too, was a helpless political pawn in the ruthless power games that took place following the death of Henry VIII.

Northumberland planned for her to be second in line to the throne behind her sister Jane. With that in view, he arranged a strategic marriage in 1553 between the 13-year-old Catherine and Henry Herbert, the son and heir of the Earl of Pembroke.

Catherine, Alison says, had the misfortune to fall in love with her young husband, who was just a few years older than her. Misfortune, because her husband’s father, the Earl of Pembroke, was playing both sides in the game of succession.

“He forbade them to sleep together,” Alison says. “He did not want the marriage consummated, so that it could easily be annulled if anything went wrong.”

Something did go wrong, of course: Catherine’s sister was deposed just days after being proclaimed Queen, convicted of High Treason, and executed the following year.

“And as soon as Lady Jane was overthrown, Pembroke [Lady Catherine’s father-in-law] threw Catherine out of his house,” Alison says.

Alison admits she’s fascinated by the Tudors. “It was a period filled with larger-than-life characters,” she says. “There was a king with six wives, two of whom were beheaded; and there was Elizabeth I, who was the ultimate survivor.”

Then there were the victims of the vicious battle for succession following Henry’s death – victims such as Lady Jane and her sister, Catherine.

At least Catherine wasn’t executed immediately following her sister’s fall. She went on to marry again and have two children, before dying at the still-young age of 27.

That gives Alison the chance to tell her story.

She loves writing properly researched histories, the author admits. Over the past 20 years or so, she has established herself as one of our most successful and popular historians: an expert on the Tudors who has brought the lives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots and others to vivid life in a series of scrupulously researched yet wonderfully readable histories.

But she also loves the freedom that she has as a novelist. She exercises that to the full in A Dangerous Inheritance, even introducing a supernatural element.

Lady Catherine, in her novel, is fascinated by the fate of the Princes in the Tower – the two young sons of King Edward IV who mysteriously disappeared during the reign of Richard III.

The young woman discovers some papers, clearly written by a woman of some importance 80 years before, at the time the two princes disappeared.

Those papers, it turns out, were written by another Catherine – Lady Catherine Plantagenet, illegitimate daughter of Richard III.

Both Catherines try to get to the truth of what happened to the two princes. And though they lived 80 years apart, in a delicious supernatural twist the two young women get to see each-other, without ever quite realising it.

Alison will be at the University of York tomorrow afternoon to talk about the historical background to her novel as part of the Festival of Ideas.

She has already written a bestselling history of the Princes in the Tower, as well as a number of histories of the Tudor period.

Much of the novel follows the attempts of the two Catherines to unravel the mystery of what happened to the two young princes.

So what does Alison think happened? Was Richard III – York’s favourite Plantagenet king because of his local links – really guilty of the murders?

Alison thinks probably so. But that doesn’t make him the monster of tradition, she stresses. You have to remember the times in which he reigned.

“It was 15th Century realpolitik,” she says.

Today’s politicians have it easy by comparison.

• Alison Weir will be at the Berrick Saul building at the University of York tomorrow from 2.30pm to 4pm to talk about the historical background to her new novel A Dangerous Inheritance. Entry is by free ticket, available from yorkfestivalofideas.com/tickets

• Festival of Ideas events will be held across the city until June 30. For a full programme of events visit yorkfestivalofideas.com

• A Dangerous Inheritance by Alison Weir is published by Hutchinson on June 21, priced £17.99.