Elizabeth Fremantle

Elizabeth Fremantle is a British author of historical fiction whose novels frequently recover the experiences of women constrained by court politics, dynastic ambition and patriarchal authority. She studied English and later completed an MA in creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London, after working in journalism and contributing to publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times and The Wall Street Journal. Her Tudor novels include Queen’s Gambit, later republished as Firebrand, Sisters of Treason, Watch the Lady and The Girl in the Glass Tower.

Fremantle’s fiction combines political intrigue with close attention to marriage, reputation, sexuality and the limited choices available to women near centres of power. Writing as E. C. Fremantle, she published the historical thrillers The Poison Bed, set around a Jacobean murder scandal, and The Honey and the Sting. Her later novel Disobedient reimagines the life of seventeenth-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi and won the 2024 Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award.