Antonia Senior

Antonia Senior is a British historical novelist and journalist whose fiction concentrates on periods of political and religious upheaval in British history. Before turning increasingly to fiction, she worked as a journalist and has written on politics, history and culture for British newspapers and magazines. Her novels are characterised by close attention to the beliefs and loyalties of people living through periods when political authority is unstable, particularly the English Civil War and the medieval struggle for power in Scotland. Rather than treating these conflicts simply as military history, Senior tends to place families and individuals at the centre of events, exploring how allegiance, religion and survival can pull people in opposing directions.

Her best-known novel, Treason’s Daughter, is set during the English Civil War and follows characters divided by the struggle between Parliament and the king, combining political conflict with family loyalties and personal relationships. The Winter Isles moves much further back in time to the turbulent medieval world of Scotland and the western islands, drawing on the competition between Norse-Gaelic rulers and the Scottish crown. The Tyrant’s Shadow returns to the political and religious tensions of early modern Britain. Across her historical fiction Senior is particularly interested in contested authority, rebellion and the difficulty of knowing where loyalty should lie when the established political order begins to break apart.