Tracy Borman

Tracy Borman is a British historian, author and broadcaster specialising in Tudor and early modern history. She studied and taught history at the University of Hull, receiving her doctorate in 1997, before building a career in heritage. She is Chief Historian at Historic Royal Palaces and has written biographies and narrative histories including Elizabeth’s Women, Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror, Thomas Cromwell, The Private Lives of the Tudors, Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him and Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I. She was appointed OBE for services to heritage in 2024.

Borman also writes historical fiction. Her Frances Gorges trilogy—The King’s Witch, The Devil’s Slave and The Fallen Angel—follows a young healer drawn into the religious tensions, conspiracies and court politics of Jacobean England. Her later novel The House of Boleyn returns to the Tudor court, portraying Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall through the experiences of her family and household. Her fiction draws on her academic knowledge while emphasising political intrigue, religious persecution and the precarious position of women close to royal power.