Writing Style
Weir's writings have been describing as being in the genre of popular history, an area that sometimes attracts criticism from academia; according to one source, popular history "seeks to inform and entertain a large general audience... Dramatic storytelling often prevails over analysis, style over substance, simplicity over complexity, and grand generalization over careful qualification." Weir herself admits writing popular history, but argues that "history is not the sole preserve of academics, although I have the utmost respect for those historians who undertake new research and contribute something new to our knowledge. History belongs to us all, and it can be accessed by us all. And if writing it in a way that is accessible and entertaining, as well as conscientiously researched, can be described as popular, then, yes, I am a popular historian, and am proud and happy to be one." Lucinda Byatt said of Weir's popular historian label, "To describe her as a popular historian would be to state a literal truth – her chunky explorations of Britain’s early modern past sell in the kind of multiples that others can only dream of."
Weir's best-selling works have focused on strong women, and she has been compared to female historians such as Antonia Fraser. Weir's non-fiction books have been reviewed by prominent historians like Diarmaid MacCulloch and Hilary Mantel, as well as such media outlets as The Independent, The Washington Post, and The Globe and Mail. Weir has also criticised films such as Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which she called "a travesty of history" and "grossly inaccurate".
Read more about this topic: Alison Weir
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