Elizabeth Chadwick

Elizabeth Chadwick was born in Bury, Lancashire, in 1957 and began writing historical fiction while still a teenager. An early interest in medieval life developed into years of research and manuscript work before her first novel, The Wild Hunt, was published in 1990. She has studied material culture, castles, landscapes and surviving documents, and her involvement with historical re-enactment has helped her describe clothing, weapons, travel and household routines in practical terms.

Chadwick’s novels concentrate mainly on England and France in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. She is particularly associated with William Marshal, the knight and statesman whose career is explored in The Greatest Knight and related books. Other works examine Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Matilda and the families affected by the Anarchy and Plantagenet expansion. Her fiction combines court politics and warfare with marriage, inheritance, childbirth and estate management, giving domestic decisions the same historical weight as battles. Chadwick is therefore well suited to readers interested in Anglo-Norman society, medieval queenship, chivalry and the networks of obligation that held noble households together.