Elizabeth Fremantle

English novelist

Elizabeth Fremantle
Elizabeth Fremantle
Born	London, England, UK
Pen name	EC Fremantle
Occupation	Writer
Language	English
Nationality	British

Elizabeth Fremantle (born 1962) is an English novelist and teacher of Creative Writing. Her published works include Queen's Gambit (2013), The Girl in the Glass Tower (2016) and the critically acclaimed thriller The Poison Bed (2018).

Fremantle's themes of women and power and are linked by her interest in exploring the invisibility of early modern women's lives. She was described by The Bookseller in 2013 as ‘a major new voice in historical fiction,’ and People Magazine called her ‘a brilliant new player in the court of royal fiction.’ Fremantle is the 5x great-granddaughter of diarist Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle and Thomas Fremantle, the latter of whom was a close associate of Horatio Nelson.

Early life

Elizabeth Fremantle was born in London and spent her early years in Hampstead, North London.

Early career

After leaving school aged sixteen Fremantle worked in a variety of jobs before embarking on a career in journalism. She worked as a fashion editor for ELLE UK followed by British Vogue and then in France for Vogue Paris.

In the 1990s she attended Birkbeck, University of London as a mature student gaining a 1st class BA in English Literature and the Prize for English, followed by a masters in Creative Writing.

Literary career

Since finishing her creative writing masters at Birkbeck, Fremantle has published six Tudor and Jacobean set novels with Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK. Her first three novels are published by Simon & Schuster in the United States. Her seventh novel, Disobedient was published in July 2023, and is a feminist retelling of the story of Artemisia Gentileschi.

Fremantle's first novel, Queen’s Gambit, focuses on the life of Henry VIII of England's last wife, Catherine Parr. Her second novel, Sisters of Treason, explores the story of the younger sisters of Lady Jane Grey (Mary and Elizabeth) and her third Watch the Lady tells of Penelope Devereux (Penelope Blount, Countess of Devonshire) – sister of the doomed Earl of Essex (Robert Devereux) who was labelled by James I of England ‘a fair woman with a black soul.’ These three books are marketed as "The Tudor trilogy".

Her fourth novel, The Girl in the Glass Tower is about Lady Arbella Stuart, who was for a time the presumed heir to Elizabeth I of England. Her fifth novel, a Jacobean psychological thriller, The Poison Bed, was published in 2018. Her sixth novel, The Honey and the Sting is a domestic thriller about three sisters trying to outrun the danger from a family secret. Her work has been translated into ten languages.

She is a committee member of the Historical Writers' Association and was co-founder of their online magazine Historia. She has had work published in various other publications including Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and occasionally reviews fiction for the Sunday Express. Elizabeth Fremantle chaired the judging panel for the HWA Gold Crown 2018,^[1] an award for historical novel of the year.

Adaptations

The film rights to Queen's Gambit was acquired by Baby Cow Productions and a feature film premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May 2023, directed by Karim Aïnouz and produced by Gabrielle Tana at Magnolia Mae productions. Alicia Vikander stars as Katherine Parr and Jude Law plays Henry VIII.