Alison Margaret Chichele Plowden (18 December 1931 – 17 August 2007) was an English historian and biographer well known for her popular non-fiction about the Tudor period.
She was born at Quetta in India, a descendant of Edmund Plowden and, collaterally, of Henry Chichele.
She later recalled: "A secretary writing scripts was a little like a performing monkey at the BBC - there was a sort of 'Fancy, what a clever little girl' attitude.
Later she turned her attention to the 19th century with The Young Victoria (1983) and Caroline and Charlotte (1989), then the Civil War period with The Stuart Princesses (1996), about the six princesses of the House of Stuart who lived through the violent upheavals of the 17th century.
She continued with In a Free Republic: Life in Cromwell's England (2006) and the last of her 25 books, The Winter Queen (about Elizabeth Stuart, wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine who accepted the crown of Bohemia), published posthumously in 2008.