Sarah Gristwood

Sarah Gristwood is an English journalist and author. She was born in Kent, grew up in Dover and educated at St Anne's College, Oxford.

As a journalist she has written for a number of British papers, including The Times, The Guardian and the Telegraph. She has written historical biographies as well as fiction, and has contributed to television documentaries.

Gristwood's historical biography, Arbella: England's Lost Queen is about Lady Arbella Stuart, an English noblewoman who was considered a possible successor to Elizabeth I. In a review in The Times, Kevin Sharpe wrote, "Sarah Gristwood presents a powerful story of the dynastic insecurity of the Tudors and Stuarts, and of the vulnerability of Elizabeth and James to foreign and domestic intrigues." Sarah Gristwood accepted the invitation of the Royal Stuart Society, on the occasion of the Quatercentenary of the death of Arbella, to give a Lecture with the title: Lady Arbella Stuart – England’s Lost Queen?

Her book, Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe, focuses on five queens: Catherine de Medici, Anne Boleyn, Mary I of England, Elizabeth I, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

She has appeared in the movie Venice/Venice (1992), and as herself in the television series Stars of the Silver Screen (2011) and Discovering Fashion: The Designers (2015).

Gristwood was married to the film critic Derek Malcolm from 1994 until his death in 2023.