Victoria M. Whitworth

Victoria (V.M.) Whitworth (née Thompson; born in London 1966 ) is a British writer, archaeologist and art historian. Her published writings, which focus on Britain in the later first millennium AD, include novels, academic works and a memoir.

Biography

Victoria Whitworth studied English (specialising in Medieval languages, literature and archaeology) at St Anne's College, Oxford, before doing an MA and a D.Phil. in York. From 2012 to 2016 she was a lecturer at the Centre for Nordic Studies on the Orkney campus of the University of the Highlands and Islands. Her research has primarily focused on Pictish, Scottish and Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture. Whitworth has published three historical novels set in Viking Age England.

On 27 September 2020 a letter in support of J. K. Rowling for her stance on transgender issues was published in the Sunday Times to which Whitworth was one of 58 signatories.

In 2025, Whitworth suggested that since the Book of Kells contains elaborate display capital letters in a style similar to the sculptures at the Pictish monastery in Portmahomack in Northeast Scotland, it may derive from there, not from Iona.

Honours and distinctions

Whitworth is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Books

Fiction

The Bone Thief (Ebury Press, 2012), The Traitors’ Pit (Ebury Press, 2013), Daughter of the Wolf (Head of Zeus, 2016),

Non-fiction

Swimming with Seals (Head of Zeus, 2016), Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell & Brewer, 2004), Bodystones and Guardian Beasts: The Gravestones of Middle Britain from the 8th to 11th Centuries (Oxford University Press The Book of Kells: Unlocking the Enigma (Bloomsbury, 2025)