Because of a Book
By Wendy J. Dunn
Increasingly, I read about the decline of reading. That fewer people have or make the time to read books. Every time I read this, I feel sad. More than simply sad. I am who I am because of books. A book changed my life and turned it into a true adventure.
I wasn’t meant to be a writer. I was born into a working-class family that denied my siblings and me those kinds of narratives. But I knew writing was my calling from the time I was eight. By then, books had captured my heart and mind, fuelling my love of history. We had no shelves of books in my childhood home, but I had a merchant sailor father who stole books during his long voyages to bring them home to finish reading. Once he finished these books, he would toss them aside into the broom cupboard. That cupboard was my Narnia—a place I would burrow in to discover the magic of another book. There was no censorship, just an amazing assortment of books for me to feast on.
By the time I reached my tenth birthday, family and friends knew two things about me — I was forever reading, and I loved reading books about history. At that age, I was into the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, so I am uncertain why my friend decided to give me a child’s book about English history for a tenth birthday present, but I am forever grateful for her choice. For in that book was a chapter about Elizabeth I. Reading that chapter changed the course of my life.
Let’s step back to that ten-year-old working-class child. My father’s name was Henry, who refused to ever use that name because it was too upper class. His birthplace was the Isle of Dogs. I discovered later that the name came about because Henry VIII kept his hunting dogs there. Yet another Tudor thread woven into my life story.
My father was evacuated as a child during World War Two when London, especially the East End, was being bombed to smithereens. Wartime experiences and years of great poverty damaged my father. He believed the class you were born into was the class you remained in for the rest of your life. It was worthless to struggle against it. His only son was his important child, while daughters were millstones around his neck. A bloody millstone.
Reading about Elizabeth’s life spoke to me at ten. Here was the story of another unwanted daughter who turned her life into a triumph. We even shared fathers with the same name, and both of them used an axe. Alright – for different purposes. My father regularly beheaded a chook for our Sunday roast. But reading that chapter made me think. Surely if Elizabeth triumphed, I could do the same? Surely I could claim the mantle of a writer if I held tight to my dream and followed it.
Decades later, I look back at that child surviving her rather unhappy childhood and thank God for that book. It ignited my fascination with Elizabeth I, which led me to an equal passion for Anne Boleyn. By sixteen, I wanted to be a Tudor historian because the Tudors captured my heart. So much so, I wondered if I had lived another life in Tudor times. Now I wonder about ancestral memory. I discovered some of my sixteenth century ancestors actually knew both the Wyatt and Boleyn families after my first Tudor novel was published.
My father closed the door on me completing high school. At seventeen, I was out of home and working in a shoe shop. I met my husband not long afterward. At eighteen, I was married and soon pregnant with our first child. It took me a few years to silence my working-class upbringing, which had me thinking, now I was married and a mother, I must let go of my dream of being a writer. I’m grateful for another book, because around this time I read ‘The Women’s Room’ by Marilyn French. It opened my eyes to the narratives in place that were preventing me from claiming my authentic life. At twenty-two, with two small boys, I applied to a local university’s Early Leaving Scheme, designed for people like me who hadn’t completed high school. To my amazement, they accepted me. I had hoped to do a straight history degree, but there were no Tudor subjects available at this Australian university – so I decided to major in my second love, Art History for my Bachelor of Arts.
Going to university relit my dream of being a writer into a blazing fire. Inspired by a poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt that I had read as a fifteen-year-old and wouldn’t let me go, I wrote what I thought was a short story that refused to be a short story. But the years of being told people like me don’t realise their dreams still fettered me. It prevented me from moving forward with my story of a poet heartbroken by the loss of the woman he loved.
Move forward a few years, and I was completing a diploma to add to my teaching qualification. One of my assignments required me to create a major work. I decided I would let my short story become far more than a short story. What really helped was a fellow student had read the first five thousand words and told me I was a real writer. It was the encouragement I needed to give me the courage to keep working on what became my first novel, Dear Heart, How Like You This?.
I have now authored five novels and one nonfiction book. I even have a PhD, which produced my second Anne Boleyn novel, The Light in the Labyrinth as my creative artefact.
Books are bridges of connection and vehicles for growth – for the writer, just as much as for the reader. We experience so much through reading a book. We travel to places without leaving our homes – and we even get to time travel.
Books have the power to change lives. I know it, because I seized my destiny all because of a book. It made me the writer I am today.
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Wendy J. Dunn is an award-winning Australian novelist whose passion for Tudor history shines through every page she writes. Known for bringing historical women vividly to life, she is the author of two novels about Anne Boleyn, and two about Katherine of Aragon, available in both English and Spanish. Her nonfiction title, Henry VIII’s True Daughter: Catherine Carey, a Tudor Life, was published by Pen & Sword Books in 2023. Her latest release, Shades of Yellow, published in September 2025, blends history, insight, and emotional depth in the signature style her readers love.
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SHADES OF YELLOW
Two women betrayed by love, five centuries apart.
A story of forgiveness, courage, and rebirth.
By award-winning historical novelist Wendy J. Dunn.
When Australian Lucy Ellis turns writing during a devastating battle with illness, she finds solace in the life of Amy Robsart—the enigmatic first wife of Robert Dudley, the man who nearly became Elizabeth I’s husband. As Lucy brings Amy’s tragic Tudor world to life, she must also face the shadows in her own: a broken marriage, deep-seated sorrow, and a terrifying brush with death that has reshaped everything she once believed.
Determined to complete her novel, Lucy takes leave from her teaching job to travel to England. But when her illness returns, the trip becomes more than research. It becomes a pilgrimage of survival.
As past and present entwine, Lucy must summon the courage to confront the heartbreak she has long avoided. Can she find the strength to confront her past, forgive the man who broke her heart, and take control of her own destiny?
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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