Victoria Whitworth

Victoria (V.M.) Whitworth (née Thompson; born in London 1966^[1]) 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.

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.^[2]

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.^[3]

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.^[4]

Whitworth is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.^[5]

• The Bone Thief (Ebury Press, 2012), ISBN 978-0091947231
• The Traitors’ Pit (Ebury Press, 2013), ISBN 978-0091947187
• Daughter of the Wolf (Head of Zeus, 2016), ISBN 978-1784082147

• Swimming with Seals (Head of Zeus, 2016), ISBN 978-1784978372
• Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell & Brewer, 2004), ISBN 1843830701
• 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) ISBN 978-1788541800

• Author's web site Archived 17 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine
• Victoria Whitworth on Academia.edu