Authors breathe new life into forgotten portraits

Celebrated authors have created imaginary lives for National Portrait Gallery portraits with unknown sitters to help bring the pictures to life.

The 14 Tudor portraits, originally thought to be figures such as Mary, Queen of Scots, are now going on show in London for the first time in 50 years, illuminated by a few lines of their imaginary identities. Alexander McCall Smith, Downton Abbey writer Lord Fellowes, Terry Pratchett and Tracy Chevalier were among the writers who took part.

McCall Smith has imagined the life of a body double for Mary, Queen of Scots, Fellowes has written "a biographical dictionary entry" about a woman whose husband was executed in the reign of Henry VIII and Tracy Chevalier has imagined a blushing young man as an object of homosexual desire.

The paintings will be on show from December 3 to June next year.