PHILIPPA GREGORY
The English historical novelist’s new book is set in 1685, with the country on the brink of civil war
How important is historical accuracy when reimaging the past in your novels? The relationship between fact and fiction is one of the questions I’m asked most often. In my fictional biographies, the history gives me the bones of the book, and the fiction adds the flesh. In this series, my main characters are fictional, but the world they live in and events they face are on the historical record and I am obsessively faithful to the historical record! What’s it like seeing your work reimagined into films? It depends entirely on the project. It’s always really stimulating to be working with professionals from a different industry, and sometimes an adaptation can bring a new dimension to the book, but I think most writers would agree that they usually prefer the novel form.
What are you reading now? I love the classics when I’m reading for pleasure, so I tend to re-read
Henry James, E.M. Forster, George Eliot or Jane Austen over and over. But right now I’m reading mostly non-fiction as research on women’s history.
Is there a book that made you love writing?
I was a voracious reader as a child and a regular at my local library. When I was around 8 years old I read The Tree That Sat Down by Beverley Nichols and it was a doorway to a completely convincing world that was recognisably my world but was filled with magic.
What’s the best book you’ve read? So hard to pick a “favourite” but it would be hard to look past George
Eliot, Middlemarch – great women characters here from one of the greatest women writers. Dorothea is a clever young woman with really nothing to do – she mistakes love of study for love of the scholar and marries the wrong man. But even the right man is not her equal. It’s a wonderfully nuanced picture of how difficult it is to be a highly intelligent woman with a great capacity for love. Other women characters are similarly complex. It’s extraordinarily dense and deeply moving, like a snapshot of a whole provincial town at a time of change.
A book that had a pivotal impact on your life? I was a young reader when I read E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread, and it was recognisable as an adult book, but I was amazed at how accessible it was. I have read and re-read it and each time I discover another layer. I also have to mention E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, which made me understand the real importance of writing history.
The book you couldn’t finish? I have tried to love Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It’s a great story wrapped up in an absurdly boring narration. The dull ill man in bed! The garrulous housekeeper!
Awful!