The Tudor Queen
As she releases her latest tale of greed, romance and bloody deeds from King Henry VIII’s court, best-selling author Philippa Gregory talks to Juliet Rieden about 30 years of historical fiction and which of her book characters she’d like to be.
Philippa Gregory’s favourite building is the Tower of London, which is hardly surprising when you consider what a rich source of material this royal fortress has been for her. The British author is one the world’s best-selling historical fiction writers and her key period is Tudor England, when the Tower was used as a grisly prison; and for Anne Boleyn in 1536, the site of her execution, her neck sliced through with a sword, her bloody severed head dropping onto a mound of straw in front of a baying crowd. “The site is wonderful and feels so haunted,” Philippa says with obvious glee. “It’s so evocative.”
She could be talking about her own novels, which also feel haunted with the vibrant, compelling ghosts of royal courts past. Indeed, for many of us, much of what we know about the Tudors and Plantagenets has been through Philippa’s novels, for even if you haven’t read them, you’re sure to have seen the adaptations – the TV miniseries The White Queen or the film The Other Boleyn Girl with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.
Now 63, Philippa lives in a renovated farm worker’s cottage in remote North Yorkshire, a beautiful windswept and – of course – historic part of England. Here she immerses herself in her characters. Philippa’s tales are all about courageous, heroic and often badlybehaved women whom she discovers through her rigorous research.
She first “fell in love with history” at university. “I thought I was going to do a degree in English literature but I had a very charismatic, brilliant history lecturer,” she says with a smile. Philippa actually left school at 17 and started training as a journalist, but soon realised she wanted to learn more and, following her first degree, supported herself through a PhD with news reporting gigs at BBC Radio.
“It took me four years and then I looked around for a job where I could go on doing this sort of research, by which time Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and she was cutting back universities, and the posts were frozen. I couldn’t get a job at all. So while I was writing my job applications and looking after my newborn daughter, I started writing a novel just for fun.”
The rest, for Philippa, is literally history. There was a bidding war between five English and four US publishers for that first novel – Wideacre – about the daughter of a squire in 18thcentury England, which 30 years later is still in print and about to be adapted for TV.
“It was completely mad and very unexpected,” says Philippa. “Of course, now I know how unusual that is, but at the time I just thought, ‘Oh this is going well,’ and pretty well overnight my life changed. I went from being unemployed to buying a house and a car.
“It’s always been really easy for me to write, a joy,” says Philippa, who spends about two years on each novel. “You have to write every day once
you’re in the writing phase – you can’t wander away. I get really fascinated by it and can’t bear to have a day where I’m not in touch with it.”
On the day we meet, Philippa has spent her morning editing her new book The Last Tudor (on sale now), and despite its title, she says it may not actually be her last Tudor yarn. “I thought it was going to be, but I don’t think it can be.”
As she tells me this I can almost hear a sigh of relief exhale around the world because, frankly, no one wants Philippa to stop plundering King Henry VIII’s court. The Last Tudor is a total page-turner. “We start with Jane Grey, who was famously Queen for nine days. A lot of people know a bit about Jane Grey. We then go on to her sisters, who are practically unknown. Katherine Grey, famously beautiful, who makes a secret marriage and defies Queen Elizabeth to do so and is imprisoned in the Tower just like her sister; and Mary Grey, the youngest, who is probably a dwarf.” Philippa is off, talking me through the intricacies of her tale with passion, and there’s no question she’s on track for another best-seller.
As a parting shot, I ask Philippa if she were time warped into Tudor times, which of her characters would she like to be?
“Never a woman, because you’re likely to die in childbirth. You’re almost certain to be married to somebody you don’t know so you will suffer some form of marital rape,” she replies. “So don’t be a woman, be a rich man, and for me the King of England’s best, obviously.”
Obviously. AWW