The doyenne of historical fiction on her favorites
Philippa Gregory, by far one of the top best-selling historical fiction writers of our time, trains her storytelling and research skills on nonfiction with her new book “Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History,” which charts what life was like for English women from the Norman Conquest to now. Since writing her first novel, “Wideacre,” while finishing her Ph.D. in English literature, the British author has been a leading voice in historical fiction, especially with her Plantagenet and Tudor works such as “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “The White Queen.”
BOOKS: What are you reading? GREGORY: A research book, “Travel Knowledge” by Ivo Kamps. It’s a collection of first-person accounts and captains’ logs from the earliest voyages. I’m particularly interested in a voyage to West Africa in 1601. I just read “The Bell” by Iris Murdoch, who I adore. Before that I was listening to Dickens’s “Nicholas Nickleby.” That has been on my to-read list for what feels like a century. I had to sign 5,500 of my new books, which took two days. They asked if I wanted to listen to music. I said no. I will listen to “Nicholas Nickleby.”
‘My choice for pleasure reading is classic literature.’
BOOKS: What genres do you read? GREGORY: I read history the most but my choice for pleasure reading is classic literature. Jane Austen. E.M. Forster. He’s my all-time favorite novelist. I don’t read much historical fiction but I just started reading the contemporary Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue, who writes wonderful historical novels. I’ve also read Sarah Waters and Tracy Chevalier for historical fiction. If I’m not feeling well and am putting myself to bed with chicken soup, I read Georgette Heyer, who wrote historical fiction in the 1950s. Her novels are filled with realistic details and are very romantic.
BOOKS: Do you enjoy reading history books?
GREGORY: Some of the heavier books, especially with graphs and lots of data, I can’t lie back on the sofa and say, now I’m going to have a good time. But since
my degree, that would be 50 years ago, historical writing has become much more accessible. I’ve just read Susannah Gibson’s “The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement,” which is about 18th-century learned ladies in England. That is a history book you would read for pleasure.
BOOKS: What were you like as a reader before you became a writer? GREGORY: Voracious. When I left school, I went into journalism. I realized at lunchtime all the journalists went to the pub and drank beer, and I went to the library to read novels. I thought, this is very enjoyable, but if I’m going to spend my life reading fiction, I better get a degree in it. Studying literature led me to writing and history.
BOOKS: Do you have a large library? GREGORY: I have an enormous personal library. I moved into an old house with my daughter and her family. I told my son-in-law, who is an engineer, that I would make my study on the top floor. He said we had to do a stress test on the floor. He didn’t think it was strong enough for my library. We got an engineer in to determine the weight of the books before I could move them in. They passed.
BOOKS: Do you have any prized possessions in your library?
GREGORY: My aunt bought every Forster novel as they came out because she loved him, which is why I have a collection of first-edition Forsters. It’s so lovely to inherit someone else’s library. When I pull out one of her books it’s like I’m wrapped in her shawl.
BOOKS: Where do you buy your books? GREGORY: I like a book store with new and used books because I love a good rummage on the shelf when you come across something that changes your life. That’s how I found Nigel Balchin’s “Mine Own Executioner,” a very nuanced and layered novel that is one of my most favorite books. It’s the story of a therapist and his own neuroses. Balchin was incredibly fashionable in the 1950s but nobody reads him now. In some bizarre way, you have to be highly reviewed and not too popular for people to take you seriously. It’s a lesson in how you can be very popular and then forgotten.