NORMAL WOMEN

This is a fascinating book from best-selling historian and novelist Philippa Gregory, described in the introduction as “the culmination of her life’s work”.

The role of men has formed the basis for many a history book, which have mostly been written by men, too. But the role of women has not just been overlooked, it was barely mentioned at all until the 1950s, when female historians started to re-read the historical records “to find out what women were doing in their dark and silent past while men were shining a spotlight and amplifying themselves”.

And while this was welcome and produced some notable biographies of exceptional women, they did little to focus on the everyday or normality of women’s lives.

This weighty tome seeks to address this and is long overdue. Covering

900 years and starting in 1066 with the Norman invasion which was “a hardening of a tyranny by men who captured the kingdom”, Gregory shows the social and cultural transformation that women have fought for through the years.

While the many women living uneventful lives give insight, Gregory’s aim was “to show that murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, whores and weavers, farmers and milliners, female husbands, hermits, the chaste, the jousters, painters, nuns, queens, witches and soldiers – are all part of women’s history, all part of our national history

– even though they lived without men noticing them for long enough to write down their names.”

This book is history written from a totally different perspective. William Collins, £25; ISBN: 9780008601706