Kingmaker's Daughter (Gregory) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—January 9, 1954
• Where—Nairobi, Kenya
• Education—B.A., Sussex University; Ph.D., Edinburgh
   University
• Currently—lives in Hartlepool, England, UK


Philippa Gregory is the author of more than a dozen books. She holds a Ph.D. in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh and lives in England.

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Philippa Gregory, author of the bestselling Wideacre trilogy and other celebrated historical novels, holds a B.A. in history and a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature. In her youth, however, the meticulous writer-researcher almost skipped going to university (she was, as she put it, "a bit of a rebel at school"). When she finally did enroll at Sussex University, she took a course taught by the historian Maurice Hutt, and the rest is — what else? — history.

It was such a powerful experience that, really, it transformed my life," she explained in an interview with The Guardian. "I was looking for something that would explain everything — I was that kind of earnest young woman! — and history seemed to be able to do that.

Gregory earned her degree from Sussex, then traveled to Edinburgh to research 18th-century popular novels. The research spawned both a Ph.D. thesis and Gregory's first novel, Wideacre, which was a New York Times bestseller. As Gregory pointed out in a Barnes and Noble interview...

It came at a time when people wanted a new sort of historical fiction: more realistic, more radical, more sexy, and harder edged. That's how I see the world, so I never wrote for a market, I always wrote to reflect my own view of the period, and it has been phenomenally successful.

After extending Wideacre into a trilogy, Gregory continued to write fiction, delving into 16th-century witchcraft, 17th-century political turmoil, and 18th-century slave trading, as well as exploring contemporary life.

But while Gregory — in her own view and in the views of many critics — continued to improve as a writer, none of her books matched the popular success of Wideacre until she wrote The Other Boleyn Girl, a provocative tale of sexual politics in the court of Henry VIII, and The Queen's Fool, the story of a 14-year-old Jewish girl brought to the court of Queen Mary. Both novels became bestsellers and widely acclaimed storytelling tour de forces.

Gregory continues to mine the territory of Tudor England for stories — and she continues with her historical research, building up an ever more dazzling, daring and complete picture of the period. As she told The Guardian...

Accuracy is very important to me because I have a total commitment to history. It answered my deepest questions, of which, I suppose, the most profound is: ‘Why am I here?' Understanding your history can tell you that. It's how I understand who I am and where I came from. I would never lie to anyone about history.

Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:

• I have an enormous horse whom I absolutely adore, and I keep playing hooky from writing to ride him.

• I went to The Gambia on holiday and gave a rural schoolmaster money for a well in the school garden to teach the children how to farm with irrigation, and to grow crops for them to eat at dinnertime. The project took off, and he and I have built more than 50 wells in The Gambia together, and we are still digging! Each well costs only £250, so I ask friends for money and I give my lecture fees towards it. It is one of the greatest achievements of my life and makes a real difference to the poorest people in Africa.

• Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian. For instance, I have never believed that there is only one person for each person in the world. It doesn't make the least sense to me. However, in reality, I fell in love at 45 and I am absolutely certain that my now husband is the only man in the world for me, a truth I find both ridiculous and uplifting.

• I love reading and I love thinking — the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time. By the time I settle down to write I have to know fairly intensely about the characters, the period, and the issues. I always get interested in some of the side issues — like the currency or the change of agriculture.

• I have a great passion for the countryside and I can't be happy unless I am walking in the country or riding once or twice a week. When we go on author tour my husband always makes sure that we have walking breaks to keep me sane!

• I have two children who are the most precious people in the world — a girl of 22 and a boy of 11. They are absolutely different, and yet for me they have that same luminosity of being my blessing.

• I couldn't name any single book as a unique influence. As a child I read Alison Goudge's The Little White Horse, and the combination of historical fiction and gothic was very powerful for me.

• I read all of Jane Austen's novels very early on and learned to love her economy of style and precision. She still seems to me the finest writer in the English language. But I am a very big enthusiast for the works of E. M. Forster, who seems to me to be able to take ideas of the greatest seriousness and incorporate them into a novel that's fluent and realistic—and even funny. (From Barnes & Noble.)