Born in Kenya in 1954,
Philippa Gregory moved to England with her family and was educated in Bristol and at the National Council for the Training of Journalists course in Cardiff. She worked as a senior reporter on the Portsmouth News, and as a journalist and producer for BBC radio. Gregory obtained a BA degree in history at the University of Sussex in Brighton and a PhD at Edinburgh University in 18th-century literature.
She makes regular contributions to newspapers and magazines, with short stories, features and reviews. A frequent broadcaster, she is a regular member on Round Britain Quiz, Quote Unquote, and is the Tudor expert for television Channel 4's Time Team and presents historical programs for BBC, most recently an exploration into eighteenth century African slavery in the North East of England. She was the primary judge for the Whitbread novel of the Year prize and is a judge for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
In her spare time, Gregory runs an extraordinary charity founded by her and a Gambian schoolmaster, Ismaila Sisay. Gardens for the Gambia digs wells for schools and communities in the Gambia financed by money raised and donated by Gregory herself. The charity is the biggest well-builder in the Gambia and is creating market gardens in the poorest nation in Africa at the rate of two a week. Gregory and Ismaila have created more than sixty wells so far.
Philippa lives with her family on a small farm in the North of England. She welcomes visitors to her website www.PhilippaGregory.com where there is a readers group, historical background material to the novels, her travel writing, journalism, and updated reports on Gardens for The Gambia.
Gregory’s first novel, Wideacre, was written as she completed her PhD and became an instant world-wide bestseller. On its publication, she became a full-time writer. Her knowledge of gothic eighteenth century novels led to the worldwide success of Wideacre, which was followed by the haunting sequel The Favored Child, and the delightful happy ending of the trilogy Meridon. This novel was listed in Feminist Book Fortnight and for the Romantic Novel of the year at the same time – one of the many instances of Philippa’s work appealing to very different readers. Touchstone-Fireside reissued the trilogy in 2003.
In her later novels, Gregory pioneered the genre which has become her own: fictional biography, the true story of a real person brought to life with painstaking research and passionate verve. The flowering of this new style was undoubtedly due to The Other Boleyn Girl, a runaway best-seller which stormed the US market and then went worldwide telling the story of the little-known sister to Anne Boleyn. The Other Boleyn Girl is becoming a classic historical novel, winning the Parker Pen Novel of the Year Award in 2002, and the Romantic Times fictional biography award. The Other Boleyn Girl was adapted for the BBC as a single television drama and was released as a major motion picture in the US on February 29, 2008 starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Scarlett Johansen as Mary Boleyn, and Eric Bana as Henry. Soon after the movie release, The Other Boleyn Girl book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, #3 on the USA Today bestseller list, and #1 on the Washington Post bestseller list.
Other Tudor novels followed The Other Boleyn Girl, each becoming instant bestsellers. The Queen's Fool took a sympathetic look at Mary Tudor through the eyes of a real-life character, a female fool, and was a Top Twenty bestseller for twenty weeks in the UK, and has been bought in the US for a four-part television drama special. The Virgin's Lover, telling the story of Elizabeth 1st love affair with Robert Dudley and the little known story of his wife, was simultaneously in the Top Twenty bestseller lists in both UK and US while being number one on the New Zealand bestseller list. It reached the Top Ten in paperback. Her third Tudor novel The Constant Princess, told the dramatic life story of Katherine of Aragon, a princess raised in the Moorish Palace of the Alhambra who achieves her life ambition of becoming Queen of England. It stayed in the Top Twenty in the US for thirteen weeks and in the Top Ten for four weeks in the UK. The final Tudor novel, The Boleyn Inheritance, delighted fans worldwide with the stories of three extraordinary women: Jane Boleyn, the widow of Anne Boleyn’s brother George, Anne of Cleves, the young woman who was brought to England by Henry VIII to be his bride and then spitefully rejected by him, and Katherine Howard, the girl, almost a child, whom he adored and then killed. The hardcover debuted in the US at #12 and the paperback has remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over 30 weeks.
Two of Gregory’s best-loved novels: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth are based on the true-life story of father and son John Tradescant working in the upheaval of the English civil war. A Respectable Trade took Gregory back to the 18th century where her knowledge of the slave trade and her home town of Bristol produced a haunting novel of slave trading and its terrible human cost. This is the only modern novel to explore the tragedies of slavery in England itself, and features a group of kidnapped African people trying to find their freedom in the elegant houses of 18th century Clifton. Gregory adapted her book for a highly acclaimed BBC television production which won the prize for drama from the Commission of Racial Equality and was shortlisted for a BAFTA for the screenplay.
Gregory’s newest novel The Other Queen, releasing in September 2008, portrays the life and infamous death of Mary Queen of Scots. It depicts Mary’s long imprisonment in England as a “guest” of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick. A suspense-filled tale of love, ambition, and jealousy, The Other Queen is told through three points of view: Bess, a spy for Queen Elizabeth in her own household, watching her fortune and her husband’s love destroyed by his obsession with Mary; Mary, a queen who will lie, seduce, plot, and sacrifice the lives of hundreds to regain her Scottish throne so that she can next take Elizabeth’s; and George, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who swore his allegiance to Queen Elizabeth but falls in love with Mary, and ultimately must condemn his love to death.
|
