Meeting Philippa Gregory

Last Thursday, I got to meet my Historical Fiction heroine Philippa Gregory!!! She was in London, promoting her new book "The Taming of the Queen", which focusses on the story of Kateryn Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth wife.

Philippa gave a lecture which was led by Chris Campbell, Literary Manager of the Royal Court. She first was asked in general about her career. She said that she had found it very hard to find work in the early years, one of those reasons being because of Margaret Thatcher who she was not a big fan of! However, while working on her History PhD in 18th century Literature, this was when she discovered her love of writing and the process of creating a novel.

Philippa was then asked that inevitable question about the importance of historical accuracy. Her response to this was that in writing, there are no rules. In fact, some history is “hidden” because there are things that some historians don’t want you to know. When researching for her current book, she realised this because it emerged that Kateryn Parr was the first Queen to publish a book and Philippa never knew this before. Following that point, she really wished that she could give characters a happy ending, but of course the story has to be based on real events!

She said that her new book had been influenced by “The Taming of the Shrew” by Shakespeare. The moment when Kateryn Parr has to defend herself to Henry over her religious beliefs shows one connection with the Shakespeare play, as Kateryn had to essentially dumb herself down and tell him that she was just a “silly woman, inferior to him” and that all she wanted to do when she debated religion with him was to distract him from his bad health.

She revealed that she really admired Catherine of Aragon and also, Anne of Cleves. She joked though that she was not such a fan of Jane Seymour and that that does seem to come out in her books! She exclusively revealed to us that her next book will be about Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII! Margaret was married to King James IV of Scotland. As Philippa admires Catherine of Aragon, she said that this would be quite a dilemma to write because as we know, Catherine's relationship as sister-in-law to Margaret was definitely not helped by the death of James IV at the Battle of Flodden!

Philippa genuinely believes that Henry VIII had a Kell Positive blood type. This explained why he went mad, became obese, paranoid and why his wives suffered miscarriages. Also, she believed that the whole court went mad with him. This would have been typical behaviour in a group that surrounds a tyrant; those who defy a tyrant ended up dead and this was what was happening in his court. Also, there were dangerous individuals in the court that manipulated this situation, one of them being Thomas Howard, who she considered to be a “murderer”. She joked that her relationship with Henry VIII has lasted 30 years, longer than any of the six wives’ marriages to him – and longer than her own!

Philippa revealed that she loved “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel. Wolf Hall shows the story from Thomas Cromwell’s perspective, but Philippa personally prefers to write from the women’s perspective. She considers herself to be a Feminist writer, but not in the aggressive sense of the word. She felt it was important also to write in the first person, as it shows the characters thoughts and feelings and shows the story in real time because the character does not know what event will happen next.

Philippa read an extract from her new book, where it describes the scene of the painting of the famous “The Family of Henry VIII” portrait of 1545. It revealed how Kateryn realised afterwards that she was only used in the portrait to help recreate the image of Henry’s dead wife, Jane Seymour.

We were all then given the opportunity to ask her questions. One fan asked when she was 16 or 17, what she believed she would be doing in so many decades time from then and Philippa replied that she felt quite bleak about the future at the time, believing that there would be a Nuclear War! However, she has now reached the age of 60, so it’s all going good!

She confirmed that The White Princess is going to be dramatized. When her books are dramatized, she can offer advice to the filming crew and does get to see the script, but at the end of the day, she’s not a film director – everything else is left to the film crew. One fan said that she must go further back in time before the Plantagenets and consider writing about Matilda!

Philippa was asked about the editing process of her books. She said how she has interesting conversations with her team when creating a book, such as the capitalisation of letters! When a book is finished, she feels sad about leaving that character and is temporarily “unemployed” until the next book.

Afterwards, she signed our copies of her new book. I asked her if she had any advice for those wanting to become writers and she said that they just needed to read lots. I told her about how I self-published two books and that I just loved writing and she wished me luck, which really did mean a lot to me!

Despite being a huge success across the world, Philippa was very nice, normal and had time for all of the fans. She is definitely one of the nicest celebrities I have met.