Philippa Gregory

Also written for The Dusty Shelf, this interview with Philippa Gregory came about prior to her book, The Other Boleyn Girl, becoming a movie.  I am thrilled with the success she’s had.

Interview with Philippa Gregory

by Lane

My good friend Nicole often sends me books for gifts. Two years ago, she surprised me with a new historical fiction work called The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory. I’m not sure who to fault, friend or author, for the two nights I went without sleep but I could not put the book down. Philippa Gregory quickly became one of my favorite writers.

Among her wide bibliography, most recently Ms. Gregory has published The Queen’s Fool and The Virgin’s Lover. Each work is stunning in its detail and historical accuracy.

I was very excited to catch up with Ms. Gregory, who is currently at work on her next novel, a story of Katherine of Aragon. She was kind enough to spend some time answering questions for The Dusty Shelf.

TDS: You have written both contemporary and historical fiction. Do you find it more interesting or challenging to write a character from a brand new perspective, or to write a character from a set of preconceived notions based on historical documentation?

PG: I find it most interesting to write a character set in an historical period. The research is the structure for both the novel and the character and everything has to flow, logically, from the history. The development of both character and story have to explain and illustrate the facts.

TDS: What is the most difficult aspect of writing historical fiction? (Attention to detail? The 21st Century mindset? Finding a character?)

PG: I think the 21st century Mindset is the greatest obstacle to writing good historical fiction. You never fully know your own prejudices and misconceptions. One can be alert to the differences from one period to another, but your focus of interest itself is dictated by your own period of time. For instance, I cannot help giving a psychological explanation which is informed by Freud and those who have come after him. Someone in the Elizabethan period would think in terms of the unconscious and subconscious (as Shakespeare so brilliantly does) but would not use those terms.

TDS: What is your preferred method of research (library, internet, History channel)?

PG: I am a book addict, when I am at the early stage of a novel I like to go to a library and surround myself with everything from the shelves on the character or the period and skim everything. Then I select some favourite historians and really study their material. I rarely go to the original sources unless I need to read a full text, and I use the internet for fact-checking of dates and names. In general, I find it a rather dangerous resource because there is no academic rigour – anyone can say anything, and while that can be a joy it can also be very misleading.

TDS: What is your favorite nonfiction history book?

PG: If I had to choose one favourite it would be EP Thompson, Making of the English Working Class. This is a tremendous book that sets the record straight from the class-dominated history that went before. This is our history – the history of the ordinary people – told by a passionate radical English Marxist writing at the height of his powers. I think he was a wonderful historian.

TDS: I have always loved historical fiction for the fact that it teaches, piques curiosity to learn, and entertains at the same time. What do you think are educational benefits to the genre?

PG: Good historical fiction does engage the reader and encourages them to read more historical fiction or even history. Bad historical fiction encourages the reader to take a romantic and unrealistic view of the past and in that sense can be damaging both to an understanding of the past and also the present. I think a good novel can be as stimulating and convey as much about the life of the time as a good history.

TDS: You have written brilliantly on the Court intrigues of Henry VIII, his various crowned heirs, pretenders to the throne of England and how their conduct and misconduct shaped the course of history. Having obviously researched and studied, what patterns do you find in the way the Court politics operated?

PG: I think as Henry grew older and more secure the power that he had vested in him as solely powerful King turned him into a great tyrant, and one sees how the power of the courtiers to oppose him and to argue a case slowly melts away. It is a very interesting depiction of the corruption of a man and of a political system by the dominance of power in one pair of hands.

TDS: I truly enjoyed the intricacies of The Other Boleyn Girl and its depictions of how families seemed to jockey for political position on the backs of their daughters. You wrote in such a way that the juxtaposition between the attitude of men toward women (as disposable and unnecessary) and the huge role of women in political history (quite necessary and hardly disposable) was very clear. Was this intentional? What are your thoughts on the subject?

PG: I think the Tudor court is exceptionally interesting in that the legal power of women is very much diminished but their importance as players remains strong. Anne Boleyn had very little help in her campaign to be Queen, even her family had profound doubts that she could do it, but by sheer force of personality alone she re-made history. However, one also sees that the social values of the time were against her: when she started to lose her hold on Henry she was vulnerable to charges which could only be raised against a woman – of witchcraft and sexual appetite.
In her story alone we see the power that a woman could claim for herself – and the danger she faced by being an exceptional woman in a misogynistic society. The role of women is one of my key interests and the period yields some extraordinary women in a time especially repressive.

TDS: In The Queen’s Fool, your heroine and her family are the guardians of literature, and religious and historical texts even though that could mean their execution. We have always lost literature and important documents in war. Why do you think the written word is such a threat?

PG: The written word transcends time, as long as there is a reader it can speak. As such, it cannot be defeated. In The Queen’s Fool they are hiding manuscripts but also published books, at a time when people are just starting to realise the power of mass publication. The manuscripts are precious because they are so rare – their knowledge can be lost and Hannah and her father see themselves as the guardians of rare knowledge. But the books are fascinating since they are published in numbers, they are still rare but not unique – Hannah [the heroine] knows that sometimes they have one part of a book and someone will have another. They are guardians of a body of knowledge, the word is spreading.

TDS: And on a lighter note, if you could save one piece of literature and one each of religious and historical texts from destruction, which would you choose?

PG: I would save Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the new testament (to be honest, sometimes I think we’d do better without the old) and Herodotus –because the text is so old it has to survive.

TDS: Your latest novel is The Virgin’s Lover, and you focus on a different aspect of the Court of Elizabeth I than you did in The Queen’s Fool. Did you find it difficult write the darker aspects of Elizabeth’s personality as you wrote a more generous Amy Dudley from The Queen’s Fool?

PG: I am very conscious that my view of Amy was transformed by reading and thinking about her in detail. The more I knew of her life and the more I invented her, the fonder of her I became. In The Queen’s Fool she is a very minor character but in The Virgin’s Lover she is the third part of the triangle and is key to the story.

Elizabeth changed far less for me. In The Queen’s Fool she is the girl who grows up in this incredibly dangerous and difficult court. In The Virgin’s Lover we see the woman who develops from that background.

TDS: You seem to enjoy writing from the late 15th to 16th Centuries. Have you a favorite historical character from that time period, and what is the creative draw?

PG: I am very drawn to the less-known characters and some of them are very heroic. I became very fond of Mary Tudor, and I am now working on a novel about her mother Katherine of Aragon who I admire very much. They were both women of genuinely high moral conviction, with an intense personal spiritual life in almost impossible circumstances.

I grew very fond of Mary Boleyn as a foil to the better known Anne, but most of her character is my invention – we simply don’t know enough about her in historical terms. It is an absolutely fascinating period filled with adventure and dramatic change and also it is the period when the society we live in now was very much invented. It is a hotbed of change and we can see a lot of the consequences of that change in our society today.

TDS: Part of The Virgin’s Lover focuses on Elizabeth I’s decision not to marry, which was shocking and appeared to be a death knell to her nation. History tells us this was a wise choice. Do you think Elizabeth could have been as effective a leader had she chosen to marry?

PG: Oho – history tells us, does it? I don’t think history ever tells us anything. I think we conclude things from history but we could be right or wrong. In this instance I think Elizabeth would have been a better Queen if she had married, on the assumption that she could have married a good man. It would be the choice of the husband that would have been key.
If she had married a heretic-burning Catholic she would probably have lost her throne, but if she could have found and trusted a man of moderate principles who would have ruled alongside her she could have done all that she did to make England a safe place, and she could have handed the country on to an unbroken line of Tudors instead of bringing in the Stuarts who were more absolutist and more tending to Roman Catholicism than she would have wished.
She could have married some of her English suitors but Dudley would have been a difficulty because of the number of his personal enemies. However, I think she could perhaps have married Dudley and survived with him as King consort. And she would have been happier than I think she was.

TDS: Religion played a devastating role in the civil wars surrounding ascension to the throne after Henry VIII’s death. You write either side of the Catholic/Protestant question, and of Judaism with great respect. Was it difficult to portray Catholicism and Protestantism in turn as they became tools of violence against one another, and any who were different? How did you manage to maintain such balance between them?

PG: It is easy to write of religion with respect when the representatives are men and women that one admires. I don’t write very kindly of Bishop Bonner who was, I think, a sadist. But I did write well of Cardinal Pole or Bishop Gardiner because they were admirable principled men.

TDS: I have often thought that we write history based on which side of various wars we stand. Had you lived in that era, would you have backed Mary or Elizabeth as heir to the throne?

PG: I think the great task in writing history is to read the record and immerse oneself in the arguments without letting them recruit you. There are great polemical histories which take one side or another, they gain their idiosyncratic power and individualism through a loss of fairness. I much prefer to judge each event as it comes along, and not to take sides. If I had lived in that era I am sure that I would have struggled to see who was in the right, and where my greatest chances of survival lay. I think I would be like Hannah [from The Queen’s Fool] who dearly wants to do the right thing but cannot always tell what that is.

TDS: What is your next step in writing? Can we look for something new in 2005?

PG: I am really delighted with my new book which will be published in the UK in autumn 2005 and in the US in spring 2006. It will be called The Ghost of the Rose and it is about Katherine of Aragon who is one of the most fascinating characters I have studied so far. Her background in Moorish Spain and her life in England has been a revelation, and I deal with her only as a young woman, at the time of her triumph. It is a very different picture than the usual one that people have of her.

TDS: And finally, of the many historical figures you’ve written, who have you enjoyed the most?

PG: Always the latest!

For more information about the very interesting Ms. Gregory, her writing and her calendar, visit her website www.PhilippaGregory.com.