This is your twenty-fifth book. How did the experience of writing The White Princess compare with some of your earlier books? Which one has been your favorite book to write?

The White Princess was one of the most controversial books, I think. My view of Henry Tudor was not common when I started the novel but during the writing a very fine biography by Thomas Penn was published that tended to share my view of him as suspicious verging on paranoid. Imagining what this would be like for his wife–herself the daughter of a phenomenally popular king–was also new. But while the material was new and difficult, the writing was very fluent. I really loved Elizabeth of York and her mother Elizabeth Woodville and some of the central characters of the books were great favorites that I had worked on through several previous novels.

Before becoming a novelist, you were also a journalist and historian. Do you ever think of returning to either of these professions?

Of course, I am still a historian. Mostly I present my research in fictional form so I am a novelist as well, but my book The Women of the Cousin’s War, written with fellow historians David Baldwin and Mike Jones, was published as a popular history book. I enjoyed telling the history of Jacquetta Duchess of Bedford, without fictional devices but I enjoyed writing Lady of the Rivers, my novel based on her life, even more.

The White Queen TV series will be airing in spring 2014 on BBC One in the UK and later in the year on Starz in the US. How involved were you with this production? What do you think viewers have to look forward to most in this small screen adaptation?

It’s a real epic, ten hours based on three books: The White Queen, The Red Queen, and The Kingmaker’s Daughter, beautifully shot with fantastic performances. I think it’s going to be completely absorbing for viewers and introduce them to an historical period that few people know well. I am particularly pleased the way the dramatization has kept the heart of the piece based on the women and on their battles for power and supremacy. I was executive producer and focused most of my attention on the scripts, which reflect the books very closely.

What’s next for Philippa Gregory?

I’m really enjoying researching and writing my new novel about Margaret of Warwick, who goes on to be chief confidante and best friend of Katherine of Aragon. She’s a most interesting character, on the edge of the court, a royal but a woman who chooses to keep a distance from the throne. The challenge has been to move on and away from Elizabeth of York, who has been a most engaging heroine, but Margaret’s eventful and courageous life is keeping my attention.










GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA

Philippa Gregory visited The Gambia, one of the driest and poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa, in 1993 and paid for a well to be hand-dug in a village primary school at Sika. Now, nearly 200 wells later, she continues to raise money and commission wells in village schools, community gardens, and in The Gambia’s only agricultural college. She works with her representative in The Gambia, headmaster Ismaila Sisay, and their charity now funds pottery and batik classes, beekeeping, and adult literacy programs. A recent deep well paid for by the Rotary Club of Temecula provides clean water to a clinic.

GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA is a registered charity in the UK and the United States and a registered NGO in The Gambia. Every donation, however small, goes to The Gambia without any deductions. If you would like to learn more about the work that Philippa calls “the best thing that I do,” visit her website,

PhilippaGregory.com

, and click on GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA, where you can make a donation and join with Philippa in this project.

“Every well we dig provides drinking water for a school of about 600 children and waters the gardens where they grow vegetables for the school dinners. I don’t know of a more direct way to feed hungry children and teach them to farm for their future.”

Philippa Gregory










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The White Queen

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SPRING 1464

With this contradictory parentage of mine: solid English earth and French water goddess, one could expect anything from me: an enchantress, or an ordinary girl. There are those who will say I am both. But today, as I comb my hair with particular care and arrange it under my tallest headdress, take the hands of my two fatherless boys and lead the way to the road that goes to Northampton, I would give all that I am to be, just this once, simply irresistible.

I have to attract the attention of a young man riding out to yet another battle, against an enemy that cannot be defeated. He may not even see me. He is not likely to be in the mood for beggars or flirts. I have to excite his compassion for my position, inspire his sympathy for my needs, and stay in his memory long enough for him to do something about them both. And this is a man who has beautiful women flinging themselves at him every night of the week, and a hundred claimants for every post in his gift.

He is a usurper and a tyrant, my enemy and the son of my enemy, but I am far beyond loyalty to anyone but my sons and myself. My own father rode out to the battle of Towton against this man who now calls himself King of England, though he is little more than a braggart boy; and I have never seen a man as broken as my father when he came home from Towton, his sword arm bleeding through his jacket, his face white, saying that this boy is a commander such as we have never seen before, and our cause is lost, and we are all without hope while he lives. Twenty thousand men were cut down at Towton at this boy’s command; no one had ever seen such death before in England. My father said it was a harvest of Lancastrians, not a battle. The rightful King Henry and his wife, Queen Margaret of Anjou, fled to Scotland, devastated by the deaths.

Those of us left in England did not surrender readily. The battles went on and on to resist the false king, this boy of York. My own husband was killed commanding our cavalry, only three years ago at St. Albans. And now I am left a widow and what land and fortune I once called my own has been taken by my mother-in-law with the goodwill of the victor, the master of this boy-king, the great puppeteer who is known as the Kingmaker: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who made a king out of this vain boy, now only twenty-two, and will make a hell out of England for those of us who still defend the House of Lancaster.