This week, we’re time traveling with Phillipa Gregory, prolific author and feminist historian (and maybe Danielle’s new bestie???). Philippa is the woman behind over 50 historical fiction novels that trace narratives across Medieval and Tudor England, including The Other Boleyn Girl, which was adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. Her latest novel, The Boleyn Traitor, follows the infamous Anne Boleyn’s sister-in-law, Jane Boleyn, through her life as a spy in the English court. And this story, as so many of Philippa Gregory’s do, brings a complicated, sometimes unlikeable, largely forgotten woman to the forefront. Because Philippa doesn’t really trust pure, pious women. She’s drawn instead to the truth – that women in from history are just as layered and diverse as we are today. 

BOOKS MENTIONED: 

The Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory 

Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History by Philippa Gregory 

Wild Acre by Philippa Gregory

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory 

Richard III by William Shakespeare

This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England by Nandini Das

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Little Grey Rabbit by Alison Uttley

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

Ulysses by James Joyce

Mine Own Executioner by Nigel Balchin